EnglishMovies - Notre Dame Brule : An interview with Jean-Jacques Annaud
By Mulder, 14 march 2022
Notre-Dame On fire is a disaster film based on the Notre Dame de Paris fire that occurred on April 15, 2019. The film is directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud from a script written by Annaud and Thomas Bidegain. Produced by Pathé Films and TF1 Films Production, it is an international co-production between France and Italy.
Q: The incredible adventure of this film starts on April 15, 2019, the day of the Notre-Dame de Paris fire...
Jean-Jacques Annaud: I was in the Vendée region of France for a few days, in a house where the television was broken. When I turned on the radio to listen to President Macron's speech, I discovered the drama that was unfolding at Notre-Dame. I didn't see the tragedy that night: I imagined it. I know the Cathedral very well. As a child, I got my first camera, a "Kodak Brownie", by fixing on film the Stryge of the Gallery of Chimeras.
Q: How did you come up with the idea of making a film about it ?
Jean-Jacques Annaud: At the end of December 2019, Jérôme Seydoux, president of Pathé, called me. He is my long-time privileged partner. He makes me a proposal that surprises me. He has the idea of a large-scale archive montage film for wide screens and immersive sound on the Notre-Dame fire. My first instinct is to worry that there is not enough varied footage to build a 90-minute film, but I listen. I leave with a folder of documentation, articles in French and English. Before going to bed, I take a look at it. I devoured the whole thing until the middle of the night. It was too late or too early to call, but my mind was made up.
Q: What convinced you about these first documents ?
Jean-Jacques Annaud: What I discovered there was unimaginable. A fascinating cascade of setbacks, obstacles, dysfunctions. Pure implausibility but true. With all the components of a fictional scenario: in the title role, an international star, Notre-Dame de Paris. Her opponent: a formidable and charismatic demon, fire. Between the two, humble young people ready to give their lives to save stones. It's a cinematography like any scriptwriter can dream of, a visual opera with suspense, drama, generosity and comedy. Everything appears to me crazy, grandiose, burlesque, human... I must now verify, concentrate on the accuracy of these incredible facts. I understand from the outset that I will have to gather all the information, all the testimonies, all the hypotheses from those who lived through those amazing hours.
Q: How did you proceed then ?
Jean-Jacques Annaud: At first, I decided to limit myself to the facts by embarking on a chronology of events. I had a hard time getting the exact times of the events: when I cross-checked the different testimonies I had at that stage, it seemed to me that everyone gave their version of the first appearance of smoke, flames, the arrival of the emergency services... I quickly realized that in the intensity of the disaster, no one had time to look at their watch. I had Thomas Bidegain, Jacques Audiard's scriptwriter, read a first embryonic version of the script. "But what more can I bring to the table?" he asks me after reading it. I explain to him that I need the critical eye of a severe judge and the beneficial contributions of a talented author.
Q : As you review the various events that punctuated this April 15, 2019, what do you discover that is surprising ?
Jean-Jacques Annaud: The fire was detected at the beginning of the Holy Monday Mass, at 18:17, and was only brought to the attention of the firemen half an hour later by a friend of the General on vacation in Florence. From the morning on, a relentless drama is set up, where everything seems to be gathered to lead to an inevitable catastrophe: it is the first day of work at Notre-Dame of the new fire safety supervisor, in charge of watching over an electronic board where alerts are set in motion in case of a disaster. He has never visited the Cathedral and is unfamiliar with the technical terms of Gothic architecture. When the alarm goes off and an indecipherable code is displayed, he calls his superior. The person in charge was not reachable and did not return the call until 15 minutes later. The "doubt removal guard" in charge of verifying the reality of a fire outbreak understands through the crackling of his walkie-talkie that he has to go to the attic of the sacristy, whereas the fire started in the attic of the nave. This is only the beginning of an astonishing non-alignment of the planets...
