Interview with Florence Delay, Bresson’s Joan of Arc

Florence Delay (b. 1941), novelist and performer, is most well-known for playing Joan of Arc in Robert Bresson’s Le Procès de Jeanne d’Arc (The Trial of Joan of Arc, 1962). Delay also narrated the French version of Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil (Sunless, 1983).

A member of the Académie française, she has been active as a novelist since 1973 when she published Minuit sur les jeux (Games at Midnight). In 1983, Delay won the Prix Femina for her novel Riche et légère (Rich and Carefree, 1983). She is an ardent hispanophile. 

The following interview took place in Paris on Friday, November 24, 2023, in Florence Delay’s apartment on the Boulevard Saint Michel.¹ 

– S.S.

Sally Shafto: Let’s begin by speaking about your meeting with Robert Bresson. You had recently finished high school. Where did you study? 

Florence Delay: I studied at the Jean-de-La-Fontaine Lycée, an all-girls school. It was near the Porte d’Auteuil, not far from the Molitor skating rink. It was a large school, and I was happy there.² 

When did you graduate? 

It must have been in 1959. 

So that fall you began your studies at the Sorbonne?

To satisfy my parents, I enrolled at the Sorbonne. But in my free time, I pursued my passion for the theatre at the École du Vieux-Colombier de théâtre.

Jean Delay

Oh, what a beautiful photo of your father, Jean Delay. We’ll come back to him.

It was in high school that I met Natacha Michel who became my best friend. Her mother was Russian, and her father was the filmmaker, André Michel (1907–1989). He was close to Chris Marker already in the 1950s. And Natacha fell in love with Chris. She deeply admired him and made him the central character in her first novel, which Chris didn’t like at all. 

What was the title? 

It’s called Ici commence.³

That’s interesting. But let’s return to Natacha’s father, André Michel, who was already an established filmmaker. I read that he was an assistant director in the 1930s and had worked for the German director, G.W. Pabst during his Parisian exile. Do you think Bresson could have known André Michel already in the 1930s? 

I don’t think Bresson knew André Michel. But don’t know for a fact. In any case, Natacha did tests for Pickpocket (Bresson, 1959) but it didn’t work out. A couple of years later, one evening at the Théâtre National Populaire, Natacha’s mother told me that Bresson was looking for someone to play Joan of Arc. Natacha took me to see Bresson on the Quai Bourbon. 

You visited him on the Île St.-Louis in 1960 or 1961? 

It must have been in the spring of 1961. Because we shot the film in the summer of 1961. 

Do you have any memories of the apartment? Did you meet Leidia, his then-wife? 

The apartment was airy and filled with light with a view of the Seine. I don’t remember her being there, but I do know that Chanel dressed Madame Bresson out of her friendship for Bresson.⁴ 

Leidia Bresson was the sister of Catharina, the wife of Chanel’s nephew (or son), André Palasse. Chanel was very fond of the two sisters. After the war, Palasse divorced Catharina and remarried a Russian woman, Nina de Kotzebue, whose first husband was Tolstoy’s grandson. But Chanel didn’t like her and her nephew more or less broke off his relationship with Chanel. At least, that’s what I think. 

Let’s get back to Bresson’s Joan of Arc. He told you he was seeing other young women for the role? 

That’s right. But we went on seeing each other. I remember walking with him in the Parc de Bagatelle, although another young woman had already been chosen for the role. Three of us tried out for the film doing tests with Léonce-Henri Burel (1892–1977), Bresson’s director of photography.⁵ And Burel remarked not that one. We won’t be able to work with her; she has only one profile. Try with the other one. So, by elimination, Robert said, okay we’ll go with her, meaning me. That’s how I got the role.

 Bresson must have already had a clear conception of the film because he realised that the heart of the film is the interrogation and the accused raising her head to the judge.

Do you think he intended to make a radically different film from Dreyer’s La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc (The Passion of Joan of Arc, 1928)?

