It was the first time I had ever happened behind a movie camera. I had written a somewhat intellectual screenplay, that complied with tastes of the time and that, today, could seem a bit Nouvelle Vague. But that Nouvelle Vague was more legitimate than the second. In the twenties we were still in search of the expressive possibilities of cinema: we had to turn it into a means of autonomous expression. Thus I wrote a very experimental script that developed several, almost geometrical, variations on the theme of jealousy. […] For the lover I wanted a young man who didn’t seem like an adolescent, and who had a bit of personality. I had been told about an actor playing under Dullin at the Atelier, but I had also been warned: “He’s a very difficult guy”. We met in a cafe, Artaud and I, and I found myself face to face with a strange character who had an absent air about him. It was as if he were always walking two or three meters above the ground. Sometimes he gave you the impression that he wasn’t listening, when in reality he listened very closely.

Claude Atant-Lara, in Odette and Alain Virmaux, Artaud vivant, Paris, Oswald, 1980