Q: A thorny question remains: what exactly was the cause of the fire? And here, almost 3 years later, we still don't know officially...
Jean-Jacques Annaud : The Justice services are continuing their investigation. The film was never intended as an investigation to replace the prosecutors. The evidence is lacking. The various probable leads are evoked. Notre-Dame Brule deals with what we know in detail: the epic of the rescue. We tell the story of how the Cathedral was saved, not how or why it was almost destroyed.
Q: The film is a spectacular fresco in which Notre-Dame de Paris plays the main role. You were able to shoot a few scenes inside, but above all you had to rebuild part of the cathedral identically in the studio...
Jean-Jacques Annaud: The building remained inaccessible because of the omnipresence of lead and the risk of collapse... But in any case, we had to drown the building in smoke, cover the ground with ashes and dust, drop tons of flaming beams, and flood the paving. We rebuilt the building identically. We set our sets on fire with hundreds of nozzles. We rebuilt in the studio to scale 1, a large part of the nave, the spiral staircases, the exterior walkways and the framework of the North transept, and the interior of the colossal bell tower in the final scene. In short, all these emblematic places of Notre-Dame that were at the heart of the disaster and that absolutely had to be shown before and during the fire.
Do you have to be a believer yourself to tackle such a subject ?
Jean-Jacques Annaud: You have to believe in cinema. I come from a completely atheist family, totally secular and republican. The meaning of the afterlife was an abstract notion in our house, but I remember that around the age of 10-12, I felt a kind of lack... I compensated by developing a great attraction for medieval architecture. I spent my pocket money on records of sacred music, Gregorian canticles, Tibetan psalms, Sahel melodies, Bach oratorios, Frescobaldi toccatas. In the summer, at my request, rather than going to the beach, we would go on a tour of the Breton calvaries or the Romanesque basilicas of the Auvergne... I am incapable of reciting the slightest prayer, but I have the greatest respect for the meditation and faith of others... Hence my happy harmony with the Buddhist monks of 7 years in Tibet, with the Bedouins of the BLACK GOLD desert or the Benedictines of strict obedience of the Name of the Rose... Inside a temple, a mosque or a church, I like to feel the mystery of the faith that I do not have, the serenity of the recollection of the prayer. The religious people I met during Notre-Dame On Fire are not surprised that I made this film... And among what we still sacralize, we find the firemen. It's interesting to see that the two come together on this project...
Q: You make the firemen the heroes of the rescue of Notre-Dame, and in particular the six young men who are the first to attack the flames...
Jean-Jacques Annaud: Two young women and two young men who have recently emerged from adolescence... Notre-Dame On fire Of the four, two have never been in a fire. These "piafs" as the novice firemen are called, are supervised by two young chiefs barely older than them! They arrive in a small "First Aid" truck, a seven-meter long intervention "machine" to fight a 120-meter long blaze. They have a stretcher, a ladder of a few meters and hoses of modest section. When I met them during the preparation of the film, they impressed me with their modesty and humility. No one, in this profession that I discovered, ever puts himself forward. All of them dedicate their lives to the lives of others, taking insane risks, facing danger and death every day, but never taking any glory from it. When I point out that this is a heroic daily life, they sweep the qualifier aside, embarrassed. They remind me of the doctrine of the Paris Fire Brigade: "risk our lives to save others". I object that Notre-Dame is a stone monument. They retort that their own lives are little compared to the thousand-year-old stones of one of the most emblematic sanctuaries in the world. Then they go on to tell the story of how, after wading through the bathtub-like corridors, they regretted being forbidden to approach the flames. The uniforms are designed to withstand 700 degrees. But when they are soaked in water and exposed to temperatures close to double that, the risk is that the hull becomes an autoclave and that inside they "steam". On April 15, the furnace exceeded 1200°... Listening to them, I became aware of the ordeal of this extraordinary operation. Unbearable heat, suffocating fumes, 40 kilos of equipment on their backs, 15 kilos of pipes each, helmets and breathing masks that were necessarily uncomfortable, and all this on a terrain that was more than hostile with, in the heights of the cathedral, passages that were implausibly narrow. Less than 50 centimeters wide!
