Is Broadway a musical or a cinematic memory? Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly or specially Georges Gershwin, Irwin Porter?
It’s this rich aspect about musical comedy that has attracted me, this period from 1935 to 1955, when the greatest musical comedies were produced. I believe that the climax was reached through the association of cinemascope and Technicolor. There is something very cinematic about filming movement, these choreographies and these incredible scenes. But, as a film lover, I never really felt a love for this specific genre until I discovered it fifteen years ago. This arrived mostly by making films. In Le mur, for example, I shot a musical comedy sequence, a moment that started out from a dream. I find it very joyful for a character to suddenly jump out of reality and starting to dance. It’s very common in your films to go from reality to fantasy. Yes, although here, hesitation is situated between illusion and reality. The male characters repeat their desire of becoming a musical comedy dancer, at an age where it is to late to become one. It’s the search for a dream that is going to clash w
