Rome Schneider on Arte: His ordeal on the set of La Passante du Sans-Souci

La Passante du Sans-Souci, the greatest feature film by the great Rom Schneider, will be screened at the Arte tonight. Opportunity to discover or rediscover behind the scenes of the actor’s life at that time, painful and tragic and their impact on the film.

It’s 1980 and Rom Schneider remembers the book Sans-Souci Crossing, A novel by Joseph Kessel in which he wants to play. For the first time in his career, he is at the helm of the project and is chosen to be directed by Jacques Rufio, who co-directed The Infernal Trio, which the actor filmed in 1974.

Rufio takes and adapts the book with Jacques Kirsner (Allons z’enfants). The script puts the president of a humanitarian organization (Michelle Piccol) in cold-blooded killing of an ambassador he recently discovered was a former Nazi who ruined his life as a child. Romy Schneider plays both Piccolo’s wife in the present as well as his mother in the past.

From drama to drama

During the annual thalassotherapy, which allows him to relax and lose weight, he stretches his leg, stretching the filming that took place in Berlin in 1981. The shooting stopped in May because he found a tumor on his right kidney. An operation was performed to remove it.

Then comes a tragedy from which the actor can never recover: A few months later, his 14-year-old son David accidentally dies while climbing the gates of a family. Filming for La Passante has since been postponed once again.

This time, he is not coming back because the German financiers of the film refuse to insure the actor for fear that he will end his life after the tragedy, as Jacques Rufio says in the movie DVD bonuses. . Eventually a friend of Rome, producer Laurent Pettin will convince him to finish La Passante.

Shooting certain scenes becomes a temptation as his son has to play his hero’s son in the movie flashbacks. Therefore, from October to December 1981, Rome responds to a young teenager who replaces his dead child with whom he has to play.

Since then, fiction has begun to merge with reality, especially in the scene above, where his mother (Rome) asks Max to play a piano melody for him. How can we not see in the emotions of Rome a mother who lost her child just a few months ago? This series is one of the (unfortunately) most famous in the career of an actor.

La Passante du Sans-Souci will be his last film. On April 10, 1982, he gave Last interview Michelle Drucker, a tragic video in which the actress is clearly seen broken. On May 29, he was found dead at his home at the age of 43.

For her role in Rufio’s film, she was posthumously awarded the title of César, and in 1984 a prize was created that honors the best female hope in French-language cinema and is called the “Rome Schneider Prize.”