Méthode 1: The Utopia of Direct Filming - Text 1
The work of Mario Ruspoli – his films and his writings – plays a central role in the minor industry of experimentation and thinking that the emergence of direct cinema brought about in France between 1958 and 1965. His precise contribution arose from his early awareness of the upheavals that this new film practice would make possible in film technique, economics and philosophy. This awareness would be apparent in his film Méthode 1, made in 1962 at the request of Pierre Schaeffer of the research department of RTF, French public radio and television, under a department carrying out joint studies into lightweight equipment involving filmmakers and equipment builders which followed the recommendations of Jean Rouch.[1] This demonstration by example would be rounded out in October 1963 by the preparation of a report published under the auspices of UNESCO and entitled Pour un nouveau cinéma dans les pays en voie de développement: le groupe synchrone cinématographique léger.[2]
In the spring of 1961, Ruspoli shot Regard sur la folie, La fête prisionnière and Les inconnus de la terre with the Quebec cinematographer Michel Brault, thereby furthering his thoughts on new shooting configurations using mobile synchronous sound units, a practice begun while shooting Chronique d’un été (Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin, 1961). In May 1962, Chris Marker joined in by making Le joli mai, with Pierre Lhomme on camera, Étienne Becker as assistant and Antoine Bonfanti on sound. Méthode 1 was the pedagogical synthesis of these experiments and prefigured the conceptualization of a new aesthetic. In it, using the dream tools of the mobile synchronous unit, barely sketched out technically,[3] Ruspoli laid out a utopia, that of cinema as a collective experience for the common good. For this didactic film, made to introduce studio technicians to direct cinema practices, Ruspoli called on the crew members of Le joli mai, whom he nicknamed the “Martians.” The television apprentices, who appear in the second half of the film, were Ivan Favreau, Elvire Lerner, Michel Davaud, Jacques Blancherie and Luc Perini. Ruspoli chose to carry out this experiment in Marvejols, a small village in the department of Lozère in southern France, with which he was personally familiar. Later, and with the same crew, he would shoot the series Petite ville,[4] consisting of six episodes and also produced by RTF.
Méthode 1 takes the form of a manifesto, extrapolating direct cinema’s potential from its primitive early technical configuration. This equipment was made up of a lightweight camera powered by a battery – the KMT Coutant-Mathot prototype conceived in the Éclair workshops by two engineers who gave it its name – connected to a Nagra III tape recorder developed by Stefan Kudelski. The synchronism of the two devices was provided by a control system made up of a frequency generator attached to the camera and a cable, the “synchronism wire,” connecting the camera and the tape recorder. An assistant was tasked with adjusting it.
