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Confidential liaisons
Sacha Gervasi, Cosimo Fusco
and Carl Colby
explore human relationships |
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| 12/12/2012 |
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The first day of Q&As at the Jardin De L’Ange featured three prestigious guests: Sacha Gervasi, director of the opening film Hitchcock; Cosimo Fusco, co-star of Berberian Sound Studio, the first Competition film to screen, yesterday afternoon; and Carl Colby, son of CIA agent William Colby, the subject of his new documentary The Man Nobody Knew, presented this morning in the DocNoir sidebar. All three spoke of human relationships on and off set, showing how fragile the boundary between the two worlds is.
“At the age of 60, Hitchcock wanted to risk everything, he needed to remind himself that he could still surprise audiences,” said Gervasi, speaking about what drove him to make this film. “This idea really inspired me, since I too produced my documentary Anvil! The Story of Anvil. I was particularly interested in developing his relationship with his wife Alma. It was a real revelation to find out how important it was to Hitchcock. I think my enthusiasm in proposing this story is what compelled Fox Searchlight to choose me to direct the film.”
Talking about the relationships on set, Gervasi praised teamwork: “Hitchcock was open to listening to others and to their ideas. Filmmaking is a collective art. You can be a great director but without great collaborators you’ll go nowhere.” In terms of his relationship with his two stars, he said: “I tried to make this film for ten years. When I found myself in the presence of Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren I was very nervous at the idea of having to direct them. Working with them was a wonderful experience both as a director and as a spectator. They knew it was my first film, and were very kind, supporting me and making suggestions where they were needed. And they had a lot of fun together, a very informal relationship was established.”
Cosimo Fusco, co-star with Toby Jones of Berberian Sound Studio, also spoke of what it was like on their set. “From the moment I read the adaptation I thought this film was brilliant,” he said. “You can like it or not, but it’s a sensory experience that stays with the spectator. Since it was a low budget film, in the two meetings with director Peter Strickland that took place before shooting began, we did a reading and rehearsed. Toby Jones and I immediately had a particular chemistry, all we had to do was look at one another to understand each other.”
Carl Colby had an entirely different, and almost indirect, understanding with his father in the documentary The Man Nobody Knew. Said the director: “I’ve been making documentaries since I was 20. At a certain point I decided to make one about my father’s life. I could have interviewed him in person, and he would have been able to tell me a lot about the political situation of any country in the world. But if I’d asked him something about our family, he wouldn’t have been able to tell me anything, as if emotions weren’t a part of his world. So I decided to interview my mother and collect numerous photographs from our past, to talk about a man that nobody knew.”
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