SCÉNARIOS © Écran noir productions
Scénarios (Scenarios), Jean-Luc Godard’s last gift to cinema
A few hours before leaving the Seventh Art for eternity, Jean-Luc Godard sealed off Scénarios (Scenarios), a short filmthat the Festival de Cannes is honored to present as a worldpremiere . Fabrice Aragno, one of his closest collaborators, recounts the last moments of this “rich vivid creativity”.
“The film Scénarios (Scenarios) took root after Livre d’image (The Image Book), in 2018. At the time, the project was vast but successive waves of Covid and scorching heatwaves joined forces to delay, postpone, isolate, and exhauste it. This didn’t stop Jean-Luc from creating, on his small wooden table, words, collages, and paintings.
Unfortunately, even though his mind remained lively, exhaustion had damaged his body. Five days before his death, we learned that his last day was scheduled the following Tuesday. The next day, Friday, Jean-Luc asked me to come see him and I found him, in late afternoon, sitting by his small cot, a plain A4 notebook on his lap, with “Scénarios” drawn and written in blue pen.
In a few hours, he described the film to be created, with still images, film extracts, and sounds, that we researched together. However, one text was missing: it was the final text, a rare Sartre that we couldn’t find. We called Jean-Paul Battaggia whomiraculously found the book in Paris the next day, Saturday, and immediately sent it to me via Internet. I printed andbrought it at once to Jean-Luc that evening, along with his nario-plan for editing, so that he could make all necessary additions. I was hoping that, buoyed by the excitement of creation, he would postpone the fatefull meeting of the terrible Tuesday that was approaching…
Feverishly, I spent Saturday night editing the film so that I could bring it to him on Monday, the day we were due to say goodbye. On Monday, I joined him with Jean-Paul, who had arrived from Paris. And there, on the editing notebook, in red this time, he had re-drawn and written the second part of the film to be made. He described it to me and to Jean-Paul, energized by creation; he had decided that the last shot would be of himself, sitting by his cot and reciting Sartre’s text.
We set up this short scene, with image, sound, clapperboard, two takes, cut. It was Monday, late afternnoon… goodbye. The Film preview of Scénarios, humbly obtained the year before, narrates and shares this rich liveliness “.
