Michel Piccoli
or
a dual career: theatre-cinema

Wim Wenders used to say that only in the cinema can we see an actor both when he is young and at the end of his career. These two moments coexist on screen, but never on stage. This thought means that we have to watch a great theatre actor with particular attention, since we are destined to preserve that memory. We are responsible for its living on as a legacy. And one day, like now, we spectators will be called upon to bring alive the memories of those performances that form our theatrical "biography".
We cannot discuss the work of an actor before having seen "the flower" of his art, as the Japanese master Zeami once said. So what is the use of talking about an experience that has been denied to others, to those who are younger? Is it only a means of leafing through the various chapters of a spectator's memory that can only communicate with similar memories? No, because speaking about an actor also means referring to his attitude towards his work and the world, ethics and commitment, his colleagues and the public. This is all that we can communicate to others to reveal an actor's identity. The rest is only autobiographical memory, and requires that talent for evocation that only story-tellers or writers possess. How can one express in words that extraordinary emotion experienced in those rare moments when an actor is completely in the part, when his art seems to be the expression of a better life?
In spite of the difficulties, one has to accept this encounter with a great actor's experiences. It is a challenge that must be faced if we are to recreate the image of an artist who has eliminated the frontiers between the arts and nations; Michel Piccoli is the protagonist of an ongoing journey between theatre and cinema, the same journey that leads him from one Mediterranean country to another. Here we are concerned with showing the role his art has played in normalizing the relationship between screen and stage. He occupies the space in between, where dialogue is interwoven.
After a brilliant debut with Jean Villar, who is still a legend in French theatre, Michel Piccoli gave a memorable performance as Don Giovanni in the television film directed by Marcel Bluwal. He returned to the stage to work with the leading directors in European theatre: Peter Brook, Klaus Michael Grüber, Patrice Chéreau, Luc Bondy and Robert Wilson. He has always given everything to each performance, and been prepared to totally immerse himself in the character. He has always succeeded in remaining "open".

This will mainly be a meeting of theatre and film people, a means of becoming familiar with the personality of this consummate actor. Afterwards, Michel Piccoli will discuss with Serge Toubiana and Georges Banu, his twofold experience that combines theatre and cinema; an experience he has always approached with confidence, as if it were a game. Predictable careers and long-term plans are an anathema to Michel Piccoli, who is the magnetic force that acts on these two closely-related arts. He has always placed his trust in the characters he has to play and the words he has to communicate. In this sense, he is (let's say it !) a "humanist artist".
There will be a screening of Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard directed by Peter Brook, in which Piccoli gives one of his finest theatrical performances: Gaev, the brother, who to defend his own childhood relinquishes the garden, symbolic of a past and a class that is disappearing. The film screenings will span the actor's remarkable, multifaceted career - on which Marcello Mastroianni and Marco Ferreri could have shed even more light...
The event will be further enriched by exchanges between theatre and film critics, experts with differing views on the theatre actor/film actor issue.
Pirandello, the Sicilian author who reduced the mechanisms of the theatre to a minimum to intensify it, is the ally Michel Piccoli has chosen to honour the Europe Theatre Prize. He will bring alive again the words of Cotrone in The Mountain Giants and, for one evening, we shall have the privilege of watching a unique experience.

Georges Banu