Country: Belgium
Year: 1967
Duration: 91'
"I never think of symbols when I make a film. Everything emerges concretely and spontaneously and I do not interpret anything. The passion for cars, for instance, is something real to a boy of twenty, isn't it? The character played by Jean-Pierre Léaud in Le départ is obsessed by cars, but after all he has a concrete relationship to them. He uses them as vehicles, he doesn't kiss them. I love cars myself, but cars don't love me all that much.
It is a nonserious film on a serious subject. I wanted to make a film about the contrast between the things you do and the things you want to do, i.e., between the hero's job as hairdresser's apprentice and his dream of winning a motor race. I wanted to connect those two extremes.
At the end of the film JeanPierre Léaud has realized that his dreams about cars were rather childish. He has suddenly learned to distinguish between what is essential and what isn't. In short, he has grown up. That is why I let the film burn there is nothing more to say. Anyway, Le départ is a test case which was made with composer Krzysztof Komeda as to how much music a film can take, and we may have used too much." (Jerzy Skolimowski, "Sight and Sound", Summer 1968)
"Le départ is a comic film. And the character played by Léod is as strong as those of Chaplin in his first short films. The confused youth at the mercy of modern times, as we have seen in hundreds of films, becomes a type here. It is parodied and immortalized by the laughs that accompany it. With Skolimowski the comic doesn't live its own past or its own conventions any longer. With Skolimowski a comic is born with an authentically modern style and content." (Luc Moullet, "Cahiers du Cinéma", n. 191, June 1967)
Biography
film director
Jerzy Skolimowski
(Lodz, Poland, 1938), director, screenwriter, producer, and actor, after inconsistent studies and experience as a boxer and a poet, became involved in cinema thanks to Andrzej Wajda, who encouraged him to enroll in the film school in Lodz. With Polanski, he wrote the screenplay for Knife in the Water (1962) and he debuted as a director with Rysopis (1964), which, with his next film Walk over (1965), made him one of the major exponents of the international Nouvelle Vague of the 1960s. In 1967, his film The Departure won the Golden Bear in Berlin but that same year another movie of his, Hands Up!, was censored (it was released only in 1981) and he never made another movie in his home country. Skolimowski's international career is full of risky production adventures and great masterpieces and spans various countries (Czechoslovakia, Italy, Germany, England, the United States). After the failure of King, Queen, Knave, he spent a great deal of inactive time in England and Poland, followed by the great success of his English movies The Shout (1978) and Moonlighting (1982). In 1985, he directed his first all-American movie, Lightship and he moved to the US. After returning to his homeland, in 1991 he directed his first Polish movie after Hands Up!, 30 Door Key and over the years continued to work in cinema, writing and producing the film by his two sons Józef and Michal, The Hollow Men (1993). After a long hiatus from film, he returned to directing movies in 2008 with Four Nights with Anna, presented at the Quinzaine des réalisateurs in Cannes, followed by Essential Killing (2010), Special Jury Prize in Venice; 11 Minutes (2015); and EO (2022), the Jury Prize in Cannes.
FILMOGRAFIA
Rysopis (Rysopis - Segni particolari nessuno, 1964), Walkover (1965), Bariera (Barriera, 1966), Le Départ (Il vergine, 1967), The Adventures of Gerard (Le avventure di Gerard, 1970), Deep End (La ragazza del bagno pubblico, 1970), König, Dame, Bube (Un ospite gradito... per mia moglie, 1972), The Shout (L'australiano, 1978), Ręce do gory (Mani in alto, 1981), Moonlighting (Moonlighting - Cittadini di nessuno, 1982), Success Is the Best Revenge (Il successo ad ogni costo, 1984), The Lightship (Lightship - La nave faro, 1985), Torrents of Spring (Acque di primavera, 1989), Thirty Door Key/Ferdydurke (1991), Cztery noce z Anną (Quattro notti con Anna, 2008), Essential Killing (id. 2010), 11 minut (11 Minutes, 2015), EO (2022).
Cast
& Credits
Director: Jerzy Skolimowski.
Screenplay: Jerzy Skolimowski, Andrzej Kostenko.
Director of photography: Willy Kurant.
Editor: Bob Wade.
Music: Krzysztof KomedaTrzcinski; canzone cantata da: Christiane Legrand.
Sound: Philip Cape.
Cast and characters: JeanPierre Léaud (Marc), Catherine Duport (Michèle), Jacqueline Bir (la cliente), Paul Roland (Famico), Léon Dony (il padrone), Paul Frère, Paul Delrivière.
Production company: Bronka Ricquier e Jacques Ricquier per Elisabeth Films (Bruxelles).
Screenplay: Jerzy Skolimowski, Andrzej Kostenko.
Director of photography: Willy Kurant.
Editor: Bob Wade.
Music: Krzysztof KomedaTrzcinski; canzone cantata da: Christiane Legrand.
Sound: Philip Cape.
Cast and characters: JeanPierre Léaud (Marc), Catherine Duport (Michèle), Jacqueline Bir (la cliente), Paul Roland (Famico), Léon Dony (il padrone), Paul Frère, Paul Delrivière.
Production company: Bronka Ricquier e Jacques Ricquier per Elisabeth Films (Bruxelles).