Monsieur Gangster - Crooks in Clover

Les Tontons flingueurs

Paru le La Lettre AFC n°190 Autres formats

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So, you brought out the Angénieux ? or Strange, this need to make phrases among cameramen, an interview by Isabelle Scala
Les Tontons flingueurs (Monsieur Gangster - USA – Crooks in Clover - UK) is the 8th film by Georges Lautner, the 7th shot with Maurice Fellous, and a classic French comedy about old men turning to crime.

On the occasion of its restoration and its release as a digital print and after much palaver (Maurice avered on the phone that everything had already been written, already said in the bonus DVD, that he had nothing to tell us), Jean-Noel Ferragut and I went to visit him at Pontchartrain.

He was waiting for us at the station, a slate in his hand, in case we didn’t recognize him. “Not the slate from Les Tontons, which was given to the plumber”, his wife confided to us...

As soon as we arrive, Maurice exhibits a Debrie Super Parvo 35mm camera, with a viewfinder through the gate. He had brought out the unit a few weeks earlier to “show the kids in the village how they shot in France between 1935 and 1950”.

While working as a studio camera technician at Saint-Maurice, Maurice took evening courses at the IDHEC school from 1946 to 1948. These courses were established by the unions for film crews that were unable to exercise their profession during the war. He met Loulou Pastier, the future operator of Les Tontons, there.

In 1948, Robert Sussfeld, location manager of the animated film Alice Wonderland, was looking for a technician to handle cameras, Maurice’s career is launched and he becomes the camera assistant to Roger Dormoy. His brother was the cinematographer of Georges Lautner’s first film. He introduces Maurice to him for his second film, Women and War in 1959. They will be do 23 films together. Death of a Corrupt Man in 1977 marked the end of the collaboration with Lautner, and Henri Decae takes up the torch during the film.

In 1962, Georges Lautner, has just completed The Seventh Juror and The Monocle, photographed by Maurice Fellous. Alain Poiré (Gaumont Inter) proposes that Lautner direct the adaptation of Albert Simonin’s detective story, Grisbi or not Grisbi. Film star Jean Gabin is to take the role of Fernand Naudin and wants to impose his usual film crew. But Lautner accepts on one condition : that his own team accompany him on the film.

The confrontation between the two parties takes a certain time until Gabin drops the project. Lautner and his team obtain the direction of the film, strongly supported by Poiré who is the only one at Gaumont who believes in it.

You had a certain habit of shooting with George. How did it go ?
MF We almost never spoke, we were so used to each other ! My goal was to save time. Lautner had the memory of directors of photography from when he was an AD ; he couldn’t stand the cinematographers of that time who were real despots and sometimes took two hours to light a shot.

When I was a camera techician in Saint-Maurice, I saw Philippe Agostini light a set for Gates of the Night throughout the night, then develop a screen test, and start to light again the next day. At that time the directors of photography were the masters of the set. George was haunted by this, he wanted to use part of their time for mise en scène, while searching for a certain quality in a minimum of time.

He would come on the set, and look about. While he did a read-through with the actors sitting down, I lit the set with directional sources (which is all there was), then George asked the actors to play the scene on the set, and rectified the scene if it did not correspond to his ideas of camera positions and movements. The problems for the cinematographer began.`

Did he know what he wanted, where to place his camera ?
MF Totally. What interests him, his thing, is to have good actors and a good writer. As he always says that he has no money to shoot, he puts the actor in place of the set and if there is no set, he goes to a very close shot. It isn’t the set that interests him. "If you make me a beautiful picture," he would say, "you’re going take an hour. That’s money I won’t have to pay for a better actor for the second or third role. I don’t care about the image. " But he would add : "In each of my movies, you will have one sequence to have your fun with."

In Les Tontons... It’s the bowling scene, there was a set and I had fun. The only movie of George’s where I had the equipment and time needed for lighting it was Road to Salina. 80% of the film was shot outdoors, and there were American actors. The production and Lautner let me do what I wanted, it was a job for hire. The most amazing thing is that I worked fast. But we are from Les Tontons !

Lautner wanted the depth of field of Orson Welles, whom he admired, with the limited resources of the Nouvelle Vague. We equipped our Camé 300 Reflex camera with the first zoom in the world, a 35 to 140 mm, which opened to 4.4, built by Pierre Angénieux. In truth, it was a 35 mm at infinity and a 42 mm at the close focus of 1 meter 20. We had many breathing problems : when you focused, you changed the focal length...

We wanted to work with short focal lengths. Angénieux had developed a system with additional lenses (which ate 1/3 of a stop) converting the zoom to a 28 to 76 mm ; it was a conversion block which was screwed on the front ; we had two focus scales. I made a front door for the Camé 300 to accommodate the zoom, and place the follow focus controls...

Had Angénieux already thought about this ?
MF He had already built a Rétrozoom for amateurs and wanted to benefit from the publicity made by the movie to sell thousands of units for 8 mm cameras. Later we associated ourselves with Dicop, Thirard’s assistant, to develop a scope zoom, but that’s another story !

To return to Lautner, he was very interested in the zoom, as there was no change of lenses, except for the 18.5 mm, which was the shortest focal length at the time. But we had every possible problem with the zoom focus, and I built a special mount that allowed us to readjust the back focus until we obtained the best focus, then we locked the back. At the time, Angénieux had not thought of everything. He made several zooms of this type, everyone bought one, but I was the only one with the additional conversion block.

You didn’t lose too much quality ?
MF It was acceptable, for black and white, for a Lautner film...

What stop did you shoot at ?
MF Often at 5.6, almost wide open, as the zoom opened to 4.4. Back then, in films, people worked in general at 4, 4.5. Focus wasn’t easy ! I had a champion : Yves Rodallec. He would look at his Kelly chart and tell me : we need such and such a stop. I changed the stop, and therefore the lighting, for each shot if necessary, to obtain the necessary depth of field.

For the main sources, no problem, but the fill was hell, you started chasing shadows. The big cameramen of the time put 2 kW as a front light, they had a dimmer in their hand, but I didn’t like putting a fixture on the camera, I put it on the side, and therefore added a new shadow, hell !

What was the film then ?
MF Plus X and Double X. When I was an assistant, in exteriors, we already used "background" film, 16 or 25 ASA, so that there was less grain.

You told us before that Les Tontons was not a film of images, but of actors. What happened with the actors while filming with Lautner ?
MF I’ll tell you a story. Before the start of Barbouzes (The Great Spy Chase), Georges asks me to "make" 4 thugs. I do what he asks, it’s easier to "demolish" a actor. After three days of shooting, Lino Ventura addresses me :
- “What is this mug you’re giving me ?
- Lino, listen, I have orders...
- I have never been photographed like that !”

He crossed me off his list. He never came to dailies again. The next film, Let’s Not Get Angry, a comedy shot in Techniscope, Lautner tells me : “Pretty him up”, which I do. Michel Constantin assures Lino : "Come and see the dailies, they’re superb." He never came...

PS Maurice moves on to other stories, with other actors, and actresses... To finish, Maurice tells us how he met his wife Raymonde, where she worked at Eclair, on Galion street. Maurice had purchased his Camé 300 Reflex from the company. So the negotiations took a long time, then...

Interview by Isabelle Scala and Jean-Noel Ferragut

Translated from French by Benjamin B