Q: The contribution of the firemen's testimonies was vital for the film. How did you go about approaching them ?
Jean-Jacques Annaud: At the time of the preparations and this indispensable documentation work, we were in the middle of the pandemic, during the first containment. However, it was very easy for us to get in touch with the privileged witnesses and actors of the disaster. To arrange meetings with members of the BSPP (the Paris Fire Brigade), Jean-Yves Asselin, my Executive Producer, went through Lieutenant-Colonel Claire Boët, in charge of communications. The same goes for the Paris City Hall: Anne Hidalgo let us know very early on that access to the Notre-Dame square would be possible for us during the shooting. Florence Parly, (the Minister of the Armed Forces on which the Paris Fire Brigade depends), as well as the Prefect of Police Didier Lallement also worked to open doors and close streets for us.
Q: What is striking when we see your film is the incredible beauty of these images of fire devouring Notre-Dame... We are both frightened and fascinated !
Jean-Jacques Annaud: I can confirm that Gothic architecture and flames make a very photogenic couple! Among the testimonies, the story of the arrival of the rescuers on the outskirts of Notre-Dame, when the furnace was already devouring the frame and liquefying the roof... All of them described to me a scene of apocalypse, in the midst of the raging fury of the fire, a hearth so powerful that sections of the beams were carried away by the rising air, crashing down onto the square below or sometimes much further away. The ashes carried by the wind fell beyond the Musée d'Orsay! The gargoyles spat out sulfur-colored smoke, vomiting lead from the molten roof. Everyone told me: the first thing that struck them (I use this word deliberately) was the rain of flaming embers that drummed on their helmets and crunched under their feet.
Q: One of the high points of this preparation was your meeting with General Georgelin, who was charged by the President of the Republic to supervise the reconstruction of Notre-Dame...
Jean-Jacques Annaud : It was in May 2020... What a character this Georgelin is! Right away, without us really asking him, he suggested that Jérôme Seydoux and I visit the burned cathedral. So we put on anti-lead outfits, (boots too big, plus insane paraphernalia made of several successive layers of underpants, swimsuits, pants of disposable materials), masked, following the General. With his baritone voice, he describes, like a guide from the Comédie Française, the state of the building after the disaster... A moving and fascinating visit. Having the opportunity to wander through the nave, the bays, the choir allowed me to clarify what I had in mind. I also realized that the two tears in the vault were both enormous but of a size that left hope for a possible restoration. The medieval architects who invented Gothic art relied on vaults and the fireproof mortar that covered them. This was to avoid the tragedies of the Carolingian constructions where the walls directly supported the framework without this precious firewall... Through the centuries, they have constituted formidable fire protections. The fall of the Arrow perforated the vault, setting ablaze the flammable gases that had accumulated under the nave... All this was evacuated upwards in an impressive flare of about thirty meters high. This, some specialists say, may have prevented a major explosion and saved Notre-Dame.
Q: But beyond this visit to the battered cathedral, you had to go on a scouting trip to other similar places, dating from the same period...
Jean-Jacques Annaud: Yes, I decided to start, as soon as the deconfinement was official at the end of spring 2020, a journey to cathedrals of the same generation or the same style as the one on the Ile de la Cité: Sens, the first Gothic cathedral in the world, the true founding matrix of Notre-Dame de Paris, Saint-Denis built with the same limestone, Amiens and especially Bourges which also has a double ambulatory. I wanted to be able to place my cameras in axes that were very similar to those of Notre-Dame and then to be able to connect them to my sets that were reconstructed identically in the studio. This avoided having everything fabricated and to stick as close to reality as possible. Doors, spiral staircases, side naves, radiating chapels, statues, cornices, passageways or buttresses, I built up a gigantic bank of possible shooting locations. Then I just had to know how to assemble this gothic puzzle so that it corresponded to a global vision of the Notre-Dame of the film. This is where I realized, (after having climbed thousands of cathedral steps, from their naves to their bell towers), how much the mission of saving Notre-Dame by the firemen was
to the limits of the impossible. The spiral staircases are sometimes so narrow that they had to strip down and then crawl through moleholes to get to the blaze...
