“We were in the Place de la Republique and we stayed there for about ten days, filming the passers-by who often stopped to ask us questions: What are you doing?, and the conversation would begin. Many of these people wanted and needed to talk and they took advantage of the situation. They knew that we were filming them and that didn't bother them or else they got used to it very quickly. This is live cinema pushed to the extreme, and yet there is something strangely literary about it as if we had invented these fortuitous passers-by, as if they had emerged from a novel by Celine or Queneau”.
Director, screenwriter and producer. Born in France in 1932. He studied political sciences at the Sorbonne, but left it for IDHEC (Institut des hautes etudes cinematographiques). He started as a cameraman and co-director in Jacques Yves Cousteau’s film “The Silent World” (1956) which was awarded with Oscar and Golden Palm at Cannes Festival. The first independent work was the film “Elevator to the Gallows” (1958). The next film “The Lovers” (1958) with Jeanne Moreau in the title role was taken controversially because of erotic scenes, rather revealing as for that time. He broke the taboo topics in his following films “The Fire Within” (1963), “Murmur of the Heart” (1971), “Lacombe Lucien” (1974). Malle, who worked both in France and the United States, also belongs to the directors of the French “new wave” who were inherent in striving to adapt their own work experience and feeling. However, unlike other members of the “new wave”, he always aspired to variety of themes and genres. Malle also worked as a documentary director. Among his documentary films are Phantom India (1969), Humain, trop humain (1974), Place de la republique (1974), God's Country (1985) and others. Louis Malle died in Los Angeles in 1995.
