While it draws upon both genres, Le Regard de Charles is not quite a self-portrait, nor a biopic. Its director, Marc Di Domenico, sees it as “a form of autofiction”. Having worked closely with the singer for the past 20 years or so, the music producer turned filmmaker had the difficult task of assembling the footage that Aznavour had shot over the course of his life and career. “An artist who films for 40 years and entrusts his images to another, that’s never been done”, Di Domenico explains. The reels were stored in a room in his house in the south of France and most of them had never been released before. “His wife Ulla and his children had had access to the family images, but nothing from before his last marriage”. From the moment when Aznavour meets his third wife in 1967, the style of the images changes. Brief, rapid shots are replaced by portraits that are more posed, in closer frames. “I wanted to show the frenzy of success as well as his family’s happiness”, says Di Domenico, “this film is the fruit of the work between my unconscious and his. Charles was marked for life by the journeys he made with his father between Rue Drouot and the Puces de Saint-Ouen. In fact, he filmed a lot of people pushing carts, from Hong Kong to Africa. For me, it was proof of the unconscious, and that marked the beginning of the adventure”… Mad about cinema, and a born actor, Aznavour collected reels of rare films, which he projected at home. The quality of the images captured by his camera, on tour or at home, is striking. “He took care of his frames, even his spontaneous first shots”, says Di Domenico. Notably, Aznavour began filming in 1948 at a time when this was not yet commonplace. “He filmed until the end of his life, but I didn’t use images after 1982, when he gave up film to switch to Vhs. And then the years 1948-1982 were the heyday of vinyl”. As you would expect, the work on the sound is particularly well done. “We’ve recovered multitrack tapes dating back to the 1950s and rediscovered some songs. I’ve treated this material like film music”. 

Olivier Nuc, “Le Figaro”, 2 October 2019