Notre-Dame is burning: “We failed to arouse desire,” explains the director of The Name of the Rose – Cinema News
While his film “Notre-Dame brûle” is broadcast on TF1, Jean-Jacques Annaud recently mentioned the semi-success of his film released in theaters in 2022.
On April 15, 2019, people around the world watched in horror as one of the greatest jewels of French heritage was devoured by flames. Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris suffered the most serious disaster in its glorious history.
At the end of December 2019, Pathé president Jérôme Seydoux suggested to Jean-Jacques Annaud that he make a spectacular archive montage film for widescreens (with immersive sound) on the Notre-Dame fire.
“My first instinct is to worry that there aren't enough varied images to construct 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.” commented Annaud.
“I devoured the whole thing until the middle of the night. It was too late or too early to call, but my decision was made. What I discovered was unimaginable. A fascinating cascade of setbacks, obstacles, dysfunctions. Purely improbable but true.”
From there, the film Notre-Dame brûle will be born, which will be released in March 2022 on our screens. Last May, the director gave the magazine Les Années Laser a long interview, on the occasion of the UHD release of his masterpiece The Name of the Rose. Always generous and voluble, he willingly covered his entire career, its ups and downs, up to his latest film, Notre-Dame is burning.
“Can you imagine how many assholes are going to rush to make a movie out of this?”
“When I heard about the fire at Notre-Dame on an old radio in the countryside, my first reaction was to say to my wife: “Can you imagine the number of assholes who are going to rush to make a film about it?” Three years later, the asshole was me!” he says with humor.
His film attracted just over 815,000 spectators. A figure far from being dishonorable, but still far from those aligned by his previous works; exceptions made obviously of Black Gold and its 215,000 admissions, and his biggest failure ever, His Majesty Minor, which had only attracted 139,000 spectators.
“If the audience was not as numerous as hoped, it is because many believed that it was a documentary and felt that they had already seen and learned everything on television or on the internet, when on the contrary it was a pure race against time with suspense, where the heroes were the firefighters and where the “bad guy” was embodied in all his destructive splendor by the fire. I believe today that we made a mistake in communicating its nature, including perhaps also at the level of its title: we failed to arouse desire and promise pleasure.”