As soon as it springs from the mountain, the stream / flows down in fits and starts but stubbornly / leaving behind its natal rocks / to become a calm and wise river. / The river knows but does not say / how sweet time is, / when the honey dusk comes, / when the boat takes us away. / The riverbanks become lost in the dark, / in the murmur of our hearts, / the river knows but does not say / how we want to sail the river of love.

Valčík sung by Milan Směták, with music by Ludvík Podéšt, in Liberté surveillée

“The memories of that film are the swirling fury of the rivers where we spent weeks. Prague, black and sad, people enchanted by our presence and happy to taste a little bit of freedom. And life in the mountain village that made us so happy. Of Marie I have only a vague memory of a fragile little mouse. Very, very intelligent!”. These are the words of Marina Vlady in an interview to commemorate Liberté surveillée, a French-Czech co-production, a sentimental adolescent comedy in Agfacolor shot at the legendary Barrandov studios, symbolic message of friendship to the tune of sporting events, traditional festivals of the Tatra Mountains and songs around a bonfire. In a Prague years before the Prague Spring, Marina Vlady, a pure- hearted Czech student, and Robert Hossein, a French bad boy on the run become a glamorous couple (in real life as well).
Liberté surveillée was one of the first co-productions with an Eastern European country, coordinated by Nino Costantini (a faithful accomplice of the Epsteins’, from La Glace à trois faces to Le Tempestaire) for Le Trident, and attests to Marie Epstein’s surprising association with two intellectuals: Henri Aisner (assistant director to Max Ophuls and Vsevolod Pudovkin, director of the film Le Choix le plus simple for the Mouvement de la paix, and one of the directors of the collective work L’Homme que nous aimons le plus, made by the PCF for Stalin’s seventieth birthday) and Colette Audry (perhaps a model for Marie Epstein, a teacher, political woman, screenwriter, writer and founder of the series ‘Femme’ for Éditions Denöel). The film is brightened by José Varela’s screen debut before May ’68, Le Signe du lion, Vent d’Est and the group formed with Kalfon, Clémenti, Valérie Lagrange and Bulle Ogier.

Emilie Cauquy