THE FRENCH PRODUCER WHO MADE ‘RAN’ RUN
At 68, Serge Silberman falls between Hollywood’s great old-time producers and today’s account-ants/packagers. Having worked in France, he has always been independent of a studio system. By his own reckoning, he has made only 14 pictures in 37 years, a sum that suggests high quality (although other reference lists are less exclusive and bring the total into the 20s). Starting in 1963 with “Diary of a Chambermaid,” he made five films with Luis Bunuel, winning an Oscar for “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.” He produced Akira Kurosawa’s current “Ran” in Japan and is about to start post-production on Nagisa Oshima’s “Max, Mon Amour,” shot in French and English in Paris.
He is in on every part of the film, starting by reading the script aloud to time it and estimate costs (he says he has never gone over budget). He learned editing from Jean-Pierre Melville, whose “Bob le Flambeur” he produced in 1955. It is said that he succeeded in getting final cut on “Ran” from Kurosawa, who is nicknamed the emperor and who is every bit as tough as his producer.
Asked if he really got final cut, Silberman pauses, smiles and replies, “Almost.” He is feisty and silver-haired in a black turtleneck sweater and gray suit, smoking endless Gitanes. His company, which is off the Champs Elysees, was formed after a former partner bankrupted him. (He was saved by Robert Badinter, now France’s minister of justice, who introduced him to Harry Saltzman, then co-producer of the James Bond films, who lent him money.) The company is called Greenwich Film Production, after Greenwich (mean) time.
“I wanted to make films not just for France but to re-create Paris of the 1920s and 1930s when there were no frontiers, no ghettos, and people exchanged ideas. It’s not logical,” he says. The name (Greenwich) has a pleasing touch of arrogance about it, and Silberman is not a humble man. Survivors rarely are.
He is hard, demanding, often unfair. He spent the war in Hitler’s death camps and the immediate postwar period escaping the Russians. The experience made him believe in chance and in respect for other people, but it clearly doesn’t make him easy to deal with.
“There is a prayer that says, ‘Forgive me for words said in anger.’ This is the most wonderful thing--it doesn’t mean I cannot be violent but that I can regret it later. Bunuel, when he was violent, became glacial but he remained respectful.” A certain degree of wrath is essential.
“I do not believe diplomatic people can be honest,” Silberman says.
He met Bunuel because the late Variety correspondent Gene Moscowitz told him to try. It turned out that Bunuel admired “Le Trou,” a film by Jacques Becker that Silberman produced (“It was very realist but Bunuel said sometimes films were so real they became surreal”) and the two men became fast friends, although Silberman made the mistake of greeting him with a bottle of whiskey. They drank it all, even though Bunuel was definitely a dry-martini man.
“He made the best dry martini in the world. He learned it at the Oak Bar in New York. In ‘The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie,’ there is a whole scene on how to make un dry .”
They drank their martinis at 6 p.m. At noon, they drank Bunuelonis, a mixture of gin and red vermouth. When Bunuel died, Silberman said, “Without Luis, I am nothing.” Silberman survived, of course, but he says in a flat and aching tone, “When Bunuel disappeared, half my life went away.”
There was no way to establish intimacy with Kurosawa but, in more than 30 trips to Japan, Silberman won the old man’s respect. He fought without success to get the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to accept “Ran” as a contender for a foreign-language-film Oscar. It was not submitted by the Japanese government, as the rules specify, and it cannot qualify as a French picture because it has been shown in Japanese and never dubbed.
“I have too much respect for Kurosawa, for myself and for the Academy members to show the picture in French instead of Japanese.”
Since he worked with Oshima directly under Kurosawa, people like to suggest that Silberman is now in his Japanese period. He shrugs. “Max, Mon Amour” stars Charlotte Rampling, Anthony Higgins and a chimpanzee and is rumored to be the most shocking film since “Last Tango in Paris.” (Oshima also directed the hair-raising “In the Realm of the Senses.”) It is about a menage a trois-- husband, wife, chimp--and Silberman doesn’t much like the “Last Tango” comparison.
“It will be a shock at the start but it is also a picture about communication between animals--what I mean is that human beings are animals too--and surely people will laugh. There is some black humor there. Black humor as human comedy if you want. I think the picture will be a sort of document of the end of the 20th Century.”
The Polish-born Silberman was studying to be a mining engineer when war broke out. After coming to Paris, he married and since the family of his wife, Irene, was in films, he started off in production. The Silbermans’ three children--a daughter who is a professor, sons who are a doctor and a lawyer--having grown up, Irene Silberman decided to become a producer and made the surprising smash success, “Diva.” (“I helped her,” says her husband.)
Silberman is probably France’s most distinguished active producer. His wartime experiences gave him his toughness, his black humor, his sorrow, his optimism, his belief in luck. He survived by chance. The three friends who saved his life are--with the possible exception of a Russian who disappeared--all dead. He does not think it is possible to view things as black and white:
“Inside all of us,” he says, “is a sort of ethic, an aesthetic, and a small devil.”