Like Reger – the character Thomas Bernhard placed on a museum bench in front of a painting by Tintoretto, an ‘old master’ if ever there was one – an actor finds himself alone and stranded after a notorious virus closes theatres indefinitely. Here he is, wandering through an empty theatre, walking through pointless backstage areas and stumbling onto a street haunted by masked passers-by. Having convinced a fireman to look after him and his explosives, he tells him and the silence around him of his disgust with, amongst other things, the Heideggerians, the lack of punctuality, people who admire as opposed to respect and the State’s appropriation of children. In the overlapping of film and theatre, despair and survival, 1980s Austria and 2020s France, Bernhard’s text gains fresh resonance, “…and as far as culture is concerned, in this country your stomach is only there to churn.”
Mathieu Amalric
- 2022
- 2022
MAÎTRES ANCIENS (COMÉDIE)
Mathieu Amalric
Technical sheet
France / 2021 / Colour / 81’
based on the novel by Thomas Bernhard
(translation from German by Gilberte Lambrichs)
Filmed from the show directed by Éric Didry
Adaptation: Véronique Timsit, Nicolas Bouchaud, Éric Didry
Starring : Nicolas Bouchaud, Patrice Blais-Barré and the voice of Judith Henry
Photography: Berto
Sound recording: François Abdelnour
Editing: Thomas Marchand
Lighting: Philippe Berthomé (creation) / Pierre Michaud (cinema) / Jean-Jacques Beaudouin (stage manager)
Sound editing: Vincent Montrobert
Mixing: Victor Praud
Calibration: Stéphanie Bisutti
A Compagnie des Indes and OTTO Productions coproduction
with the participation of francetélévisions
