In the series Jazz in the Film, episode 339: Michel Magne (5).
- “Everyone is Beautiful, Everyone is Nice” (1971) Jean Anne & Anne Germain, vocals. Studio Orchestra conducted by Claude Germain.
- Theme from “I Want Some Money” (1973), in collaboration with Jean Yanne. Studio Orchestra.
- Suite from “The Chinese in Paris” (1974). Studio Orchestra.
- “Don Juan 73” (1972). Studio Orchestra conducted by Michel Magne and Claude Germain.
Michel Magne (1930-1984) – Episode 5
Everyone who reminisces about Michel Magne invariably declares that he was eccentric. He had a strange sense of humor, and his plans were not always realistic, but he came up with original solutions. In the late 1960s, he had his Chateau d’Hérouville completely sawn off at the base to ventilate the foundations, after which he raised the entire castle. He built his famous studio there, where all French musicians liked to record their records.
In Magne’s music, there was also something quirky, say the filmmakers who hired him. He has always had a tendency to be extremely innovative. This is why his misfortune is that the ties with directors with whom he has worked frequently eventually all deteriorate, as with André Hunebelle, Roger Vadim, and Georges Lautner, whose films we played music from in the previous Magne episodes.
Then his castle burned down in 1969. His recording studio and many music tapes were lost. In the end, in 1984, at the age of 54, he committed suicide disillusioned.
Michel Magne did try to forge new connections. In the early 1970s, he began a fresh collaboration with Jean Yanne. Yanne was then an actor and writer, and developed into a filmmaker. He is three years younger than Magne, so they share the same musical education.
In 1971, they made the musical comedy Tout le Monde Il est Beau, Tout le Monde Il est Gentil together. The film is Yanne’s directorial debut, and he plays the lead role himself. Because Yanne started his career at a commercial radio station, he wrote a script that satirizes the world of radio stations. When no producer showed interest in his satire, he set up his own production company, Ciné Qua Non.
Tout le Monde Il est Beau, Tout le Monde Il est Gentil has a topical subject: Yanne plays a radio reporter who reveals the fake news of the director of the Radio Plus station. He is fired for this, but in the end, everyone realizes that editorial freedom must be paramount. After all, these are the idealistic seventies.
The songs are sung by Jean Yanne, N’Dongo Lumba, Ginette Garcin, who plays the script girl of the radio studio, and Anne Germain, who had been a member of the Swingle Singers and had done the singing role of Catherine Deneuve in Les Demoiselles de Rochefort.
The orchestrations are by Michel Magne and Claude Germain. Germain, Anne Germain’s husband, conducts.
Michel Magne likes to attach himself to a filmmaker who gives him all the space for his experiments. It worked well with Jean Yanne, and so they came together again in 1973 for the film Moi, Y’en a Vouloir des Sous. This is also a satire, on the trade union movement. Traditionally strong in France, the unions always oppose everything, but in this version, the chairman comes under the influence of his nephew, who is a financial analyst at a large industrial enterprise. The nephew applies the same capitalist management to the union’s funds, which then become so rich that the workers embrace capitalism: ‘I also want to make some money’, could be the free translation of the title Moi, Y’en a Vouloir des Sous.
Michel Magne wrote the ironic number ‘Pétrol Pop’ for the film, together with director Jean Yanne.
The mutual inspiration between Magne and Yanne spirals out of control when they come up with Les Chinois à Paris in 1974. It is a typical French comedy: Paris is invaded by the Chinese army at night. Millions of Chinese follow. The Parisians are facing a second occupation, just like during the Nazi occupation in World War II. But this time, this “special military operation” that is very relevant in our time, takes unexpected turns. The French form Resistance by subjecting the Chinese to excessive eating and exhausting sexual seduction.
Michel Magne accompanies this abundance by means of a pastiche on Bizet’s opera Carmen. In two suites, he arranges the Spanish dances into jazz, called “Carmeng 1ère et 2e Partie.”
First, you will hear “Pétrol Pop” from Moi, Y’en a Vouloir des Sous, from 1973, followed by the Suite from Les Chinois à Paris from 1974.
In 1968, Roger Vadim made Barbarella, together with Michel Magne. The dramatic outcome was discussed in the previous episode with Magne’s music: the score was rejected by the American film studio. Perhaps as a consolation, Vadim asks his good friend Magne in 1972 to create such an exuberant score for the erotic drama Don Juan ou Si Don Juan était une Femme….
This version of Don Juan, also known as Don Juan 73, is a modern version of the classic womanizer Don Giovanni. This time, it is a woman, Jeanne, in contemporary Paris. She believes that she is the reincarnation of Don Juan, who seduces men like a spider in her web.
The man-eater is played by the director’s former wife, Brigitte Bardot. As a thank you for launching her career with Et Dieu… Créa la Femme in 1956, she agrees to Vadim’s request to be filmed (for the first time!) completely nude. In this story, Jeanne proudly reveals to a priest that she has even murdered a man. The film shows what she confesses about her sexual past.
Michel Magne composes a kind of fusion opera in which the arias are sung by the English rocker Mister Eye.
The orchestrations and musical direction of Don Juan 73 are by Michel Magne and Claude Germain.
When French or Italian composers ask a compatriot to write English lyrics for their compositions, you always get awkward rhyme schemes and especially wrong stresses on the simplest words. In this case, Boris Bergman squeezes English words into the French meter. Bergman, born in 1945, is a French lyricist who wrote lyrics for artists such as Nana Mouskouri, Dalida, and Aphrodite’s Child.
Authors know that you always have to translate “toward your own language,” that is, from a foreign language into your mother tongue. After all, you master the latter the best. Boris Bergman does it the other way around, and the result can be heard.
Kees Hogenbirk.
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