Render unto Resnais... : and a homerun.

Resnais committed one undisputable masterpiece. It stands precariously on the brink of this blog scope : film tells the final hours in a writer’s life, it is called " Providence ", in French, even more so in English ; there are doubts about its French passport.

French-British production is based on a British script by David Mercer, shot in English and England ; cast is led by John Gielguld, Dirk Bogarde and Ellen Burstyn. Nationality aside, movie received seven, for once smartly awarded, French Cesars.

With « Providence », Resnais delivers the goods as an author : he deserves credit not only for his direction work, but for bringing together all of the film ingredients (outline, script, dialogues, cast, location, music...) and blending them into one seamless, harmonious whole.

Film triggers many questions : was Resnais meant to be a British filmmaker ?

Produced in a British environment, would " Hiroshima, mon amour " have been an endurable film ? Or would Great Britain have successfully removed the project from the director's mind ? Would « Muriel » have been different on the other side of the channel ?

In this art of the moving image, may it all come down to the language the actors speak ? Would English have been a better vehicle for Resnais ? In English, he would not have been able to work with Duras, nor possibly Robbe-Grillet ; would he have found local writers possessed with the same dreary self-consciousness ?

Is such dreary self-consciousness even possible in English or strictly French ? Would English have peppered Resnais’s intellectual games with welcome humour ?

Is it the actors ? Would the sparkle in John Gielgud’s eye have reminded Resnais that « It’s only a film » and have prevented so many of his characters throughout his career to take themselves so seriously ?

Is it the countryside, the weather, the food even ?

Maybe it was just a matter of " Providence " or British beginner's luck, and we should be grateful the experiment was not replicated.

Maybe it was successful miscommunication : Resnais did not get what he wished from his British partners and the film was not the Hiroshima or Marienbad clone it promised to be.

It could be even worse : a British film for the French only, in which British writer, actors, crew, accomodated Resnais’s whims, while smiling at his back, as packed with Gallic clichés on the Brits as a Hollywood film shot in France with « baguettes », « bérets » and « vive la différence ».
Alain Resnais expressed many times his wish to make a film about Mandrake the magician ; the project shall probably never be and we shall not know if we missed a great English-langage film or were spared another bad French movie.