Q: We should also talk about the casting of your film. You chose to call on established actors but not on stars who are well known to the public...
Jean-Jacques Annaud: The men and women who saved Notre-Dame are anonymous heroes - and who wish to remain so. It would have been inappropriate to have them embodied by stars who were too immediately recognizable... In order to affirm the distance between documentary and fiction, I decided not to hire, with a few exceptions such as the "operational designer", the real firemen who had been the heroes of April 15. It is a margin of freedom and creation that I absolutely wanted to preserve. On the other hand, there was the question of the public, political and military personalities whose faces are known to the public and who were present that evening and that night... President Macron, Anne Hidalgo, Prefect Lallement, General Gallet, General Gontier, head of the Paris Fire Brigade, etc... For some of these personalities, I decided to insert into the film real images of the moment, taken by tourists, journalists or the firemen themselves. These inserts, shot on the spot, reinforce credibility. For other characters, such as Generals Gallet and Gontier who inherit copious dialogues, I relied on solid artists with successful careers in television and theater. It is in this pool of great professionals that we have drawn. The audience will recognize Samuel Labarthe, Chloé Jouannet, Pierre Lottin, Jérémie Laheurte, Jean-Paul Bordes, Ava Baya, Vassili Schneider or Jules Sadoughi.
Q: Let's come to the construction of the sets and the shooting locations in the studio... For such an important project, you had to find the right places...
Jean-Jacques Annaud : We needed sets that were large enough to accommodate sets that were sometimes 25 or 30 meters high, and most of them would be completely burned out! We absolutely wanted to shoot in France but the fact is that not a single studio has the necessary infrastructure for this project... Two choices were offered to us: La cité du Cinéma in Saint-Denis, and Bry-sur- Marne. In Saint-Denis, we shot indoors and in Bry, on the "back lot" as they say, a vast outdoor space. We also needed workshops for carpentry, ironwork, sculpture, plaster casting, etc. I was able to get the minimum amount of living space for my film in terms of infrastructure. At the Cité du Cinéma, I was able to count on the experience of the technical teams, who are used to this type of production. I also benefited from the extraordinary know-how of Jean Rabasse, an exceptional set designer. Jean has worked on several films by Jean-Pierre Jeunet but also for Bernardo Bertolucci and Roman Polanski. Our first discussions were exciting and productive. Beyond all these difficulties, I kept in mind the spirit of this project: it had to be shot in the right place. Where Notre-Dame was thought of, sculpted, built. So in France...
Q: How did you go about building the sets ?
Jean-Jacques Annaud: Our production offices were set up in the Cité du Cinéma, on a single floor. Drawings, models, 3D models: I asked that we reproduce several reduced versions of Notre-Dame or its belfry, like cardboard or wooden construction sets. Each object required several weeks of work because they were made according to the plans of the originals. This allowed me to imagine very early on the axes of my cameras, the location of my actors, the segments to be set on fire or the way to route through all this the safety devices such as water or even the emergency exits... And then, all this meticulous preparation work saved us precious time when I shot in the real cathedrals or on the sets of the decors. It also allowed me to build only what I needed... At the same time, our technicians developed special fireproof cameras, capable of withstanding the heat of fire scenes. Throughout this meticulous pre-production work, I was thrilled, as I passed from one workshop to another, to see the joy and pride of these passionate craftsmen. Cabinetmakers, plasterers, ironworkers, glaziers, painters, etc.: all of them are true goldsmiths, who do not often have the opportunity to build Gothic columns and vaults. I took my decoration teams on several visits to real cathedrals so that they could be inspired by the patina of the walls and statues, for example. We also did tests to find the right way to reproduce the melting of the lead from the roofs on the floor or the firemen's helmets because of the heat of the fire. I felt "carried" by this collective enthusiasm.
