When Varda approached Resnais for help, he asked to see her script. She immediately delivered one to him at her home on the rue des Plantes, a fifteen-minute walk from the rue Daguerre. After reading it, the future director of the classic drama Hiroshima, my love (1959) politely declined by letter. “Your research is too similar to mine,” he wrote.
But Varda wouldn’t take no for an answer. Over the phone, she begged Resnais to see the unedited footage. Her insistence paid off. They met at the Éclair laboratory in Épinay-sur-Seine, north of Paris, where she was able to screen the images for free. Since she had ten hours of material, Varda hoped Resnais, a laconic figure affectionately known as the Sphinx, would see three or more. Varda sat four rows behind him in anxious silence.
Ninety minutes into the screening, with only the dull hum of the projector lamp and the metallic whir of the film reels to be heard, he stood up and announced, “I think I’ve seen enough.” Varda’s heart nearly stopped. The Sphinx silently made his way to the door. At six feet three inches tall, he was much taller than Varda. Before he left, he said something to the effect that the shots were very interesting, but that it was too much work. “I won’t be able to do it,” he said politely. Varda recalled, “He left. I collapsed.”
Resnais surprised Varda with a call the next morning, offering some friendly advice. “Even though I can’t do it, maybe I can help you get started,” he said. To determine continuity, he explained, “you have to number the takes.” In the analog era, each foot of processed film had to be manually marked with the scene number and the take number. Resnais lent her two synchronizers, which record the length of a segment or roll of film, to help her with the job. One had a crank, the other a sprocket; a crank advanced a foot of film at a time so that the negative could be numbered in one-foot increments. Resnais explained that she should start from scratch, turn once, and write the data on the edge of the frame. The first frame of scene 25, take one, should be 25– 1– 1. One foot further on, 25– 1– 2, and so on. For the second take, 25– 2– 1, 25– 2– 2, etc. He told her to buy white Chinese ink and a pen with a fine tip. He showed her where to write the numbers. It was a foreign language, but she listened attentively to his lesson. Soon she would speak it fluently.