The Passion of Pierre Clémenti: European cinema's christ-devil child1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.

In his prison-penned memoir, Quelques messages personnels, Clémenti described his meeting with Bunuel:

"He had a legend, the aura of genius, a friend to the mysterious and the strange. I arrived full of holy terror and mad hope all at the same time. I was struck immediately by one thing, only one: he's a man of whom you only see the face. The fabulous mouth, worked by life, heavily wrinkled skin, the driven eyes, but in their black ring, a sparkling light. I was incapable of saying a word, I don't even remember if it was a production office, an apartment, a hotel room. I looked at the deep earth of his face, the clear water of his regard. They told me 'Speak loudly, we don't know if he's deaf or if he pretends to be . . .’ But how to speak? I repeated to myself 'Come on. You have to speak.' I thought that my silence and my insistence on staring would become intolerable. Someone else would surely have addressed me, would have started to speak, if only to reduce the tension a little. He was content to just look at me. Simply, directly, as if we had met there for a mutual exam and that words weren't necessary. A guy walked in, perhaps an assistant, I can't remember. Bunuel turned towards me. 'This is Clémenti. Show him the script.' If I understood properly, I had just been hired for Belle de jour...With no other director did I have such a feeling of confidence." (QMP)

On the afternoon of 11th May 1968, Clémenti, Kalfon, Jean-Luc Godard, Valerie Lagrange, Denis Berry and (later Goncourt-Prize winning author) Jean-Jacques Schuhl were charged at by Parisian CRS riot police on Boulevard Saint Michel, as they made their way towards the Jardins de Luxembourg to hear Daniel Cohn-Bendit making a speech to the protestors, whose anarchic demonstrations were now in full swing. Suddenly surrounded by a street war, the group made their way back to Schuhl's apartment in the rue Royer-Collard, where they spent the night answering the door to various bloody protestors who had dropped by to clean up the teargas from their eyes, and nurse other war wounds. Below on the street huge flames now filled the Latin Quarter as upturned cars burned. It was a turning point for many of the participants: Kalfon eventually dropped out of cinema for the time being to concentrate on music, Lagrange severed her record company deal with Phillips and Clémenti became increasingly based in Italy. He often stayed at the Albergo Provincial Romana in the Trastevere, the old quarter in Rome, when he was filming, and became part of the family of artists and working people living there who referred to him adoringly as Pietro.

"I also came to Rome to meditate on the meaning of christianity...To find the meaning of the sacred, the mysteries which were also the first representations of theatre. And present this sacriment to spectators who were perhaps waiting for a revelation . . . I love the Italian people, the poor people, those who slave like beasts to make their incredible families live well. They know a lot about life, more than the grand people know. They know to what point the system enslaves them, but they are full of hope and energy. They are the true force of Italy." (QMP)

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