ONCE UPON A TIME… VINCENT, FRANÇOIS, PAUL… AND THE OTHERS

Protagonists:

• Catherine ALLEGRET, actress
• Michel BOUJUT, critic, writer
• Geneviève CORTIER, script supervisor on the set
• Jean-Loup DABADIE, scriptwriter
• Marie DUBOIS, actress
• Ludmila MIKAËL, actress
• Michel PICCOLI, actor
• Philippe SARDE, composer
• Jean-Claude SUSSFELD, cinematographer on the set
• Jean-François SIRINELLI, historian

Portrait of a film: This film is a portrait of a group of three inseparable fifty-somethings who, along with their wives and friends, find themselves caught up in the torments of the end of the “Glorious Thirties”. These disillusioned men only stick together to escape loneliness. Seeing the men in such disarray, the women make the choice to change their lives. This will be the greatest public success of Claude Sautet’s career.

Portrait of an era: The film was made during the 1974 presidential campaign that saw the emergence of Giscardism. All the political, social and economic divisions of this period run through the film like underground rivers: the end of the continuous growth, the first restructurings, the emergence of the jobless society, feminism, the right to divorce and abortion.

Portrait of a filmmaker: Claude Sautet had been one of the most famous script doctors in the profession for a long time, before he began directing at a late stage of his career. Sautet will always be the fifty-something filmmaker incarnated on screen by his male “second self”, Michel Piccoli and Yves Montand, both of whom are featured in the film. Claude Sautet, who had a passion for social relationships, filmed this micro-society with tenderness almost as if it were behind the glass of an aquarium.