Notre Dame Burns: ‘We Failed to Awaken Desire,’ Explains The Name of the Rose Director

On April 15, 2019, people around the world discovered, horrified and alive, one of the great jewels of French heritage engulfed in flames. Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris suffered the most significant disaster in its glorious history.

At the end of December 2019, Jean-Jacques Anne, president of Pathé Jérôme Seydoux, offered to shoot a spectacular archival montage for the widescreen film (with immersive sound) on the fire of Our Lady.

“My first instinct is to fear that there aren’t enough diverse images to make a 90-minute film, but I’m listening. I’m leaving a documentation package, articles in French and English. Before I go to bed, look.’ Ano commented.

“I ate the whole thing before midnight. It was too late or too early to call, but my point was already made. What I discovered was incredible. A fascinating cascade of failures, obstacles, dysfunctions. Totally incredible, but true. .

From there, the film Notre-Dame burns will be born, which will be released on our screens in March 2022. Last May, the director gave a lengthy interview to Les Années Laser magazine for the UHD release of his masterpiece The Name of Rose. Always generous and willing, he happily covered his entire career, its ups and downs, right up to the last film. Notre Dame is burning.

“Can you imagine how many jerks are rushing to make a movie out of this?”

“When I heard about the Notre Dame fire on the old radio out of town, my first instinct was to say to my wife, ‘Can you imagine how many jerks are rushing to make a movie out of it?’ Three years later, I was the fool!” He says with humor.

His film attracted more than 815,000 viewers. A figure that is far from shameless, but still a far cry from his previous works; With the obvious exceptions of Or Noir and its 215,000 admission and its biggest failure, Sa Majesté Minor, which only attracted 139,000 viewers.

“If the audience was not as large as expected, it was because many believed it was a documentary and felt that they had already seen and learned everything on TV or on the Internet, whereas, on the contrary, it was a pure race against time. , where the characters were firefighters, and where the “bad guy” was embodied in all his destructive glory by fire, I believe we made a mistake in conveying his nature, including perhaps at the level of his title. We could not awaken the desire and the promise of pleasure.