"The Coutard Dolly"

By Kees van Oostrum, ASC President

La Lettre AFC n°271

[ English ] [ français ]

Few days ago, we received from Kees Van Oostrum, President of the ASC, these kind words addressed to all the members of the AFC. “I was going to write you last week when I got the news that the great Raoul Coutard had passed away but then decided that I was going to write my upcoming Presidents desk article for the ASC magazine about him and my personal connection. I never had the privilege of meeting him but he was of great influence to me as a cinematographer. Anyway included is the article that will go out in the next issue but wanted to share it with you already.”

It sat in the corner of the abandoned grip-equipment room — a room you ordinarily would pass right by unless you were looking for the odd part, a lockdown bolt, an exotic clamp. ​It looked like it was conceived and built for a giant toddler, except that it was lacking a seat and peddles. It was covered in dust, dulling its original silver finish, and its three tires were flat to the ground, their rubber cracked and dry.
The contraption had obviously not been used in years when we, students at the film school, asked the equipment custodian what it was. He paused his ragged step, sucked deep on his pipe, and with a voice that dripped gravitas announced, “That’s the Coutard dolly ! It was built by him for The Dark Room of Damocles !”

​Our mouths dropped open. “Raoul Coutard had been here ?” we asked. “Oh yes, absolutely,” the custodian affirmed. “He shot this film here with Fons Rademakers, and I moved him around on this dolly.” We simply could not believe it. The man who had brought us Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless and A Woman Is A Woman, and François Truffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player and Jules and Jim, had been here and had used thisvery three-wheeler to accomplish the unimaginable.
​We had studied those films with great attention, running them back and forth on a flatbed, dissecting the camera movement, analyzing the lighting. We were fascinated by their mix of realism with a quirky wink of an eye to the fabric of cinema. We devoured the opening titles of Godard’s Contempt, where Coutard himself appears, seated on a dolly, operating a geared head. He slowly dollies closer and closer, then pans and tilts the camera lens directly to us, the audience. This sparked for us deep discussions of truth and reality — the ethical locomotive of New Wave cinema, and the obligation of the “cineaste,” as we liked to call ourselves.
​Driven by a feverish commitment, we spentdays cleaning the Coutard dolly, replacing the tires, oiling the bearings, and making her look shiny andnew, ready to be put back into service.

In the weeks that followed, we emulated the shots from Breathless, executing its endless dolly moves while hand-holding the camera from the small, wheeled platform. We discovered that you could put a tripod on the dolly and move swiftly through corridors, even turning sharp corners — and then we discovered that this could result in a disastrous tilt and crash because, after all, the rig was only supported by three wheels !
​With this tricycle dolly, Raoul Coutard had become our ghostly teacher, our hero of cinematography, our imaginary master. And whenever a shot was in debate, we were ready torecite his sayings, like when he referred to Prussian General Carl von Clausewitz’s 1832 book On War : “When an operation is decided it needs to be executed.” Or when Coutard, after shooting Breathless, described Godard as the “the only director with whom I can take risks.”

​Indeed, we would take great risks as we religiously executed our moves with the dolly. When the papers recently announced that Raoul Coutard had passed, it all came flooding back — Coutard’s dolly and its profound influence during my student years.
​Once I was a working cinematographer, I was again enamored with Coutard’s work on Philippe Garrel’s movies, notably Wild Innocence. Vibrant colors, contrasting black-and-white, and the ever-present handheld work underlined the realism of human relationships. I realized then just how important that awkward silver tricycle had been in shaping me as a cinematographer. It had unearthed a legacy that would endure beyond the 92 years of Raoul Coutard’s life. His dolly provided his vision with a vehicle that continues to transport it into an endless future.

Kees van Oostrum
ASC President