The following year, he appeared as Pablo in Fred Haines's psychedelic adaptation of Herman Hesse's Steppenwolf. An almost return-to-form of Clémenti's career, the film manages to combine stunning visual effects, such as Clémenti apparently crumpling Dominique Sanda in his hand like a piece of paper, with some poignant acting by Max Von Sydow as the eponymous Steppenwolf, all climaxing in some Schnabel-esque semi-mythological interludes. After being shelved for years due to legal and distribution issues, the film was screened in 2000 in London, and was now described by Jenny Fabian in The Guardian as "perhaps too philosophical, too gothic for its time...The early special effects have a magic long since lost in the onslaught of computer animation." ⁶ Richard Herland, the film's producer found Clémenti a charming addition to the cast:

"Steppenwolf was mostly filmed in Basel. A one-franc tram ticket could take you from the French border, winding through the city, to the German side. Since most people spoke two languages, it seemed a third, English was no problem. In fact, Italian came a close fourth. Thus we decided to make an English-language film with a cast that were not native English speakers. My co-producer, Melvin Fishman, enjoyed saying that our Steppenwolf was the first film in broken English. Pierre challenged Fishman's notion in that he seemed to have no foreign language skills. That, Melvin said, was perfectly in character for Pablo who communicated with music. Pierre did manage to speak a few lines learnt by rote. Of course, he did much more than that: Pierre infused Steppenwolf with magic." ⁷

Clémenti described his autobiographical film New Old ou les Chroniques du temps présent (1979) as "my diary of my life before and after 1973". The same year he played the title role in La Vraie histoire de Gérard Lechômeur (Joaquín Lledó, 1979) alongside Nico (both also provided original music). In the 1981 Merchant-Ivory adaptation of Jean Rhys's autobiographical novel, Quartet, he performed alongside Alan Bates, Maggie Smith and Isabelle Adjani as Theo the pornographer, a louche and manipulative character, and against a backdrop of 1920's decadence and deceitfulness. At this point, his career become even more erratic, and he was performing only minor and less interesting parts for various directors, although his character in Pont du Nord (Rivette, 1982), which was co-written by his old friend Bulle Ogier and her daughter Pascale, who both also starred in this generally admired and beautiful ode to the city of Paris, was seen as both charismatic and potent. It wasn't until 15 years later though, with his starring role in Le Bassin de J. W. (Monteiro, 1997) that he succeeded in re-establishing himself as an actor and the film was considered a minor comeback, after which he went on to appear with Kate Winslet in Gillies Mackinnon's adaptation of Esther Freud's semi-autobiographical novel Hideous Kinky (1998) which was, regrettably, to be his last cinema appearance.

Two years later he was dead. Catherine Trautmann, then French Minister for Culture said in a press release following the anouncement of his death, "The camera will no longer show the emaciated face and the gangly silhouette of Pierre Clémenti, the low-key actor of auteur cinema and the star inspired by the avant-garde cinema of the 60s and 70s. In his life as in his work, Pierre Clémenti was not an ordinary person, he was an atypical idealist, groomed in the school of Pasolini, Visconti and Bunuel." "A mainstream career? I could have survived in mainstream films, but that wasn't my story. I have no regrets. I don't have the will to be part of films that don't even deserve to be made... I've always worked alone and I ruined nothing but myself." ⁸

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Extracts are author's translations from Clémenti, Pierre; Quelques Messages Personnels, Editions Gallimard, 2005

Citations:

¹ Zouzou. Jusqu'a l'aube. Flammarion, 2003 (author's trans. from French)

² Lagrange, Valerie. Mémoires d'un temps où l'on s'aimait. Le Pré aux Clercs, 2005. (author's trans. from French)

³ Fabien, Gerard; Bernardo Bertolucci. Interviews (Conversations with Filmmakers Series). Roundhouse Publishing, 2000.

⁴ Bruno, Edouardo. Interview. NoShame Films, 2005. (author's trans. from Italian)

⁵ A Conversation between Pierre Clémenti, Miklos Janscó, Glauber Rocha and Jean-Marie Straub convened by Simon Hartog in Rome, February 1970. Rouge, 2004.

⁶ Fabian, Jenny. "Jung Hearts Run Free." The Guardian. April 21, 2000.

⁷ Herland, Richard. Correspondence with author.

⁸ Vincens, Bruno. Interview with Pierre Clémenti. L'Humanité. October 29, 1997. (author's trans. from French)