Elsa la rose

Photo not from the film: Henri Matisse: Elsa Triolet (1946).

FR 1966. Ciné-Tamaris présente Elsa la Rose produit par Pathé en 1966. Elsa la Rose © Agnès Varda 1998.
    Elsa racontée par Aragon. Elsa filmée par Agnès Varda.
    Poèmes dits par: Michel Piccoli.
    Musique: Simonovitch, Ferrat, Moussorgsky, Gershwin, Handy.
    D: Agnès Varda, Raymond Zanchi. SC: Louis Aragon, Agnès Varda. Cin: Willy Kurant, William Lubtchansky. S: Bernard Ortion, Jacques Bonpunt. ED: Jean Hamon.
    Featuring: Elsa Triolet (elle-même), Louis Aragon (lui-même).
    20 min
    Court métrage documentaire. L'histoire d'amour de Louis Aragon et Elsa Triolet.
    Date de sortie: 23 Oct 1966.
    Elsa la rose is available on Vimeo with English subtitles.
    Vimeo link viewed on a 4K television screen at home in Helsinki, 10 April 2020.

"Je suis plein du silence assourdissant d'aimer."

"I'm full of the deafening silence of love": the film begins with Louis Aragon writing these words about his wife, the writer Elsa Triolet. The film is a poem about their love, a tender and playful montage of Elsa's childhood days as "zemlyanka" ("the wild strawberry"), her first marriage which took her to Tahiti, her meeting with Viktor Shklovsky in Berlin after the Revolution, the love affair of Elsa's sister, Lili Brik with Vladimir Mayakovsky, and Elsa's fatal meeting with Louis Aragon in 1928 ("she has been escaping me 37–38 years"). Together Elsa and Louis combat Fascism in the 1930s and participate in the Resistance in the 1940s. Louis keeps being inspired by Elsa's love all his life: "I am a shadow in your feet", "I became myself with your touch". Beautiful music, including a song by Jean Ferrat to Aragon's lyrics, is heard on the soundtrack.

A poetic love story about two poets in love.