A look back at “An Indian in the City”, broadcast this evening on TF1, and the most famous sequence of the film in which we can see the young Mimi-Siku climbing the Eiffel Tower.
A true commercial triumph when it was released in theaters in 1994, An Indian in the City, with its 7.8 million admissions, is one of the greatest successes of popular French cinema.
Broadcast tonight on TF1, this comedy in which a Parisian businessman meets his hidden son, raised for 13 years in a tribe in the depths of the Amazon, was carried by Thierry Lhermitte but also by Ludwig Briand, who lent his features to the young Mimi-Siku.
In one of the most famous sequences of the film, we can see the young boy climbing the Eiffel Tower with his bare hands and sitting on the metal structure of the Iron Lady to admire the Parisian panorama. But did the young actor who played the character, now 43 years old and a clerk by profession, really climb the monument for the needs of the filming?
Did Ludwig Briand climb the Eiffel Tower?
As we could discover in the show Secrets de tournage broadcast on Europe 1 in 2015for the rare wide shots in which we can see Mimi-Siku climbing on the Eiffel Tower, it is a stuntman that we see on screen. On the other hand, in many other shots, and in particular when the character looks at the horizon, sitting on the metal frame, it is indeed Ludwig Briand (without a net, but equipped with a harness attached around the hips and accompanied by a stuntman posted at his side) who is on screen!
“He did it without flinching! Everything was well calculated, there was no risk, but after the shot, he told me he was very scared.”explained director Hervé Palud in the show Secrets de Tournage.
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“I was prepared.”
5 years later, still on the airwaves of Europe 1it was the turn of the main person concerned to discuss the filming of the famous sequence:
“The scene was actually filmed on the Eiffel Tower, and it's really me that you see, there's no addition.”confided Ludwig Briand.
“It's just when there are shots that are from very far away and I'm holding on with both hands, that it wasn't feasible, they (the film crew: editor's note) didn't want to. I was prepared. I had a physical preparation which was important, and in particular (on) the apprehension of vertigo.”
Even though he was doubled for the most dangerous shots, the young actor accomplished a significant part of this impressive performance:
“We shot mostly on the first floor, and there were also a lot of scenes above the second floor. (…) It was more the cold that bothered me than the altitude. It was more of a game, and then it was a childhood dream.”
(Re)discover the trailer for An Indian in the City…