'1917' WAS AN IMPOSSIBLE MISSION. HERE’S HOW SAM MENDES PULLED IT OFF
"1917", une mission impossible : Sam Mendes relève le défi (to pull off réussir, s'en tirer)
1917 de Sam Mendes a manifestement su créer la surprise: le voilà nominé dans pas moins de dix catégories aux Oscars. Connu pour ses films American Beauty, Les Sentiers de la perdition, Jarhead, ainsi que deux James Bond - Skyfall et Spectre, le réalisateur s’est inspiré des récits de son grand-père, vétéran de la Grande Guerre. Mais il s’est également lancé de nombreux défis pour raconter cette mission impossible.
When director Sam Mendes was a young boy, he and his father often traveled to the West Indies to visit his grandfather Alfred Mendes, a novelist. Sam, who had been brought up in North London, found his grandfather to be quite exotic: The small and wiry World War I veteran would sing opera in a booming Trinidadian accent, traipse around his creaky colonial house in shorts and flip-flops and vigorously greet each morning with a pre-dawn plunge into the sea.
1. director ici, réalisateur / novelist romancier / to be brought up être élevé, grandir / quite assez / wiry sec et musclé / veteran ancien combattant / booming sonore, retentissant / to traipse around flâner, se balader dans / creaky décrépit / flip-flops tongs / to greet accueillir / pre-dawn avant l'aube / plunge plongeon. 2. Alfred Mendes also had a tendency to obsessively wash his hands, always for several minutes at a time, to the point where Sam and his cousins noticed that above all his other quirks. “We would laugh at him,” the director recalled, “until I asked my dad, ‘Why does Granddad Alfie wash his hands so much?’ And he said, ‘Oh, he remembers the mud of the trenches during the war, and the fact that he could never get clean.’”
2. at a time d'affilée / to notice remarquer / above ici, plus, davantage / quirk bizarrerie, excentricité / to laugh at se moquer de / to recall se souvenir / granddad grand-père, papy / mud boue / trench tranchée. 3. That’s when the boys stopped laughing at their grandfather. It’s also when they began asking what happened when, at age 19, Alfred Mendes enlisted and fought on behalf of Britain in what would become one of the world’s deadliest conflicts.
4. “We expected, I suppose, conventional stories of heroism and bravery,” Mendes said. “We certainly didn’t expect what he told us, which
3. to enlist s'enrôler, s'engager / to fight, fought, fought combattre / on behalf of au nom de / deadly meurtrier.
4. to expect (s’)attendre (à) /
was unbelievably shocking and quite graphic tales of utter futility and chaos.”
HAUNTING MEMORIES
5. There was the wounded soldier his grandfather carried back to the trench under enemy fire, only to discover once he arrived that the man was dead, his body having absorbed a bullet meant for Alfred. Another story involved a German soldier whose head was lost in an explosion, though his body somehow carried on running.
6. And then there was the mission that Alfred Mendes volunteered for on Oct. 12, 1917, after nearly a third of the men in his battalion had been killed in the Battle of Poelcappelle. The survivors were stranded across many miles, and Alfred, who had been trained as a signaler, was sent to rescue them and lead them back to his camp.
7. “That tiny man in the midst of that vast expanse of death, that was the thing I could never get out of my mind,” said Mendes. It is the image that inspired the new film “1917,” directed and co-written by Mendes, about two British lance corporals who must make their way across miles of battleground to deliver an urgent message that could save 1,600 of their fellow soldiers from a massacre. Still, though the stories his grandfather told him had never been far from Mendes’ mind, that didn’t mean making a movie like this came easily.
8. “People say, ‘Oh, you must’ve wanted to tell the story for years,’ and actually, I didn’t,” said unbelievably incroyablement / graphic cru, explicite / tale récit / utter complet, absolu.
5. wounded blessé / to carry porter / fire tirs / once ici, une fois / bullet balle / to involve concerner / to carry on continuer.
6. to volunteer ici, s'engager / nearly presque, près de / third tiers / Poelcappelle bataille qui a opposé les Britanniques aux Allemands dans la commune flamande du même nom le 9 octobre 1917 / stranded échoué, coincé, en rade / mile = 1,609 km / trained qualifié, formé / to rescue sauver, secourir / to lead, led, led sb back to ramener qqn à.