Q: In Notre-Dame On Fire, the scenes of the fire ravaging the cathedral's frame are particularly intense. How did you envision and shoot them ?
Jean-Jacques Annaud: The framework of Notre-Dame, this famous forest of oak beams (some of which are over 900 years old), went up in smoke during the fire of April 2019... We had to reconstitute this unique place in the world, which has now disappeared, in a scene taking place in the north transept of the cathedral, where the first firefighters responded. Very dramatic and spectacular scenes... We first had this framework modeled in 3D images before having it built for real. This set was installed in Bry-sur-Marne and we set it on fire. Our bells were made of reinforced plaster, capable of withstanding 400° during the shooting.
Q: In the spring of 2021, on March 9, came the first day of shooting. What do you remember about it ?
Jean-Jacques Annaud: Finally! It was in Bourges, where we spent a good week shooting scenes in the cathedral at the beginning of the film, which show the influx of visitors to Notre-Dame. I wanted to show the cacophony of the guides during these group visits! So I recreated the presence of tourists of all nationalities, Spanish, Italian, English, German, Chinese, Japanese, Hungarian, Canadian, Russian... We then stopped in Sens to set up the twin scenes of Bourges, but seen from a different angle, no longer in a low angle, but from above. It was especially important to take advantage of the pavement identical to that of Notre-Dame. I also shot the stairs leading to the belfry: of the 350 steps, the last 50 are in an extremely narrow spiral. I also found there some superb medieval doors in solid oak wood
spared during the Revolution.
Q: One of the most impressive sequences in the film is the collapse of the spire of Notre-Dame and the vault. For this, you shot in the studio at the Cité du Cinéma. Tell us about it...
Jean-Jacques Annaud: It was April 5, 2021... A very important day indeed. It was a total reconstruction because no surveillance camera, nonexistent in Notre-Dame, recorded this moment. The firemen themselves, understaffed in their audiovisual service that day, have no image of this capital scene. In reality, the vault fell from a height of 40 meters, spilling 500 tons of flaming beams, mortar and stones onto the cathedral's paving. This sequence lasts about 1 minute 30 seconds on screen but it took us weeks of preparation! I want to salute the entire special effects team, the best I've ever worked with. We meticulously set up the largest studio in the Cité du Cinéma to have at least 20 meters of drop height for 75 cubic meters of flaming material. Six large metal baskets were built by the iron workshop, equipped with grids on which were placed fake cork stones, mortar and balsa beams. These baskets are equipped with cables operated by a lever system similar to that of railroad switches to open them. At the right moment, all this is ignited and from then on, we had one minute and 15 seconds before the heat and smoke became uncontrollable, even dangerous! This fire ignition is operational after 30 seconds, so I have 40 seconds to film the scene! In order not to have to redo things, I shot with a dozen cameras simultaneously, from different angles, some of them being in the middle of the blaze, protected by "crash boxes", metal boxes ultra resistant to shock and heat that are ventilated... Not a single one of these cameras failed us! On the other hand, the power of the fire partly burned the ceiling of the studio: fortunately we were well insured.
Q: A month later, another crucial moment: you were able to shoot on the square in front of Notre-Dame...