Yes, absolutely. Bresson admired Dreyer enormously but wanted to do something new. Bresson made a film not about Joan but about her words.⁶

He based the screenplay on archival documents, on the minutes of the trial for a film that lasts a little more than an hour. He knew how to distil the very essence of the interrogations. As a writer, he accomplished an incredible work in the screenplay. 

Bresson’s film is the opposite of Dreyer’s because it concentrates on what she said. Whereas Dreyer’s film is based on her face and emotion. Bresson banned any sense of emotion in the film. 

When Joan recanted, I began to cry, and he stopped everything. He took me for a walk and took out a large handkerchief of blue linen to wipe away my tears. And when the emotion had passed, we resumed work. But then, I felt that something had been captured…. A trace of my tears remained. 

Florence Delay as Jeanne d’Arc in Bresson’s Le Procès de Jeanne d’Arc

And he liked that, but not showing you crying. 

All that because he explained to me – or rather no, because he didn’t explain anything – but he wanted us to hear the words. He thought that an intonation could destroy the meaning. That’s why he disliked actors, because actors performed what they were saying, while for him the intention had to be conveyed solely by the words. 

Yes, the words had to be spoken very flatly. 

An intonation recto-tono.⁷

Yes. Did he do many takes? The shoot took place in the summer of 1961. Where did it take place? 

At the Meudon Observatory very near Paris. Every morning, he would come to pick me up. Initially, as he didn’t give any direction, I would often have to redo a scene. But fairly quickly I understood what he wanted. Then, there would be just two or three takes. When I would have to do many takes, he would say oui. That’s when I understood the difficulty of saying oui/yes in life. Because non with its nasal consonants is far easier. 

He wanted a oui with a period at the end, but he never explicitly said that. 

But you quickly caught on.

The shoot lasted six weeks. The film is very compact, lasting just over an hour, which is extraordinary. 

It was a new way of conceiving la durée in the cinema. 

The film was released in 1962 and it won the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. 

Did you present the film with him at Cannes?

No, I wasn’t there. He had planned a screening at the Vatican. My boyfriend at the time and who would become my first husband, Dominique Fourcade, said it was ridiculous.⁸ He also didn’t like the idea of me posing for the cover of Paris Match in front of all those priests. As a result, I didn’t go to Rome. It’s a pity because it would have made a nice memory!

Delay and Robert Bresson presenting The Trial of Joan of Arc on 27 November 1962 © AGIP / Bridgeman Images.

So he showed the film at the Vatican? 

I don’t know what happened in the end. All I remember is the Paris premiere, which was a chic affair with the public dressed in tuxedos and evening gowns on the rue du Faubourg St.-Honoré. 

And I remember that the afternoon of the premiere I saw a friend of mine, Clara Saint, who was dating the dancer, Rudolf Nureyev. He had just decided to defect from Russia. They attended the screening. 

I want to return to something you said to me the other day in the café. You told me your parents, Jean Delay and Marie-Madeleine Carrez, initially didn’t want you to collaborate with Bresson because of Nicole Ladmiral’s recent suicide.⁹

My parents felt Bresson was tainted with a bad reputation. 

They felt he was a bad influence on young women.

Not just that he was a bad influence, but that he destroyed them. They felt he had destroyed Nicole Ladmiral who killed herself. 

You never knew her? 

No. My father finally accepted on condition that I didn’t use his last name in the credits. I used my mother’s maiden name for the film: Florence Carrez instead of Florence Delay. 

I imagine Bresson always behaved correctly with you on set. 

Of course, otherwise –. But he flirted a bit. 

He apparently loved to flirt with all his actresses. 

Yes, with all his female actors. 

Anne Wiazemsky describes his ambiguous behaviour in her autobiographical novel, Jeune Fille (2007). He had a strange relationship with his so-called models. For his film Lancelot du Lac (Lancelot of the Lake, 1974), which was an old project of his that dates at least to the 1950s, Bresson had originally wanted Nikki de Saint Phalle as Guinevere. But when he finally made the film in the early ‘70s, he chose her daughter, Laura Duc Condominas. It’s clear he liked working with young people and filmed them well, like Martin LaSalle (Michel) in Pickpocket. 

Yes, and Claude Laydu in Diary of a Country Priest.

