Jean Vivié’s participation in the 2nd Amateur Film Congress during the summer of 1936, in Berlin, provided him with an opportunity to film that effervescent city just before the opening of that year’s Olympic Games. Vivié uses this event as an angle of approach capturing scenes in Berlin that reveal the truth about what was going on in Germany. A Nazi flag embodies this truth as it gradually unfurls. From mere prop at the start, the flag loses its frills and fills the frame at the end.
Jean Vivié (1904-1972) was a member of France’s elite Corps of Mining Engineers. He loved new technology and soon became an acknowledged expert on developments in photography, sound-recording and television broadcasting.
He contributed to or at least tried out successive cinematic innovations and improvements and eventually came to run the Service des archives du film at Bois d’Arcy, outside Paris, established as a part of the CNC in 1969 and renamed Archives françaises du film in 2003. There, he was able to introduce new film conservation techniques and to acquire numerous machines and posters.
The Jean Vivié Prize at Cannes is awarded to the best image and sound technicians.
In 2004, Eric Vivié left his father’s 16mm films to Lobster Films. Magnificent unedited Kodachrome footage recording a trip on the Normandie liner in 1939 formed the backbone of 2005 documentary film entitled A bord du Normandie by Eric Lange and Claude Villers.

Nathalie Fisbach