Jean-Jacques Annaud: Yes, right in front of the palisades of the lead zone behind which almost no one can access. It's an important step in the film that was not easy to set up. We had extras, firemen's vehicles, tourist buses, but also technicians, cameras, boxes of equipment, fans, smoke machines and others that projected charcoal from above, etc... This also implied cordoning off part of the neighborhood and the surrounding roads. We also had the exceptional authorization to shoot inside the corridors of Notre-Dame. We were about 30 people (instead of the usual 150) and we came out very moved... Suddenly, Notre-Dame really took shape in the eyes of my technicians. We went through parts of the cathedral still littered with charred embers, debris of beams, walls blackened by smoke, covered with solidified lead drips... The sensation was overwhelming, gripping. Between the different shots, on this square of the Ile de la Cité, I regularly caught myself looking at Notre-Dame. I like to identify it with a living character. It is my star and I love it. I tell her story during the tragic hours when she almost died. Her rescuers are prevented from coming to her by traffic jams, construction. Will the good doctors stop the bleeding in time? The wonderful news is that the cathedral has survived. It is still there, even if the combined action of fire and water did not help its general condition, which would have required major work anyway, as the stones are in such bad shape in some places... I had to tell the truth about what really happened to it. It was my responsibility to do so, with emotion and respect.
Q: And then the ultimate favor: you were able to shoot inside the cathedral itself...
Jean-Jacques Annaud: That seemed impossible, inaccessible. Of course, it was with an ultra-small crew and for a limited time, after having submitted to the extremely restrictive protocol: our lead suits and the costumes of our actors were thrown away to be burned at the end of the scene!
Q: In the spring of 2021, you have also launched an appeal on social networks to collect photos or video images shot on the night of the fire by tourists or anonymous people. The idea is to insert these documents in your film...
Jean-Jacques Annaud : We received more than 6000 films, videos or photos. On these images recorded on cell phones, I saw a whole bunch of details that (fortunately) corresponded perfectly to what I had already shot! I also got film of the crowd on the bridges singing hymns. We were sent footage of what happened abroad when the disaster was announced because the whole world was watching the event live. In China, Australia, the United States, England and Iceland, the fire made headlines.
Q: Back to the studio in May 2021, this time in Bry-sur-Marne for another Dantean moment in the film...
Jean-Jacques Annaud: The fire in the north transept passageway, and there again, we built a life-size set. This passageway is the one where the first six firemen sent to the fire arrived. They arrived on the scene more than an hour after the fire broke out. They were confronted with a monstrous fire and the fury of the flames with derisory means of fighting. The scenery was several dozen meters high: a very narrow corridor about 50 centimeters wide, overlooking the void on one side and the fire on the other... Everything was recreated identically in Bry, with the gas reserves we needed and pumps to spray water. The roof was duplicated in four versions representing the stages of the progression of the disaster, until its near destruction. The decoration teams had to deal with crazy constraints, in particular to conceal the ducts that were to carry the smoke and the fire on this cinema corridor... Each flame was fed by a variable power nozzle, controlled remotely. The color of the fire had to be red and not blue, so it was also necessary to manage the power of the fans that directed the smoke at the right speed and in the right direction. According to the phases of the fire, these smokes are first white, then black and finally yellow! This remains a very dangerous moment of the shooting for my actors because the fumes, (whatever one does or can foresee), are toxic. As for the flames on this set, they were rising to 500 or 600° and of course, I expressly told my actors that they should back away and take cover when the heat became unbearable... We had a team of real firemen in case things got out of hand. During this scene, I saw once again how much the actors are motivated by this kind of situation, as long as they trust us and know that everything is being done for their absolute safety. This is the essence of their vocation: to live extraordinary lives and here, they were served...
Q: A word about one of the other characters in the film: the music. You worked with a British composer, Simon Franglen...
