LA SAGA RASSAM-BERRI, LE CINÉMA DANS LES VEINES
La Saga Rassam Berri (The Family) at Cannes Classics: boldness as an inheritance
Rassam, Berri, Langman. You’d need a calculator to determine the number of awards scooped up by this cinema clan. La Saga Rassam Berri (The Family) takes us into the private lives of these talented producers and directors, with eventful lives, where the greatest French and American filmmakers cross paths. An interview with Florent Maillet, co-director of the film along with Michel Denisot.
Rassam, Berri, Langman, Bouquet… What kind of cinema do these families talk about?
They talk about fifty years of cinema, elitist films, specialist films, popular films and auteur films. It begins in the 70s with the end of the New Wave, with Godard. We’ve added Jean Yanne for the popular films. And this story continues with Dimitri Rassam, who produced Martin Bourboulon’s Les Trois Mousquetaires (The Three Musketeers) and Benjamin Millepied’s Carmen.
How were you able to get access to the very discreet Paul Rassam?
It’s a good story because Michel Denisot has known him since the 80s. They would cross each other all the time and have dinner together. Paul Rassam is someone very secret. He’s never wanted to talk about himself or appear anywhere. And then recently, he said to Michel: “I’d like you to tell our story. We get asked a lot, I always say no. But today the time has come and I’d like it to be you.”
We enter by the intimate, we leave by the intimate… How did you have access to these sequences?
It’s crazy because we had placed the camera and they had a family lunch as though the camera wasn’t there. It was rather beautiful, they told their story and, I had never seen this, each had the same version of events. We can tell that they’re really a “family”. It’s a very tight-knit clan. Carole Bouquet takes care of Paul Rassam, she takes him to the hospital when needed. When he comes to Paris, he stays with Thomas Langmann. They really love each other.
It’s also a story of American cinema, and not minor American cinema.
What’s incredible is the connections they were able to make with all the future greats of Hollywood. When they met Milos Forman, he wasn’t anybody. At the time, Claude Berri bought, with her own money, The Firemen’s Ball, which nobody wanted. He almost lost his shirt on that one and that created a strong friendship between them. There’s a very close friendship with Francis Coppola. The mystery remains on Jean-Pierre Rassam’s meeting Coppola. No one was able to talk to us about it. Paul doesn’t know, neither does Carole, even Coppola doesn’t remember. For Paul, it’s starting from the sale of Apocalypse Now. The two hit it off and he produced almost all of Coppola’s films.
Have the daring production choices been passed down through the generations?
It’s still being passed down to the latest generations with Dimitri Rassam. At his age, he’s already had a great success with Le Prénom (What’s in a Name?). He’s much more secretive, doubtless more so with the contemporary norms of production. Producing Les Trois Mousquetaires (The Three Musketeers) in two parts today, that’s rather an enormous risk.
