It was the early sixties, and Brigitte Bardot, Jeanne Moreau, Catherine Deneuve, and Delphine Seyrig were the stars in our sky. When I first met Jean-Claude Carrière, about fifty-five years ago he was thirty, I was twenty-three we were working on the same picture, though not together: Louis Malle’s
Viva Maria! We shot it in Mexico, and since he had already started working with Buñuel on
Belle de jour, it was only natural that he put elements of anarchy and surrealism into Malle’s film. This wasn’t exactly a guarantee of commercial success, though that approach did lead to well-received films like
Last modified on Wed 17 Feb 2021 13.41 EST
One of the tenets observed by the screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière, who has died aged 89, was that âthe scenario is created when you and the director establish a near telepathic communication. This requires, on both sides, a receptiveness and a trust which can never be taken for granted. The scriptwriter must on occasion be prepared to submerge his ego, since ultimately itâs the directorâs film, and youâre there to help him, to facilitate him.â
Among the film directors whom Carrière âfacilitatedâ were Louis Malle, Pierre Etaix, Volker Schlöndorff, MiloÅ¡ Forman and, above all, Luis Buñuel, for and with whom he wrote six exemplary screenplays. Carrière first met Buñuel in 1963 when the latter was looking for a French co-writer on Diary of a Chambermaid, based on Octave Mirbeauâs 1900 novel. âBuñuel chose me only after eating lunch together and getting me to talk about the
Jean-Claude Carrière, 89, Dies; Prolific Writer of Screenplays and More
He was a favorite of Luis Buñuel and other top filmmakers. He also had a fruitful collaboration with the stage director Peter Brook.
Jean-Claude Carrière in 1999. He had more than 150 film and television writing credits and also wrote books and plays.Credit.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times
Feb. 11, 2021
Jean-Claude Carrière, an author, playwright and screenwriter who collaborated with the director Luis Buñuel on a string of important films and went on to work on scores of other movies, among them Philip Kaufmanâs âThe Unbearable Lightness of Beingâ (1988), died on Monday at his home in Paris. He was 89.
Oscar-winner screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière, who penned the scripts to "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" and "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie," has died at the age of 89.
Jean-Claude Carriere, Unbearable Lightness of Being Screenwriter, Dies at 89
Pat Saperstein, provided by
FacebookTwitterEmail
His family confirmed his death, of natural causes, to AFP.
Carriere was a frequent collaborator with Luis Bunuel, writing the screenplays for “Diary of a Chambermaid,” in which he also played the village priest, ” “Belle de Jour,” “The Milky Way” and “The Phantom of Liberty” as well as the international arthouse hits and Oscar nominees “That Obscure Object of Desire” and “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeousie.”
In an interview for “The Storytellers,” Carriere talked about how close his relationship became with Bunuel, “It was a very close relationship. We were always alone in some remote place, often in Mexico or Spain, talking French and Spanish, without friends, without women, without wives. Absolutely no one around. Just the two of us. Eating together, working together, drinking together to get absolutely obsessed abo