Swiss director Simon Edelstein’s triumphant return to Locarno, 50 years on

Simon Edelstein (right) in 1991. CC BY-SA 4.0 / Claude Richardet

The last time Simon Edelstein had a film screened at the Locarno Film Festival was over 50 years ago. This year a retrospective paid homage to the influential Swiss director showing two newly restored versions of his films.

History hasn’t been very fair to Simon Edelstein. The director and screenwriter from Geneva is better known for his photography books, which capture the beauty of dilapidated cinemas around the world, than his films. This injustice, however, has been repaired in grand style this year.

The 78th edition of the Locarno Film Festival presented two of Edelstein’s films – Les Vilaines Manières (Evil manners) and L’Ogre (The Ogre) – which had been restored recently by the Cinémathèque Suisse [Swiss Film Archive] with the support of French-speaking public television RTS, in a section dedicated to the rediscovery of Swiss cinema (Cinéma Suisse Redécouvert).

Retrospectives are often the only way to access obscure films that have been lost in time, shedding light on the contexts and situations that brought them to life.

Learning on the job

Edelstein, 83, was a prolific documentary filmmaker with over 100 films to his credit, mainly for RTS (which is part of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation, the parent company of Swissinfo).

He was also the cinematographer for Michel Soutter, part of the Groupe 5 collectiveExternal link, before he began directing his own films at the end of the Swiss New Wave movement in the 1960s and 1970s.

Edelstein’s mentor: Swiss film director Michel Soutter (1932–1991), left, chats with French actor Jean-Louis Trintignant, right, during the filming of Reperages, 1977. Keystone/Photopress-Archiv

At the time, there was no film school in Switzerland where you could learn how to make movies, Edelstein explains to Swissinfo with the help of his wife Elizabeth as interpreter. “It was a profession that was learned on the job in television,” he says.

When Soutter learned that Eldestein wanted to become a filmmaker, he put him in touch with French producers who, at that time, were particularly interested in Swiss filmmaking and, more importantly, in funding the projects of young filmmakers.

The first of his two films screened at Locarno this year was Les Vilaines Manières (1973), which centres on Jean-Pierre, played by Jean-Luc Bideau. The Swiss actor was in exceptional form as the host of a popular radio show who interviews lonely women who have trouble finding a partner. From his recording studio, he commands their attention and offers reassurance.

“There was a broadcast in France at that time with exactly the same topic,” recalls Edelstein. “I had done a documentary on it and was very impressed by the artificial empathy that the journalists developed with these people who lived small lives that nobody was interested in. And then suddenly there was someone who showed interest in them and asked them a lot of questions.”

Today Jean-Pierre could easily be part of the podcasting world.

Scene from the film “Les Vilaines Manières”. Cinémathèque Suisse

A Donald Sutherland cameo

In the film, Jeanne, an enigmatic character played by Francine Racette, suddenly upends Jean-Pierre’s regimented and monotonous existence. He runs into her in an elevator and becomes involved as she breaks the law: from maritime theft to burglary.

The film has a loose, evocative narrative style, aided by its grainy, black-and-white photography by Renato Berta, with Geneva as the setting for the two lovers who endlessly roam the city. It is also reminiscent of a masterpiece by French director Eric Rohmer, Love in the Afternoon (1972), in its pragmatic exploration of relationships, connections, or lack thereof – a subject that never gets old.

Scene of Simon Edelstein’s “Les Vilaines Manières” (Bad Manners, 1974), a forgotten gem of Swiss cinema celebrated this year in Locarno. Cinémathèque Suisse

But perhaps the most jarring curiosity in this film is the abrupt and blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearance by the late Canadian star Donald Sutherland. “Donald Sutherland was very much in love with the lead actress, Francine Racette, and he would not leave her side during the entire shoot,” explains Elisabeth. “He had nothing to do, and since he was a big star, Simon said that this was an opportunity to do something with him.”

But Edelstein couldn’t create a character for Sutherland on the spot, so he asked him to walk past the camera as a pedestrian picking something up.

A darkening frame

L’Ogre (1986), however, was an entirely different prospect and was made more than ten years after Les Vilaines Manières. Edelstein’s age of innocence had long gone; the subject was much darker, full of pitch-black humour.

The story follows Jean (Jean-Quentin Châtelain), a Latin teacher who is contemplating on his complicated feelings about his father (an unforgettable Marcel Bozzuffi) who had suddenly passed away. The film opens with a flashback in which the father plays with Jean as a young boy and dangerously puts a knife to his son’s neck, in the same vein as Wendell B. Harris, Jr.’s Chameleon StreetExternal link or more recently Lynne Ramsay’s Die My LoveExternal link. Or, in biblical terms, he reenacts Abraham’s sacrifice of his son Isaac.

The sacrificial scene in “The Ogre”. Cinémathèque Suisse

Now an adult, Jean starts hallucinating as the lines between reality and dreams become blurred. His father occupies his thoughts, and Jean finds refuge by sleeping with young women. The high school where he teaches has many peculiarities, especially the students, one of whom looks as though she is slowly dying every day, literally and metaphorically.

Jean hesitates to acknowledge that anything is wrong. In this segment, the film has more in common with the American teen dark comedy crime HeathersExternal link (1988) than anything in European cinema, as they are both from the same era and refer to characters in heightened realities as a means of coping with school.

Bringing words to light

The origin of the story is the homonymous book by the Swiss author and painterJacques ChessexExternal link. “We were already friends when L’Ogre, the book, received the prestigious Goncourt literary prize in France,” explains Edelstein. Chessex’s book was also a great commercial success.

“Chessex said that he would like me to adapt the work for the cinema,” adds Edelstein. “Of course that was a big chance because the rights were negotiated directly with the author, and it made it easier to get the funding.”

But it was not an easy task, he recalls: “The book is not very easy to read and the way it is written has nothing cinematographic about it, so it was a challenge to adapt.” Jean spends most of the film seeking death obsessively, without acknowledging the signals all around him.

Photographic refinement: scene from “The Ogre”. Cinémathèque Suisse

L’Ogre was shot in colour by cinematographer Bernard Zitzermann. Edelstein’s keen visual sense from his early work as a director of photography makes him adept to these technical aspects. The cinematography is the first thing that draws you into what is otherwise a difficult movie. A brutal confrontation at the end destroys any lightness or playfulness that Edelstein seemed to be exploring throughout the film.

Fountain of youth

Edelstein did not make many feature films – after Les Vilaines Manières, Un Homme en Fuite (A man on the run) came out in 1980, followed by L’Ogre six years later. After that, he made Visages Suisses (Swiss faces), one of the 16 short films commissioned by the Organisation of the Swiss Abroad and RTS, and sponsored by Nestlé and Sandoz, to celebrate the 700^th anniversary of the Swiss Confederation in 1991.

It would be another decade before he released another mid-length film, Passage au Crépuscule (2000). His last, Quelques Jours Avant la Nuit (Some days before the night), came out in 2008.

Sharing his two films with audiences on Locarno’s big screens this year makes him feel like a 30-year-old again, says the Swiss director – the same age he was when Les Vilaines Manières was competing for Locarno’s Golden Leopard award in 1973. “This strange feeling of being young again… it makes me want to make a new film.”

Edited by Eduardo Simantob and Simon Bradley