10 Things You Didn't Know About European Directors

By Greta Lorez

Did you know…

… Jean-Luc Godard, one of the founding
members of the Nouvelle Vague, was the son of a Swiss couple. Born in
Paris, he spent his childhood in Switzerland and at the age of 18,
moved back to Paris where he studied Ethnology at the Sorbonne. Godard,
however, never severed his Swiss connection: many of his movies were
shot on location in Switzerland. He lives there now.

… the German filmmaker Wim Wenders (Paris, Texas, Wings of Desire) gave American director Jim Jarmusch (Coffee and Cigarettes) his 16 mm black and white leftovers. Jarmusch included this material in a 30 minute short named Stranger than Paradise which he later, after a producer watched it, turned into the feature film.

Scene from “Stranger Than Paradise” (Jarmusch).

… the German auteur filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder (Ali: Fear Eats the Soul)
stole his own short from the film school where he had applied and was
rejected. Fassbinder was so furious that the school did not return the
film to him that he (so it’s told) broke into the school and stole the
movie back.

… Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire was shot
without a script. Instead, Wenders improvised the storyline. Once they
started shooting, Wenders realized that a character was missing and
called the actor Peter Falk. Falk’s character? A former angel who
becomes a human. The film won Palm d’Or for Best Director and later,
Hollywood bought the rights of the story for the remake City of Angels.

… Wes Anderson (who mostly lives in
Paris and who shot his last movie in London) allegedly loves drinking
coffee in the hotel lobby such as the Bar de l’Hotel in the 6th
arrondissement in Paris.

… the Danish director Von Triers’ (Dogma, Dancer in the Dark and recently Antichrist
with Charlotte Gainsbourg and William Dafoe) real name is Lars Holbaek
Trier. The “von” in the middle of his name, what indicates an
aristrocratic family he created as a pseudonym.

… the Italian filmmaker Michelangelo
Antonioni ordered his production designers to paint the grass and the
tree leaves for the famous park scene in Blow Up so that they
looked greener. Antonioni even ordered to paint the facades of an
entire street of houses for a single shot because he thought they
weren’t coloured enough. The next day, the houses were painted back to
their original colour.

… Polish filmmaker Krzystof Kieslowski once worked on all the three movies of his famous trilogy Blue, White, Red at the same time. (Wrote Red in the morning, shot White during the day and edited Blue at night.)

… late French filmmaker Eric Rohmers, a
member of the nouvelle vague and the chief editor of “Cahier du cinéma”
real name was Jean-Marie Maurice Schérer. When Rohmer was asked why he
choosed the name “Eric Rohmer” he replied, “There was no reason, it was
just a name I liked.” He signed his first article with the name in 1950
for the magazine.

… it was Francois Truffaut who wrote the script for Godard’s movie A bout de souffle (Breathless). Truffaut wrote it as a short story before he turned it into a script.

… the German/Turkish filmmaker Fatih Akin (Head-On, The Edge of Heaven) wrote the script for his first feature movie Short Sharp Shock
when he was still in school. At 16, Fatih Akin decided to become a
director. He wrote his script in his school books, entered into a
production company in Hamburg and gave them his schoolbooks with his
story. The producers recognized his talent and after two short movies,
Akin shot Short Sharp Shock and began his career.

… Frederico Fellini started his career
by drawing comic strips. Talented at drawing little cartoons as a young
boy, he made them for friends, teachers and family. When Fellini got
older, he worked as cartoonist and journalist at the daily paper “Il
Piccolo”.

On the set of “La Strada” (Fellini).

… German filmmaker Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run, Heaven)
was rejected by all German and French film schools. Tykwer, crazy about
movies, worked as a director of programming at a independant movie
theater in Berlin. There, he met his future Director of Photography
(working there as a film projectionist) and so their work began..

… Jim Jarmusch (who lived in Paris in
his youth and is since, very attached to the city) some times comes to
Paris with his fotocamera or polaroidcamera and wanders around in the
middle of the night taking pictures of cabdrivers, musicians, and
people he coincidentally meets on the streets.

… Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman (The Virgin Spring)
once, after having a dispute over censorship, became so angry about it
that he put several obscene pictures in the front credits of his film
Persona.

The not-so angelic Ingmar Bergman.