Jean-Jacques Annaud: A very long time partner... This subject of her most Gracious Majesty of England was introduced to me years ago by James Horner, my late great friend composer who signed for me the scores of The Name of the Rose, Stalingrad, Black Gold and The Last Wolf. If a terrible plane crash had not taken his life in June 2015, we would have continued this wonderful collaboration and frank friendship. Simon, whom James referred to as "the best keyboard artist in the world", is also a genius arranger who has thousands of sounds of every instrument imaginable in his files and is able to play them for you on the keyboard! He is currently working with James Cameron on the sequel to Avatar... Composing the music for my films is a moment I have long dreaded, for fear of losing control of things. If the initial idea, the script, the dialogues, the casting, the choice of the sets, the shooting, the editing, the color grading or the mixing are all under my control, the music must be entrusted to someone else. Basically, I made the baby but I'm not the one who dresses it! I can inspire, but I'm not the one who cranks. Of course, (and this is the case with Simon), I spend a considerable amount of time "spotting" where scene by scene, shot by shot we decide to the second what it is necessary to express. We recorded in England. First at Abbey Road, the mythical Beatles' studio, also one of the temples of film music recording. We recorded the chorus composed by Simon for Notre-Dame On Fire with the 35 singers of the group Tenebrae, one of the most famous in the world, who collaborated on the Star Wars soundtrack... A rare moment: at the end of the recording, the singers stood up to applaud Simon's work. We then recorded the 70 musicians of the orchestra at Air Studios, also in London.
Q In terms of post-production, how much of the film had to be shot with special effects ?
Jean-Jacques Annaud: Mikros and The Yard, two extremely competent French companies, took care of this task under the supervision of our VFX coordinator and supervisor Laurens Ehrmann. This concerns about 1/4 of the shots, or about 400 out of the 1500/1600 shots in the film. For half of them, it was mainly a matter of removing security cables holding the actors or water or gas pipes on the sets. The other half of the work was more complex, adding smoke in the background or flames when it was not possible or too dangerous on the set...
Q: This long and exciting adventure is coming to an end... Notre Dame brûle is coming to the screens. How do you look back on this cinematographic epic, which you started without knowing it on an April evening in 2019 ?
Jean-Jacques Annaud: I am delighted with this moment in life! It has only confirmed an attitude that I have applied since the beginning of my career: always listen to that little ringing inside. If it doesn't ring when I'm interested in a potential subject, forget it. I only operate on enthusiasm. From the moment I started reading the first documents given to me by Jérôme Seydoux, I have been passionate, seduced, fascinated, surprised by this story. Every morning, from the scouting to the shooting, through the preparations, the casting and the post-production, I woke up wanting to jump right out of bed into this new day that was beginning! What's funny and touching at the same time is that I pass by Notre-Dame almost every day. I only have to stand on the balcony of my Parisian apartment to see her, over there on the other side of the Seine... I keep talking to her and calling her "ma chérie"! I ask her "how are you today? Of all the actresses I've had the chance to direct, Notre Dame is without a doubt the most dignified, but also the most fragile. She is as beautiful as ever. The most famous cathedral in the world is under construction for a long time to come. I see week after week the progress of this colossal, unique and historic construction site. It has come a long way but it is still here... Its history will last long after mine or ours. I am happy to have been able to believe, for a brief moment, that I was her lover.
Q: Your film takes the form of a thriller throughout: we know the threat, we hear it, we guess it, we know the devastation it will cause, but we don't see it at the beginning...
Jean-Jacques Annaud: It's the principle of suspended time: to make the spectator's expectation and pleasure last as long as possible by maintaining the suspense of the fire... I wanted to delay things as much as possible, by sowing a bundle of clues, by displaying the hours and minutes on the screen before the fire becomes inevitable. This is what fascinated and excited me from the start when I read the first documentation: the accumulation of malfunctions in this story is mind-boggling. I had only understood one tenth of the truth... One wonders how we managed to save Notre-Dame... To tell you the truth, the night of the fire, I was convinced that the cathedral was going to collapse. General Gonthier revealed to me a few months ago that he too was afraid of it. He had planned to make, if I may say so, a cross on Notre-Dame and to secure the surrounding buildings in order to avoid a contamination of the fire on the whole Ile de la Cité when the cathedral collapsed...
Q: The care taken with the sound in your film is exceptional. Crackling, flames, water, atmosphere or dialogues: each sound element is totally highlighted...