That’s one of my Bresson favourite films. There’s a real sense of grace that operates in it. 

Yes, as in the Bernanos novel. 

Did you ever meet the man who plays the Curé de Torcy in that film? His real name was Adrien Borel, but he hides behind the pseudonym, André Guibert, in the credits. I wonder if your father ever knew him. He was Bresson’s psychoanalyst. Borel specialised in treating artists: besides Bresson, Michel Leiris, Georges Bataille, and the young Surrealist poet, Jacques Baron, also consulted him. 

No, I didn’t know him. 

Did you keep in touch with Bresson after the release of the film? 

Yes, we were in touch when he was preparing Au hasard Balthazar (1966). I recommended Anne Wiazemsky to him because I thought she corresponded perfectly with what he was looking for.

Oh, you knew Anne? She’s a little younger than you.¹⁰

Yes, she’s no longer with us. I knew her because, at that time, I was close to her uncle the writer, Bruno Gay-Lussac (1918–1995). He was Jean Mauriac’s cousin, and she was Jean’s niece. I met Jean through Bruno. François Mauriac had two sons, Claude and Jean, and one daughter, Claire, Anne’s mother who married the Prince Wiazemsky. So, I knew Anne through Jean Mauriac and I had the idea she would fit the film. Bresson was delighted with my suggestion.

Dominique Sanda who plays Une Femme douce (A Gentle Woman, 1969) had been working as a fashion model. I believe that is how Bresson found her. Did you know Marika Green, the Jeanne of Pickpocket? 

No, I don’t remember meeting her. But Bresson had the reputation for being a snob. We understood his choice of models was very intentional. I was my father’s daughter and Anne was François Mauriac’s granddaughter.¹¹

Marika Green’s father was a Swedish journalist. Her brother, Walter Green, plays Jacques in Au hasard Balthazar and is the father of the actress Eva Green. 

Here’s my idea. Already in the 1920s when Chanel was building her enterprise, she consciously hired young women of good social standing, often foreigners, sometimes of aristocratic lineage who had lost their fortunes, as her models. For example, she hired the sister of the Russian Count Dimitri (who was involved in the assassination of Rasputin) who worked for her designing Russian-inspired fabrics that she used in her designs. It was a very clever business tactic on Chanel’s part, one I think that Bresson would later repeat after he renounced working with professional actors after Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (The Ladies of the Bois de Boulogne, 1945). These young women from good families lent an aura of prestige to Chanel’s collections.

 Did you know Maria Casarès? Her father had been Prime Minister under the Popular Front government in Spain. It seems Bresson behaved badly with her. 

I didn’t know her personally, but I often saw her on stage. But don’t forget she was pretty obnoxious herself. She had a reputation for being difficult. 

And while we’re at it, we should mention Bresson’s male models. There again, he didn’t take just anyone. For Quatre nuits d’un rêveur (Four Nights of a Dreamer, 1971), he took Guillaume des Forêts, the son of Louis-René des Forêts (1918–2000), a great writer. In Balthazar, he gave a role to the writer and translator Pierre Klossowski (1905–2001). I remember, in particular, the scene where Anne eats a spoonful of jam while he looks on delighted. Bresson’s choice of models who often have an association with writers is noteworthy.¹² 

Some of Bresson’s models have a connection to the visual arts. Klossowski of course was the older brother of the painter Balthus…. And Isabelle Weingarten in Four Nights of a Dreamer was the granddaughter of the art dealer, Pierre Loeb, whom Bresson may have known already in the 1920s. And Laura Duc Condominas was the daughter of the well-known artist, Nikki de Saint-Phalle. 

You mentioned the other day that Humbert Balsan had a close connection with Chanel. 

That’s right. Balsan who plays Gauvain in Lancelot du Lac (1974) was a second cousin of Étienne Balsan, a wealthy playboy whose family produced the l’horizon bleu fabric for the French military uniforms in the First World War. He was Chanel’s first important protector. 

