Place de la Republique was shot over several weeks in the fall of 1972. Malle's original intention was to film in forty locations around the city of Paris. He set out to question passersby about their "lives, feelings, and interests" and to use professional actors to provoke reaction-causing situations. Instead, Malle and his small crew (sound designer Jean-Claude Laureux, cinematographer Etienne Becker and associate director Fernand Moszkowicz) filmed in a single location, the busy Place de la Republique. They also dropped the use of actors, and relied solely on pedestrian interviews interspersed with sequences using hidden microphones and cameras. Some subjects even jumped in and became interviewers, posing questions themselves.
Malle had ample experience with the documentary form by the time he shot Place de la Republique. He had literally gotten his feet wet on the documentary Le Monde du Silence (1956), Malle's first film which he co-directed with Jacques Cousteau. The picture went on to win the Oscar® for Best Documentary. Malle had also made several documentary shorts including Vive le Tour (1962) about the Tour de France. In addition to the feature Calcutta, Malle turned his six-months in India into a seven-part TV series called L'Inde fantome (1969, aka Phantom India). Along with Place de la Republique, Malle also produced the documentary Humain, trop humain, focusing on autoworkers at a Citroen plant, in 1972. Both films were released simultaneously in Paris, nearly two years later in April 1974.
In the interview book, Malle on Malle, the director reveals that his experience with the Indian documentaries changed his focus; from that point on, his intention was always to alternate between fiction and documentary work. Malle also notes that most of his scripted French films after 1963's Le Feu follet are set in the past. As he puts it, "dealing with something in the present in fiction was dangerous; it would be influenced by what seemed topical." In contrast, Malle's documentaries allowed him to live in the present moment. "I thought I could confront the present better with cinema direct, in 16mm, in a documentary form," he explains.
In fact, "cinema direct" is the term Malle prefers to describe his work rather than the more widely used "cinema verite." He defines cinema direct as "a kind of a documentary where you completely improvise, you work with a minimal crew, you don't try to organize reality, you just try to find where your interest or curiosity takes you, you try to film what you find interesting or surprising and later try to make sense of it in the cutting room."
The description seems to fit Place de la Republique perfectly and the editor Malle called in to put the pieces together was Suzanne Baron. She had made a name for herself as editor on two Jacques Tati comedy classics, Mr. Hulot's Holiday (1953), which she co-edited, and Mon Oncle (1958). She had also worked with Malle previously, editing Calcutta as well as Humain, trop humain. Baron would team with Malle on fourteen pictures over the years everything from the coming-of-age drama Le Souffle au Coeur (1971) to the 1984 crime comedy Crackers, a remake of Mario Monicelli's Big Deal on Madonna Street (1958) starring Donald Sutherland and Sean Penn.
Place de la Republique fell at almost the mid-point of Malle's career. According to at least one critic, it arrived during a rare dry spell for the director. Apparently, Malle spent much of the summer of 1972 supervising the French-language dubs of The Godfather (1972). Nonetheless, his next film Lacombe Lucien (1974) - which was filmed after Place de la Republique but released before it - would go on to receive critical acclaim, including an Oscar® nomination for Best Foreign Language Film.
Director: Louis Malle
Cinematography: Etienne Becker
Film Editing: Suzanne Baron
Cast: Louis Malle.
C-94m. Letterboxed.
by Stephanie Thames