Jean-Jacques Annaud: It is indeed a huge job that will have taken us more than 6 months since the summer of 2021... The soundtrack was designed to be immersive and will be at its maximum power in large Imax, Dolby Vison, Atmos 4K, 7.1 and 5.1 theaters... I am convinced since the beginning of this project that 50% of the emotion could come from the sound. Everyone has seen images of the cathedral on fire, but few people have heard it, especially from inside. My goal is that the spectators be in osmosis with the firemen in the heart of the furnace, that they hear the beams groaning, exploding, that they understand the rage of the "fire demon", of this conquering devil who devours everything, that they breathe the smoke insinuating itself into the nooks and crannies of the cathedral, that the crackling of the water projected onto the white-hot tubes of the scaffolding give them the impression of handling the fire hose themselves. The Atmos technology makes this experience possible thanks to more than seventy loudspeakers distributed horizontally and vertically around and on the ceiling of the room. Each sound detail becomes a component of the story. The Notre-Dame fire plunged a vast area of Paris into a deafening din... I insisted on re-recording sounds that were more precise than those that could be obtained live during the hustle and bustle of the shoot. They were replaced during post-production: the bursting of a heavy lead drop on a fireman's helmet or on an old oak floor, the scraping of chairs propelled by the collapse of the vault on the cathedral's pavement, the rumbling of medieval doors slamming against the doorframes, the strafing of water drops propelled by fire hoses on the various surfaces, walls, flaming beams, tubular scaffolding, bronze bells. It is a considerable work, to which we must add that of the different teams in charge of the ambiences (rumors of the city, sirens, traffic jams, horns, clamors of the crowd, etc.), of the effects, (creaking of the hinges, locks which slam, clanking of the keys, crash of the rubble which crushes on the ground...), of the sound effects, (all that must be perfectly synchronized: impact of boots on stone steps, rubbing of uniforms on walls, windows breaking). Plus, of course, a good third of the actors' dialogues to be redone in post-synchronization, dialogues often covered during the shooting by the tumult of smoke fans, ember propellers, fire nozzles... Finally, the music, composed by Simon Franglen for months to accompany every half-second of the story's inflections, to underline the tensions and to make the emotions blossom. Dozens of hours of spotting to decide everything with me before composing, dozens of hours of setting the models on the provisional image, dozens of hours of recording, thousands of sound tracks mixed in London and then adjusted to the image by Dick Bernstein, who came specially from the United States for a month and a half to carry out this task... Few spectators can imagine the mass of work that this represents The fascinating and fundamental work of post-production remains a domain as magical as it is mysterious.
Synopsis:
Jean-Jacques Annaud's feature film, reconstructs hour by hour the improbable reality of the events of April 15, 2019 when the cathedral underwent the most important disaster in its history. And how men and women put their lives at risk in a rocky and heroic rescue.
Notre-Dame On fire
Directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud
Produced by Jérome Seydoux, Ardavan Safaee
Written by Thomas Bidegain, Jean-Jacques Annaud
With Samuel Labarthe, Jean-Paul Bordes, Mikaël Chirinian, Jérémie Laheurte, Maximilien Seweryn, Dimitri Storoge, Chloé Jouannet, Pierre Lottin, Jules Sadoughi, Vassili Schneider, Ava Baya, Nathan Gruffy, Sébastien Lalanne, Bernard Gabay, Oumar Diolo, Antonythasan Jesuthasan, Élodie Navarre, Chloé Chevallier, Tony Le Bacq, Miguel Facchiano, Maxime Grandemange, Daniel Horn, Pascal Rénéric
Music : Simon Frangien
Image : Jean-Marie Dreujou
Editing : Reynald Bertrand
Production companies: Pathé, TF1 Films
Distributed by Pathé
Release date: March 16, 2022 (France)
Running time: 110 minutes
Photos : Copyright Pathe Distribution