Recently, I listened to an interview with Edmonde Charles-Roux whose Chanel biography influenced future accounts of the couturière’s life. Charles-Roux spoke condescendingly of Chanel because of her tragic childhood, orphaned at the age of 11 after her mother’s death and the abandonment of her father. According to her worldview, impossible to make something of oneself in life if one wasn’t born into the right circumstances, in a good family of good social standing, like Edmonde Charles-Roux. 

I understand better now why my sister detested Edmonde Charles-Roux. 

Charles-Roux published her book whose title immediately intimates her disdain for Chanel (L’Irrégulière) shortly after Chanel’s death.¹³ Your sister’s book on Chanel was also published at that time.¹⁴ Why did she publish it under the name Claude Baillén and not Claude Delay? 

Baillén was the name of her first husband. Her second husband’s name is Tubiana. 

Your sister followed in your father’s footsteps as a psychiatrist or psychoanalyst. 

My father was a psychiatrist. He had an uneasy relationship with psychoanalysis, which he didn’t like. He started a psychoanalysis degree but never finished it. But that didn’t stop him from being closely associated with Jacques Lacan. It was in my father’s department at the Hôpital Saint-Anne that Lacan delivered his first seminar, before the rue d’Ulm.

I read that your father pioneered the use of psychedelic drugs in the treatment of depression. 

Yes, psilocybin. He called them tranquilisers. It was a major discovery. 

I recently translated a screenplay on Frantz Fanon.¹⁵ I did a little research about Fanon’s time interning at the St.-Alban Psychiatric Hospital with the Spanish-born psychiatrist Francesc Tosquelles who developed a new practice called institutional psychiatry. In Algeria, Fanon employed Tosquelles’ methods. Do you think your father knew Tosquelles or Fanon? 

No, I don’t think so. The poet Paul Celan, however, was one of his patients. 

That’s interesting! Let’s get back to Bresson. Is there anything else to be said…. At the time you were very interested in the theatre and wanted to become a stage actress. 

Not exactly. My ambition was to found a theatrical troupe. I wanted to be Federico Garcia Lorca! I didn’t want to perform Lorca; I wanted to be him. By that, I mean to establish a company and stage my own plays. As a young man, Lorca founded an acting troupe called La Barraca. His goal was to travel throughout Andalusia and to stage plays from the Golden Age of Spanish Literature in local villages. What he did was extraordinary. I was crazy about Lorca. 

Did Bresson forbid you from working in another film? It’s always said that he demanded his models not continue with acting. 

Well, he didn’t exactly succeed with that, considering the careers of Dominique Sanda and Anne Wiazemsky. They both managed to establish themselves as actors after working with him. 

That’s right. 

As for me, immediately after working with Bresson, I was offered the role of Beatrice opposite Pierre Fresnay as Dante. But that didn’t interest me at all. I wanted to stage plays. 

You mentioned earlier that Bresson took you to Chanel’s atelier to dress you for the film. 

Yes, I had just one outfit in suede. He wanted Chanel’s opinion on the cut, etc. I tried on the outfit and Chanel made two or three adjustments. It’s the only time I ever saw Chanel, in contrast to my sister who became quite close to her. 

Yes, your sister was with her shortly before she died. 

I know your second husband, Maurice Bernart (b. 1932), is an independent film producer. What are some of the films he produced?

Yes, he produced many films in the Série Noire and also Alain Cavalier’s Thérèse (1986), etc. 

Original film card for The Trial of Joan of Arc

Oh, this is the original fiche or note card on the film. 

Do you know this book? 

Oh yes, that’s the volume of Bresson’s interviews that his widow, Mylène Bresson, edited.¹⁶

And did you know Pierre Charbonnier who was Bresson’s set designer? They had a real complicity. They knew each other from their time together as art students at the Académie Ranson in the early 1920s. 

I am going to show you a drawing by Charbonnier. It was given to me by René Char in 1956.

Charbonnier drawing with poem by René Char

It’s marvellous!

There’s a poem by Char inscribed on it. 

You knew René Char at a young age. 

Yes, he had an affair with my mother. She introduced me to him when I was 15. And my father knew about it. 

