My memory of Colette is first of all an image: a cloud of hair, marvelous eyes emphasized by eyeshadow… Colette easily grasped the idea of the film; during the entire making of it she demonstrated exemplary cooperation, working within the limits of film technology with that professional patience she certainly learned from her years in music-hall.

When she improvised, Colette amazed me even more… The ‘market’ scene especially comes to mind. When Colette could still move around, the scene that she put on at the market – I have been told – was incredibly entertaining: always ready with a joke, her thoughts on fruit, vegetables, flowers… In 1950, nevertheless, moving about was no longer possible for her. So the market came to her: in the shape of radishes and onions, the produce that Pauline brought home to her… People who have seen the film perhaps remember the scene: Colette as she is biting an onion, and perhaps they can still hear, like me, the cracking of the onion under teeth…

To accompany the images I thought of using excerpts from her works, a kind of ‘Colette according to Colette’. But my work still lacked a spine, a connecting theme. So I asked Colette to write a text linking together the different excerpts that could make the transition from one stage of her life to another, from one place to another. Which she did superbly, with an awareness of the tempo of film that today still amazes me – like when she talks about the portico of Palais Royal. And not only. She even agreed to read the text herself, playing the role as a true actress – again mindful of rhythm and the slightest nuance.

Yannick Bellon, in Colette et le cinéma, a cura di Alain e Odette Virmaux con Alanin Brunet, Fayard, Paris 2004

The restoration of Le Friquet was made possible through the use of a number of sources: two interviews with Maurice Tourneur certifying the ‘paternity’ (“Pour vous”, 26 May 1932, the committee of historical research of Cinémathèque française in 1956), the novel by Gyp (Countess Martel de Janville), published in 1901, and the play in four acts by Henri Gauthier Villars, known as Willy, supported by Colette, Armory and Luvey, in which Polaire had already played the part of Le Friquet.

Céline Ruivo