Tchao Pantin on France 5: The story of a film that nobody wanted
Coluche’s unforgettable performance in front of Claude Berri’s camera returns this Friday on television
Few films will have changed the image of their main actor so much. Tchao Pantinthe drama of Claude Berri that earned Coluche The César for best actor in 1984 returns this evening to France 5. Five prizes were in all awarded to the film at the time, including two to Richard Anconina (Best Men’s Best Role and Best Hope), as well as those of photography and sound.
3.8 million admissions, Tchao Pantin was also a nice success in theaters, then on television. Multi-relief on the small screen, this story of revenge has marked several generations of spectators.
Tchao Pantin Has no more secrets for you? Really ? Here are three manufacturing anecdotes that are worth seeing this unforgettable film.
Coluche and cinema, love cow
The adaptation of a book by the co-scriptwriter of The pool
Tchao Pantin features a night friendship between two solitudes: an alcohol and depressive pump attendant and a young drug trafficker. A friendship in life to death because we will see the first to go back to any danger to avenge the second after his brutal assassination.
At the origin of this story, there is a novel published in 1982 by Alain Page, which also co-signs the script. And he was not at his first screen on the big screen. Fourteen years earlier, in 1968, he had taken his first steps there by co-signing the scenario of The pool by Jacques Deray with Jean-Claude Carrière, under the pseudo of Jean-Emmanuel Conil. And the one who will create for television the characters of the famous series The Cordier, judge and copwill even pass once behind the camera in 1986, the time of a feature film for the cinema: Boy taxi With Richard Berry and Claude Brasseur. Alain Page is now 94 years old.
A lack of enthusiasm … yet rewarded
This is the story of a film … which nobody wanted. Starting with its director Claude Berri who does not see what to do with this story when producer Christian Spillmaecker offers him. Has a detail that will change everything.
Berri perfectly imagines in the role of the depressive pump attendant an actor whom he has already directed twice (in The pistonnée And The schoolmaster) and that Spillmaecker has just produced in Banzai : Coluche. But the latter also begins to kick in touch, explains that he does not want such a black role, while in his life he is about to touch the bottom. Since his candidacy aborted in the presidential election in May 1981, everything goes from bad to worse for him. His wife left the family home with their two children Marius and Romain, Patrick Dewaere committed suicide with the help of the rifle he had offered him and he, the number one public entertaler, which was also under huge concerns of money, sank into drugs. This pump attendant character worn out by life therefore has everything of the mirror in which he refuses to look at himself.
And when he will finally agree to embody him, Coluche will take this character and the film even further than the scenario let him guess. The criticism will salute the performance, the public will be at the meeting (3.8 million admissions, the eighth biggest success of 1983 in France) and the profession will offer him his only Caesar in his career (face, excuse the little, to Gérard Depardieu, Yves Montand, Michel Serrault and Alain Souchon) with a memorable show on stage to celebrate this Tchao Pantin which will leave in all with 5 statuettes (including two for the only Richard Anconina, therefore).
The first BO of Charlélie Couture
In 1981, he knew his first public card with a 45 laps extracted from the album Rock poems :: Like a wingless plane. And two years later, Charlélie Couture crossed a new CAP. He signs his very first film music for Tchao Pantin. A first that will not remain without tomorrow. He has composed for more than 15 original bands for cinema, including Boy taxi,, Plane of Marie-France Pisier or the French versions of the songs of Randy Newman for Toy story (The first and the fourth episode).
