Francofonia

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Yes, hello.

Yes, good day.

Keep it brief, please.

Maybe, but a consultation

at port is essential.

In Rotterdam, of course.

Where else?

No, I haven't had a letter

or call from him for a long time.

Maybe his ship

is somewhere on the Atlantic.

It's Captain Dirk.

No, you know, Dirk.

Yes.

Are museums really sending out anything

in shipping containers today?

Good. All the best.

No, we're still shooting.

Yes, I'll see you later.

Good-bye.

Yes, hello.

When is the orchestra recording?

Yes, in Amsterdam.

The string section?

Check with the composer.

All the best.

Hi, Dirk.

I waited for you

to make contact at last.

I can't see you,

there's no picture.

I'm home already,

just got back from Europe.

Yes, my friend.

My work is almost done.

But I don't think

the film is successful.

I've surrounded myself with

books and talk to myself.

Dirk? Dirk?

The connection is gone.

I didn't manage to ask where he is now.

On which seas.

Why is he looking at me like that?

As if he knew what was awaiting us.

Now he'll tell us.

Who will if not him?

Anton Pavlovich...

You don't say he is staying silent, too?

Now he's fallen asleep.

He sleeps and sleeps...

He's sleeping deeply, won't wake up soon.

He's fallen asleep, too.

In the hardest period...

Mr. Chekhov! Anton Pavlovich!

Mr. Chekhov, wake up!

It's the dawn of the century,

the dawn of the 20th century.

Who can I turn to?

Who is there?

A-ha. There are the people.

What faces, what souls!

Angels... children.

But children are always hard-hearted.

Especially when their parents are asleep.

So that's how the 20th century started:

The fathers fell asleep.

There she is again.

As soon as I show up here,

you start pursuing me.

It's pursuit.

My dear ghost, tell us,

what is it that awaits us all?

Freedom, equality, brotherhood.

Freedom, equality, brotherhood.

My dear Marianne,

I'm not in the mood for humor.

The connection to the ship.

You haven't responded for ages.

We've been worried about your status.

Oh, it was a mistake

to take anything from the museum.

It's not human,

dragging art across the oceans.

Dirk? Dirk!

That's it, the connection

is gone again. The sea...

The ocean.

I watch this and recall Chekhov:

On a huge sea,

one wave rose above the next,

and they knew no sense nor pity.

Elemental forces of the sea and of history

are those without sense or pity.

What use is this ocean to me?

Let it live its own life beside us.

Why do we need to know

this elemental force?

After all, we have our cities,

our skies, our warm and cozy apartments.

Life, beauty...

A people is surrounded by an ocean,

while a person has his ocean within.

I've been thinking

about this city a lot, lately...

The Louvre is here somewhere.

So where is the Louvre? I can't see it.

Alexandre, we are ready.

Alexandre! Alexandre!

We are ready.

So is the camera already rolling?

Then let's go.

Sequence four, take two.

Calamity can strike

even the happiest city.

In the summer of 1940,

enemy troops entered Paris.

This was on the 14th of June.

The city was empty. Yes, empty.

The government had headed south,

declaring beautiful Paris an open city.

The French are all cinematographers,

making films regardless of the situation.

Here we have the new owner,

come to survey his new acquisitions.

Is everything as it should be

and in good condition?

But where are the subjects?

New subjects:
the neighboring people.

Empty Paris.

He who could, fled.

He who could, surrendered, hid.

Others perished

offering fierce resistance.

Well, all right...

The tower is where it belongs.

Everything is well and as it should be...

Ah, a straight line!

A straight one!

But where is the Louvre?

Ah! There's the Louvre!

How good that it's there.

It always fascinated me,

it's where it belongs.

Great architecture all along the line.

The Louvre, the Louvre.

Might it be

that this museum

is worth more than all of France?

Who needs France without the Louvre?

Or Russia without the Hermitage?

Who would we be without museums?

It sometimes seems museums

don't care what happens around them

as long as they're left in peace.

Museums can also conceal

the improper behavior of power

and of people...

On my first visit to the Louvre,

I was amazed by these faces.

These are the people... the people.

The people, as I would like to see them.

Comprehensible to me.

They are of their own time...

and I recognize them.

Why?

The French...

the human stock of Europe.

I wonder what would have become

of European culture

if portraiture had not emerged.

For some reason,

Europeans developed the wish,

the necessity,

of painting people, faces...

With a brisk whistle, he will have

the forbidden light extinguished.

Why is this study

so important to Europeans,

while other people, such as the Muslims,

don't have it at all?

Who would I have been,

had I never known or seen

the eyes of those who lived before me?

I'll go down! I won't go down!

I'll go down! I won't go down!

You go down!

- Shut up, you little brute, it's too loud!

In Europe, Europe is everywhere.

We sit beside, opposite one another,

and our lot is one and the same.

Why is art

unwilling to teach us prescience?

Don't you have a handkerchief?

This is an alert.

- Yes, it's an alert, so?

So the German army has entered Paris.

Yes, 1940. Summer...

Summer.

The army creeps forward,

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