On the occasion of the release of Eiffel, a French blockbuster on the bill since Wednesday, spotlight on some of the films that have influenced the writing and staging of Martin Bourboulon’s feature film.
Eiffel, an ambitious romance revisiting the construction of the Eiffel Tower, was released on French screens on Wednesday. With one of the highest budgets of French cinema this year (more than 20 million), the feature film directed by Martin Bourboulon claims a number of influences, which the team was kind enough to tell us about. occasion of a long format devoted to the making of the film (see our video report above).
As the director explains, “there are films that were invited like that very naturally in the preparation of this film“. Starting with First Man.”I think [Damien Chazelle] brilliantly succeeded in marrying the intimate and the epic“, a cocktail that the team behind Eiffel have sought to obtain.
“In First Man, you wonder how he feels and what his personal story is about going to the moon. We know his story as an astronaut, but we don’t know his story as a human, adds the cinematographer Matias Boucard to our microphone. This film arrived very quickly in our conversations with Martin Bourboulon“.
“In this somewhat intimate drama, we feel that this man whose journey we follow with a handheld camera, as close as possible to himself, is in a way was a little overwhelmed by this conquest of the moon. I liked this dynamic a lot“, adds Martin Bourboulon.
VVZ Production – Pathé Films
Another great reference that guided the artistic direction of the film, La Porte du paradis. “We had this desire for a western in the film, to show an era a little less encased in black suits, top hats, and put on something a little more lively.“, details Matias Boucard.”We have talked a lot about the pageants in Heaven’s Gate which are amazing. There are completely crazy scenes, with thousands of extras“.
In short, the team also mentions “the beauty of There Will Be Blood in some places“or La Reine Margot by Patrice Chéreau,”with [en commun avec Eiffel] great liberties taken on the costumes, certain biases“.
As for the series, production designer Stéphane Taillasson talks about the decisive influence of Peaky Blinders precisely in this desire to take liberties with the times and try to dust off the film in costumes. “Peaky Blinders has been a real direction for me. I devoured this series and I had a real click, compared to the exteriors, to the movements. This allowed us to “cheat” but always with elegance, and to “cheat” on codes. What is important is the spectacle, it is what we see in the image.“
Finally side influence on the scenario, the rapprochement has been made a lot with Titanic. Like James Cameron’s film, the film tells a well-known story, the outcome of which we already know, but with an emphasis on romance.
In collaboration with the writers, Martin Bourboulon wanted to make a feature film centered on a love story crossed with an adventure film, around the construction of one of the most famous monuments in the world. “All the work on the script – then on the directing and the editing – consisted of ensuring that these two stories constantly feed on each other, while respecting the beacons of reality, he explains. The strength of cinema lies in its ability to slip into what history does not say and to offer a powerful romantic material by developing a hypothesis: Eiffel would have decided to build this tower which he did not want at the start, in a gesture love for Adrienne. ”
Eiffel, based on an original idea by Caroline Bongrand, is co-signed by her with Thomas Bidegain (Un Prophète, Les Frères Sisters), Martin Bourboulon, Natalie Carter, Martin Brossollet, and the collaboration of Tatiana de Rosnay.
