INTERVIEW
The script for the film The American Class by Michel Hazanavicius and Dominique Mézerette is released this Thursday by Allary editions. An illustrated book which aims to be a parody of the collection "The great classics". In "Media culture" Thursday, the director Michel Hazanavicius returns to his cult film of diversion and the concept of plagiarism. Released in 1993, The American Class is a diversion of extracts from Warner films reassembled together with many legendary Hollywood actors whose voices have been redoubled with the original French voices. "It makes them say anything. It's a film about everything about anything," sums up director Oscar winners five times since for The Artist .
"A film based on its bullshit, dialogues and valves"
On the back cover of this book, co-signed with director and screenwriter Dominique Mézerette who died in 2016, one can read: "Discover the full dialogues of the cult film by Michel Hazanavicius and Dominique Mézerette, accompanied by a critical and enriched device original illustrations by one of the authors. The one who is alive. The other drew better, but he died. World of shit. " A summary of dark humor.
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And humor is of course the essence of this cult film with tasty scenes that takes up the structure of Citizen Kane by Orson Welles. Plagiarism? Not quite. "I set foot in plagiarism to say it differently. We took over the structure of Citizen Kane but not to make it like we do it again because we were doing anything. It really allowed to put all the crap that "We wanted to have something that vaguely resembles a story," he recalls. "But it is not a film based on its history, it is a film based on its crap, dialogues and valves," added the director.
The diversion of images: "A very democratized process with the arrival of the net"
On the form, the film recalls situationist films like Can dialectics break bricks? or panties in summer . Films that Michel Hazanavicius remembers having seen while he was in art school in 1985-86. "I was doing a bit of hijacking of still images, like posters, as part of this art school and I had a revelation at that time," he explains.
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Procedures which inspired many others, notably on television. But Michel Hazanavicius does not believe he was plagiarized by others after the release of The American Class . "I would not say that we were plagiarized. It is a process which has been very democratized with the arrival of the net and the possibility of playing with images", underlines the director of the films OSS 117 . "At the time, in 1993, playing with images was complicated. And now, with the net, it's within everyone's reach."