Who Is Alain Jessua? An Interview with French Cinema's "UFO"
Alain Jessua once described himself "as a UFO" in the French cinema of his time. Commercially and critically successful, yet neither mainstream nor avant-garde, he was a maverick whose films tackled controversial subjects in a bold, cinematic style. Much like the American maverick Samuel Fuller, Jessua followed his own path, but unlike Fuller, his career has yet to receive the reassessment and serious study it deserves.
As a result, his compelling and highly original films, including La Vie à l'Envers (Life Upside Down, 1964), Jeu de massacre (The Killing Game, 1967), Traitement de choc (Shock Treatment, 1973), Les Chiens (The Dogs, 1979) and Paradis pour tous (Paradise for All, 1982), are rarely screened and largely unavailable on English-subtitled DVD. In a rare and exclusive interview with newwavefilm.com, Jessua looked back on his remarkable life in cinema.
Key Themes
The Uncanny in the Ordinary: Jessua was drawn to "that little something unusual that occurs when reality is slightly shifted." His films nudge everyday life just off-centre and follow the consequences.
The Fine Line Between Sane and Mad: From La Vie à l'Envers onward, he explored how thin the boundary between normal and abnormal can be. He identified closely with his outsider heroes, noting that "the everyday bores me."
A Clear Moral Point: Jessua found it hard to write a film without a moral stance. He often delivered it through black humour, which let him make his point while still entertaining the audience.
Prescient Social Critique: Several of his films anticipated the future, from reality-TV voyeurism in Armaguedon to urban paranoia in Les Chiens and medicalized happiness in Paradis pour tous.
Empathy for Every Character: Whether heroes or villains, Jessua wanted audiences to identify with his characters. He believed everyone is drawn to power to some extent.
Formative Influences
Born in Paris to a Jewish family, Jessua was seven when World War II began and eleven when Paris was liberated. His family fled and hid during the occupation, sheltered by friends who saved their lives. His first taste of cinema came from watching silent films like Metropolis (1927) on friends' small projectors. After the war, he and a friend, the nephew of director Julien Duvivier, would sneak onto Duvivier's sets. "To me, the film studios were factories manufacturing dreams," he recalled. Rather than attend film school, which was poorly regarded at the time, he chose to learn on the job.
Jacques Becker
Jessua's first job was as seventh assistant on Becker's Casque d'Or (1952), doing "all the menial work" but learning through observation. Becker was passionate, detail-oriented and famously slow, having worked on the film for ten years. He loved playing with intonation, asking actors to say the same line ten different ways to produce ten different meanings.
Max Ophuls
As second assistant on Ophuls' Madame de... (1953), Jessua followed the film through every final stage, including dubbing and editing. Ophuls rehearsed actors on set without the crew present, "a very modern way of doing things." In a cinema that was "almost like being in the army," both Becker and Ophuls were unusually open with their assistants. "My films are at loggerheads with Ophuls's," Jessua said, "but he remains the strongest influence on my work."
Robert Giraud
After realizing he was becoming a technician rather than a filmmaker, Jessua funded his first short, Léon la Lune(1956), with insurance money from a severe car crash. The poet Robert Giraud, "a specialist of the unusual Paris" and "a real fountain of knowledge" about the city's underbelly, introduced him to the real tramp who starred in it. The film won the Prix Jean Vigo in 1957.
Jessua and the Nouvelle Vague
Seven years passed between Léon la Lune and Jessua's first feature, and in that time the Nouvelle Vague came to prominence. Though he lived through the movement's rise, he stood apart from it.
A Younger French Cinema
Before the New Wave, directors needed more than ten years as assistants before making a feature, and most were in their forties. "French cinema was starting to feel rather arthritic," Jessua said. Directors aged 25 to 30 proved that younger filmmakers could make good films with smaller budgets and more freedom.
Friend, Not Follower
"I never really felt part of the Nouvelle Vague," he explained. "I befriended some of its prominent proponents but I never identified with the movement."
