QUENEAU Raymond. - Lot 188

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Lot n° 188
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QUENEAU Raymond. - Lot 188
QUENEAU Raymond. CORRECTED TAPS, Un couple, [1960]. Important information about the collaboration of Jean-Pierre Mocky and Raymond Queneau on their first film. Un couple is the second film directed by Jean-Pierre MOCKY (1929-2019), who had already written Les Dragueurs (1959). Mocky's script was adapted with the help of Queneau, who wrote the dialogues. The two spouses in question, Anne and Pierre (Jean Kosta and Juliette Mayniel), have been married for three years and, although they continue to love each other, physically they no longer get along as they used to. They decide to separate. Pierre, who works in a toy factory, is lured by his boss Mr. Gratteloup (Francis Blanche) into an evening with prostitutes, but does not succumb to temptation. Nor can he cheat on his wife with Véronique (Véronique Nordey), a work colleague. Pierre and Anne meet at a party, where they realize that other couples are more ill-matched than themselves. They give each other a second chance and go to the mountains. But despite this happy interlude, a rift remains. Pierre flirts with Veronique, while Anne realizes that she can love another man than Pierre by letting herself be seduced by her next-door neighbour. She decides to leave her husband, who lets her go. At least that's what was filmed. But this voluminous collection of sheets shows that the script was constantly evolving, and that Queneau and Mocky groped around for a long time. Of this collaboration, the director would say: "Raymond Queneau suggested that I should not keep to the serious tone but introduce bizarre and eccentric characters and spice up this amorous introspection with derision. "Otherwise, you'll piss off the audience". In an early version, the film ended with Pierre and Véronique (still called Brigitte) getting married. Similarly, they imagine multiple ways for Anne to meet another man: at the cinema, on the bus, in an elevator. Queneau's dialogues are brief, precise, without pathos This rather dark film, daring for its time, caused a scandal at its release. However, it was hailed by Jean Cocteau: "This terrible portrait of vulgarity will shock those who believe the film to be vulgar and those who see their own portrait in it. One of the great beauties of this film is that the written language (said) and the visual language are equivalent in style and of the same weight (which is rare). And Louis-René des Forêts wrote: "I consider Un couple to be the freshest and most unusual film I have seen in a long time. It breaks with all the conventions of French cinema. The file includes: * the first state of the typescript (241 pages in-4, 17 of which are in Jean-Pierre Mocky's handwriting), with numerous autograph corrections by Raymond Queneau. * the second state of the screenplay (176 typewritten pages) with some autograph corrections by Raymond Queneau. * the third state of the screenplay (258 pages) with numerous cribs and autograph corrections by Raymond Queneau. * the first screenplay by Jean-Pierre Mocky (37 p. in-4 dactyl.), dated "Malaga, June 1959". * typescript of the screenplay, with provisional dialogues (192 p.). * typescript of the screenplay with dialogues by R. Queneau (163 p.). * letters from the production, contracts, regulations (14 documents). This very complete file also contains several interesting documents. For example, the "sketches" of the main characters, which were used to recruit the actors; or an advertisement for the film, written in the form of a letter from a spectator to his wife, to tell her that the work made her understand what was happening between them.
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