@GigglingGanon@jake22_h “You don’t know what my trauma triggers are.”
And I don’t care. It’s not anyone’s duty to dance around your “triggers,” it’s your responsibility to learn to deal with them and function within society.
Isabelle Huppert on how Michael Haneke finally convinced her to star in "The Piano Teacher" (2001) & her thoughts on the character:
"Interviewer: Michael Haneke said he would not do “The Piano Teacher” (2001) without you. Did it take convincing for you, or was the role an immediate “yes”?
Huppert: Between Michael and me, it’s a non-story. The first offer was 'Funny Games' (1997) and I turned it down. I thought the film was brilliant, but when I first read the script, it was really, really difficult, because for 'Funny Games' it’s more like an experience to show how the violence was operating onscreen for the spectator, and how it was most of the time wrapped in some kind of a sweet something to make it acceptable by the audience.
In 'Funny Games' there is no wrap. It was the dry experience of death and murder, so there was very little for the imaginative process. But later, he came to me for “Time of the Wolf,” which I dropped out of for various reasons, and I couldn’t do it. [“Time of the Wolf” later came together in 2003, two years after “The Piano Teacher.”] He finally came to me for “The Piano Teacher” (2001) and he was very stubborn and said, “Isabelle, this is my last time. I will never ask you again, and I won’t do the film [without you].” That was enough for me to do it, of course. He was very patient.
Interviewer: Erika can be hard to read. She has a monochromatic expression, and when that starts to shatter, you know she’s unraveling. Other than reading the novel, what was your own private, internal process of preparing to play her?
Huppert: There was something very touching in the character. She has a very high idea of love, but she’s also a suffering woman. That was enough for me to make her be accepted and to love, but of course, really twisted, undoubtedly.
Sometimes, the audience doesn’t know exactly the reasons why you are connected to a film. You can’t really analyze it, but it’s there, and in that case, there was something ideal, something very much in the feeling of love, the love concept was really elevated in the film. She puts love on such a high level, but obviously, she can’t reach it. That’s the problem. But it’s a good project in which to search for love in such an ethereal region of feeling."
(Isabelle Huppert's interview with Ryan Lattanzio, Indiewire, 2022)
P.S: On this day, 25 years ago, "The Piano Teacher" (2001) premiered at the Cannes Fil Festival, France.
Paul Dano recommends 'Good Morning' and other works by acclaimed Japanese filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu!
"He really changed who I am. I think he's one of the greatest filmmakers of the 20th century."
Katharine Hepburn aparece con lágrimas en los ojos frente a Spencer Tracy en la escena final de "¿Sabes quién viene a cenar?" (1967), de Stanley Kramer. No estaba actuando; sabía que su amado de toda la vida estaba gravemente enfermo y se conmovió con sus palabras.
Jacques Rivette on Joseph L. Mankiewicz:
"His great films, like All About Eve (1950) or The Barefoot Contessa (1954), were very striking within the parameters of contemporary American cinema at the time they were made, but now I have no desire whatsoever to see them again. I was astonished when Juliet Berto and I saw All About Eve again 25 years ago at the Cinémathèque. I wanted her to see it for a project we were going to do together before Céline and Julie Go Boating (1974). Except for Marilyn Monroe, she hated every minute of it, and I had to admit that she was right: every intention was underlined in red, and it struck me as a film without a director! Mankiewicz was a great producer, a good scenarist and a masterful writer of dialogue, but for me he was never a director. His films are cut together any which way, the actors are always pushed towards caricature and they resist with only varying degrees of success. Here’s a good definition of mise en scène – it’s what’s lacking in the films of Joseph L. Mankiewicz. Whereas Preminger is a pure director. In his work, everything but the direction often disappears."
— "The Captive Lover – An Interview with Jacques Rivette" by Frédéric Bonnaud (Les Inrockuptibles, 25 March 1998; English translation by Kent Jones, Senses of Cinema, September 2001)