Godard's Editing Revolution
For Jessua, the movement's greatest contribution was Jean-Luc Godard's revolution in editing. Godard showed that the old cinematic language could be shattered: no fades, no clear-cut transitions, no need to show everything. "You could show a couple having dinner in one scene and in bed in the next; the audience is clever enough to bridge the transition for themselves." After Breathless (1960), even established directors such as René Clément, with Plein Soleil (1960), embraced the elliptical style.
Notable Films by Alain Jessua
Across three decades, Jessua built a body of work that blends genre, satire and social prophecy.
"La Vie à l'Envers" (1964)
Jessua's debut follows an outwardly successful man who rejects his life for solitary contemplation while everyone around him thinks he is mad. The ambiguity was deliberate: "The line between normal and abnormal is very fine indeed." He fought hard to shoot it in grey and white with almost no shadows, and "people thought I was mad." The film is still screened in French medical schools and Chicago psychiatric institutes to illustrate schizophrenia.
"Jeu de massacre" (1967)
A co-producer insisted on colour, which pushed Jessua to recreate the look of comic books with filters. Guy Peellaert's Pop Art-inspired comic is matched by a soundtrack from English pop band The Alan Brown Set. The film won Best Screenplay at Cannes.
"Traitement de choc" (1973)
After the collapse of his dream project, the science fiction script La Planète Bleue, an exhausted Jessua spent a week in thalassotherapy and turned the experience into a horror film set in a health clinic. Starring Alain Delon and Annie Girardot, it is a darkly comic attack on the rich who exploit others. Its black humour, he said, "is a great way to make your point, while also entertaining your audience."
"Les Chiens" (1979)
Inspired by elderly Milanese who kept dogs to ward off muggers, Jessua "simply pushed reality further." Gérard Depardieu plays a dog trainer in a suburb where residents arm themselves with attack dogs. No one believed in the film at the time, yet years later attack-dog incidents became a reality in France. "It was a premonitory film if you like."
"Paradis pour tous" (1982)
Patrick Dewaere plays a man cured of depression by "flashage," a treatment that leaves patients in a permanent state of serene indifference. The idea came from a California cashier whose reaction made Jessua realize that admitting a bad day broke a social code. Dewaere had to show subtle nuances of happiness, and "by the end of the shoot we did not even need to speak to each other; he would read my mind."
"En toute innocence" (1988)
Starring Michel Serrault and Nathalie Baye, this Hitchcockian thriller stages a psychological war between a man and his stepdaughter behind closed doors. It was Jessua's one film made deliberately without an overarching moral: "I wanted to tell a simple story with good actors."
Later Years and Legacy
Jessua's later career brought both disappointment and reinvention, along with clear-eyed views on where cinema is heading.
A Final Film and a New Craft
His last film, Les Couleurs du Diable (1997), about a painter who makes a Faustian pact for fame, left him "really dissatisfied." Shot in Italy on a limited budget, it lacked the effects his vision required. Since then he has focused on novels, which he finds deeper than screenplays: "When you write a script your style is very elliptical... Novel writing is a much more in depth writing process."
On Directing Today
Jessua worked from a precise French-style script breakdown, yet rehearsed key scenes with actors and let them change. With digital cameras, he said, "I would improvise much more since one can shoot films more quickly."
The State of the Industry
He sees a paradox: making films is easier than ever, but distributing them is harder. Of more than 300 French films made each year, only around 60 reach cinemas. Publishing, he noted, faces the same pressure toward proven commercial genres.
Conclusion
Alain Jessua remains one of French cinema's great overlooked mavericks, a filmmaker who stood beside the Nouvelle Vague without ever joining it. His films blend suspense, satire and black humour to probe the line between sanity and madness, and many of them foresaw the anxieties of today. As he put it, "I like films that open up a different door onto reality and show a new world."
As you explore the history of French film, consider seeking out Jessua's work. Whether through the grey-and-white solitude of La Vie à l'Envers or the unsettling smiles of Paradis pour tous, his "UFO" vision of cinema is long overdue for rediscovery.
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