It’s strange thinking about one’s parents. My father also had extra-marital relationships. There were no lies between my parents, only silences. There was a kind of mutual respect there. But occasionally, my father would say to me: Do you understand something of the poetry of this poet of whom your mother is so fond? Do you like it?

Florence Delay’s Wall of Photos

I’m going to show you a photo of Robert on my wall of photos. 

Here he is along with Lorca and Desnos. 

The photo of Bresson is a Harcourt studio image. And here is José Bergamin, who had been a close friend of Lorca’s. 

And there’s a Miró.

That’s my husband Maurice. 

Do you like Desnos? I think Bresson must have known him in the 1920s. 

All this brings back memories that are far away and yet not so far. That’s what is interesting. That is what memories are. 

Do you like the poetry of Pierre Reverdy? He was one of Chanel’s most important lovers. Even after he retired to the monastery at Solesmes, he would return to Paris from time to time to see her. She apparently financed his publications without his knowing. 

Reverdy’s conversion was strange. And the conversion of Max Jacob was extraordinary. 

There were several at the time who converted under the influence of Jacques Maritain. There was another writer in Chanel’s circle, Maurice Sachs, who also converted to Catholicism. He even toyed with becoming a priest. He wrote a memoir about the les années folles titled Au temps du bœuf sur le toit, published on the eve of World War 2.¹⁷

In an interview, François Weyergans asks an interesting question about Lancelot of the Lake and Bresson’s last films. Weyergans makes an observation about the faces we least remember. He observes that Lancelot’s knights, some young men in Le Diable probablement (The Devil Probably, 1977) and also in L’Argent (1983) all have the accent of the 16th arrondissement. 

This is surprising on Bresson’s part who always said he disliked accents. And then their eyes lack the power of the gaze of Martin Lassalle in Pickpocket, of Florence Carrez in The Trial of Joan of Arc, of Anne Wiazemsky in Au hasard Balthazar, of Nadine Nortier in Mouchette (1967), of Dominique Sanda in A Gentle Woman. It’s curious.

Ah, Weyergans commented that the accents of the knights in Lancelot gave them away as residents of the 16th arrondissement? That’s insightful. After a screening of Lancelot shortly after Bresson’s death in 1999, I met the man who plays Arthur in the film. He was a painter, which may have been why Bresson was interested in him. But his voice wasn’t great.

Yes, that’s right. He was a painter, but I don’t remember his name. 

Oh, wait a minute… Luc Simon. 

Bravo! Here are my Bressonian treasures. 

In the Notes sur le cinématographe (Notes on the Cinematograph, 1975) Bresson says that scandal is marvellous, which links him on the one hand to the Surrealists who greatly valued the marvellous and sought to upstage established order and also to May ’68. I think Bresson sympathised with the young demonstrators during May ’68. 

This is a photo of Borges, the Argentine author with Hugo Santiago, who was one of Bresson’s assistants on The Trial of Joan of Arc and who later became a filmmaker. Santiago was also from Argentina. 

That’s interesting. The young man who plays Michel in Pickpocket, Martin Lassalle, was Franco-Uruguayan.

Hugo Santiago was obsessed by Bresson and came to Paris determined to meet him. 

Oh, because he had seen The Diary of a Country Priest?

In 1959 when he was just 19, Hugo left Argentina for Paris, with all his luggage and a letter of introduction from Ramon Gomez de Lasterna to Jean Cocteau (1889–1963), asking him to do what he could for the young man. 

And Cocteau asked him: What can I do for you young man? And Hugo answered: I want to meet Robert Bresson. 

That’s a great story. Already in 1959, Bresson’s renown was quite international. 

So that’s how he met Bresson. And Hugo Santiago, is he still living? It would be great to interview him.

No, he passed away several years ago.¹⁸

Thank you so much Florence Delay for this generous interview à batons rompus.¹⁹ 

***

For a fine appreciation of Florence Delay’s work in The Trial of Joan of Arc, read: José Sarmiento’s “Voices with(out) a Face: Procés de Jeanne d’Arc,” Senses of Cinema, no. 62 (March 2012).

Endnotes