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I HAVE BEEN asked about my evolution since LA REGLE DU JEU. I don’t think it is of the slightest importance.

In the first place, no one person makes a film. It is the product of teamwork. There is, naturally, one person who influences the team, and he becomes the animator, the leader, the boss, as workers say.

In the beginning of American film it was often the star who was the prime-mover, and it is quite correct to say “Douglas Fairbanks’ film,” or “Mary Pickford’s film,” because they influenced and inspired the work of everybody.

Sometimes the writer has been the one, but mostly it has been the director. In Europe a film is, before everything else, the work of its director, and of the technical methods his personality causes him to select and employ.

Being a director, I am convinced that I, and persons like me, are like chefs, capable of creating a good dinner.

We cannot do anything without the collaboration of our saucemakers, our bakers, our wine stewards, etc. Nor without the owner of the restaurant.

There are owners of high class restaurants, and of low class ones. The latter always bother their chef with advice – a little more salt, too much tarragon in this chicken. The high class producers – excuse me, restaurant owners – leave their chefs alone. Their talent consists in choosing them judiciously, and in surrounding them with good cooks and helpers, and with the technical equipment and means congenial to their personalities.

If this doesn’t work, there is always the last resource of firing everybody.

In this world, only results count. And my results are the product not only of my work, but of the work of actors, technicians, and laborers. That is why my evolution, by itself, cannot explain the difference between LA REGLE DU JEU and THE RIVER. It is necessary to study the evolution of all the collaborators who helped me to make these two films, and all the films I made between 1939 and 1949.

Nobody develops alone. Even when separated by great distances, people of similar civilizations move approximately together. The world that we know, our civilization, where lie our interests and affections, follows this path.

I spent ten years outside of France. The first time I returned to Paris I sat down with my old friends and we took up our conversation not where it had left off, but where it would have arrived if we had continued seeing each other every day.

I speak, naturally, of my very close friends.

This, by the way, is rather disquieting. I am sure that this is the way it was for me n my return to France. If others feel this way, and if they are a majority, the idea of a national group, which we in France have held since Joan of Arc, becomes of less importance, and of doubtful validity.

We progress by groups, not individually.

There are a thousand ways to create. One can grow potatoes, procreate children, discover a new planet.

What attracts me to film-making is what attracts others to literature or music or any- domain of the arts. I believe more than ever that the cinema is an art and therefore can, among other things, help to depict this collective evolution of mankind.

When I say that the cinema is an art, I admit that it is perhaps an art stained with industrialism and commercialism. But isn’t the same thing true of tapestry, of pottery? Some faience work of Urbino’s, or a Beauvais tapestry, are unquestionably works of art, but they come from a factory. Like a film, their fabrication required the collaboration of authors, technicians, financiers and businessmen. And, after all, the presentation of a play, of a symphony, of frescoes ornamenting a palace, have entailed financial or business deals comparable to those that precede the making of a film.

In this life, one can choose one’s group. But more often than not, chance places you. What does it matter? The essential tiling is that our voices he not isolated voices.

I have to admit that, ill all the films I have made, my influence has been great enough so that I must accept the greater part of the responsibility for the finished product. But it would also be useless to deny that my collaborators’ influence on me has been enormous. I have tried to digest it and thus enrich my knowledge of life. Row can one know life if not through other human beings?

The big thing is how not to he a bystander in life, how not to observe others as a tourist observes the crowds that pass below his hotel balcony. One must take part in life. Otherwise we remain amateurs. To have children two persons are needed, and must love -be it only physically.

While a film is being made the relations between the collaborators – I should say the accomplices – becomes strangely intimate. There is a kind of general fusion, which oftentimes appears vulgar, but which is actually, perhaps, the source of the “true greatness” our profession. A profession which also has its mediocre sides, as have all great professions.

I must acknowledge, to he honest, that I have always avoided working where I would encounter hostile personalities. I am one who does not think that illumination comes from discussion. I am one who believes that it better for the job if, instead discussing, everybody gets down and digs in the same hole, and in the same direction.

I am quite well aware that if one is to choose one’s working conditions one must abandon the hope of making a fortune.

There are some creators who feel things that are in advance their times, just as there are creators who feel only the thin that are behind their times. And there is a third kind, who feel the things that are part of their times. These are the biggest successes. As soon as they open their mouths the public knows what they will say, and recognizes its own thoughts.

The greatest creators, of course are those who feel in advance their times. But the others are also necessary in film-making and the ideal team for making films includes representatives of all three categories. Nevertheless, I think the greatest films are the result of teams that are inspired by the kind of creator who feels in advance of his time. By this I do not mean that such a team, led by this kind of creator, be he director, writer, cameraman, actor, or merely adviser, will he justified commercially.

And not always artistically. But the creator who runs ahead of his fellows fulfills a valuable function. He plays a role different from that of most men. But it is the role assigned to him in this vast world, which the Hindus say is “one”, and of which, they say, each of its is a part, as is a bird, a tree, a stone.

When one is making a path through a jungle it is a good idea to beat the bushes ahead with a stick and uncover the dangers that lie ahead. Sometime the stick breaks in your hands. Sometimes it doesn’t break, and the force of its resistance numbs your arm. This is the kind of thing I have been doing these last few years.

I didn’t want to stay put. But my compass was out of order. I couldn’t find my direction. I am very proud of this.

It means that I haven’t lost contact with the actual world, with this strange, unstable world of the mid-twentieth century.

Very few people, today, can truthfully say they know where they are going. Be they individuals, groups, or nations, chance done is guiding them. Those that seem to advance toward a goal are guided by instinct, not by reason.

When I made LA REGLE DU JEU, I knew where I was going. I knew the ills of my contemporaries. This doesn’t mean that I succeeded in clearly depicting these ills in that film. But my consciousness of the dangers that then assailed men inspired the situations, the dialogue, and even dictated who my collaborators would he. That is, those who shared the same anxiety about the world that I had!

I think the film was good. But is not so hard to do a good job when the compass that dictates one’s direction is this sort of uneasiness. I found a similar sort of certainty with THE RIVER.

I felt rising in me a desire to touch with my finger that fellow human being who, today, symbolizes the whole world. Evil may seem to sway the course of human events. But I sense in the hearts of men a desire for – I will not call it fraternity, but investigation. It is a curiosity that is still only on the surface (as in THE RIVER). But it is better than nothing.

Men are very tired of wars, privations, doubt, and fear. They have not yet come to the era of great energizing enthusiasms. But we are entering a period of good will.

My friends felt this in India, and so did I. Even in the bad days when Hindus and Mohammedans were killing each other. The smoke that went up from the simple homes fanatics were setting on fire, did not stifle our vision, or our hope. We told each other that the hatred and the slaughter were anachronisms.

All this is very vague. The feelings to which I allude are hard to formulate, and to verbalize. I take a certain risk in confiding that I think I sense these surges of good will in men. If I am mistaken I will he ridiculed.

I take this risk with confidence.

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