7. tiny (tout) petit / in the midst of au beau milieu de, en plein(e) / expanse étendue / Lance Cpl= Lance Corporal soldat de première classe / to make, made, made one's way trouver son chemin; ici, rejoindre / battleground champ de bataille / to deliver communiquer, transmettre / fellow compagnon, ici autre(s).
Mendes, 54, whose career has encompassed big-screen projects like “American Beauty” as well as a long list of stage credits, including “The Ferryman” and the 1990s revival of “Cabaret.” “The truth was, it never felt like my story to tell,” he said. “It felt like it was my granddad’s story, and I didn’t own it.”
9. Once Mendes began mulling the screenplay with cowriter Krysty Wilson-Cairns, he quickly laid down three rules. Instead of adapting his grandfather’s own story, Mendes would follow two relatively anonymous soldiers whose heroism would be accidental. The story would take place in the spring of 1917, when the Germans retreated to the Hindenburg Line and left a trail of devastation and traps in their wake.
10. And there was one other artistic inspiration that would turn out to be the film’s defining feature. Mendes wrote it on the screenplay’s first page: “1917” would be presented as if it were all shot in one take.
11. “It was absolutely a given that was what excited me about it,” said Mendes. “There’s a great danger that once you’ve got used to making films, you get lazy with the way you shoot them. ‘Oh yeah, I know: close-up, over the
8. to encompass comprendre, compter / big screen grand écran, cinéma / American Beauty film réalisé par Sam Mendes et sorti en 1999, avec A. Bening et K. Spacey / stage de théâtre / credits ici, production (artistique) / The Ferryman pièce de théâtre sur le conflit nordirlandais écrite en 2017 / revival ici, reprise / to own posséder ; ici, maîtriser, s'approprier.
9. to mull réfléchir à / screenplay scénario / to lay, laid, laid down établir, imposer / to retreat battre en retraite / Hindenburg line ligne de Hindenburg (vaste système de défenses et de fortifications au nord-est de la France pendant la Première Guerre mondiale) / trail traînée, sillage / trap piège / in their wake sur leur passage.
10. to turn out to be s'avérer, se révéler (être) / defining déterminant, essentiel / feature caractéristique / to shoot, shot, shot filmer, tourner / take prise (de vues), plan.
11. to be a given aller de soi / to excite attirer, susciter l'intérêt / to get used to s'habituer à / lazy paresseux / close-up gros plan / shoulder, two-shot, moving shot, fancy shot every three scenes.’ You can kind of read it in other people’s movies.”
CONTINUOUS TAKES
12. But to film “1917” in robust long takes and to stitch those separate pieces together in nearly invisible ways would pose a unique challenge. “For the first few scenes in the draft, I would feel like I was wearing a straitjacket,” admitted WilsonCairns. “It’s a real bummer, the loss of moving around in time and space. But in exchange for that, you get to move around the film landscape the way we do in reality, and what that gives you as a writer is the ultimate ability to disappear.”
13. Mendes began filming “1917” in April at Bovingdon Airfield in England. He was locked into a Christmas Day release, giving him an unusually short window to complete a film of this scale. And though Mendes had rehearsed the film extensively with his cast and assembled an Oscar-winning team of behind-the-scenes collaborators, including cinematographer Roger Deakins and editor Lee Smith, any little thing that went wrong during all of those long takes could scuttle the work of hundreds of people.
14. “There were times when I thought, ‘I’m using every fiber of everything I know about theater and film combined,” Mendes said. “I was pushed to the limit to try and find solutions.” O
two-shot plan à deux (personnes) / fancy compliqué, sophistiqué / kind of en quelque sorte.
12. to stitch coudre, assembler / nearly presque / to pose représenter / challenge défi / draft (première) version, ébauche / straitjacket camisole de force / bummer dommage / loss perte ; ici, impossibilité / to move around se déplacer librement / landscape paysage / ultimate ici, meilleur / ability capacité, faculté.
13. to be locked in être pris dans / release ici, sortie (film) / to complete achever, terminer / scale envergure, ampleur / to rehearse répéter / extensively longuement / cast distribution (acteurs) / to assemble rassembler ; ici, réunir / behind-the-scenes en coulisses, dans l'ombre / cinematographer directeur(-trice) de la photographie / editor ici, monteur(-se) / to go, went, gone wrong mal tourner / to scuttle saborder, faire échouer.
14. fiber = fibre (GB) / to try ici, s'efforcer de.
Mendes wrote it on the screenplay’s first page: “1917” would be presented as if it were all shot in one take.