Fanspot
Off the coast of La Rochelle
“I’m in the hospital, I’m not scared anymore. I think it’s sunny, or rainy. No there is a little sun. I lay people in the garden. I even hear the wind.”
Pierre (Michel Piccoli)
Claude Sautet spoke of this final sequence in these terms: “This scene was shot off the coast of La Rochelle. Everyone had been drinking, there was a slight roll, the water was at 17° and Piccoli could not sink vertically. A frogman was brought in and attached Michel’s foot to a weight at the bottom of the sea. At a signal, he would pull the rope slowly, to make it sink. We repeated the plan about 30 times. When we finally got Michel out of the water, he was dead… from exhaustion!“
This scene precedes the moving one in which Romy Schneider leaves the hospital after the death of Michel Piccoli’s character under the eye of the director Jean Boffety. The latter had to adjust his way of doing things according to a single actor, namely Boby Lapointe. Completely losing his means as soon as the lens got too close to him, the actor forced Jean Boffety and Claude Sautet to use long focal lengths and overexposed images throughout the film in order to give it a certain unity. Curiously enough, it is to Boby LaPointe’s stage fright that Les Choses de la vie owes its particular and certainly audacious patina.
The car that Michel Piccoli drives in the film is a 1959 Alfa Romeo Giulietta Sprint.
Pertuis d'Antioche
A strait bordering the department of Charente-Maritime, the Pertuis d’Antioche acts as a separation between the Ile de Ré and the Ile d’Oléron.
This strait takes its name from the principality of Antioch. The pertuis having been widely used by the Crusaders when they left Saintes and Rochefort for the Middle East. Integrated into the marine natural park of the Gironde estuary and the sea of Pertuis since its creation in 2015, it is also famous for sheltering Fort Boyard but also many blockhouses of the Atlantic Wall.
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BARCELONA map of the 100 most famous places (French edition)
The Barcelona Fantrippers map, an original way to discover the city of Gaudí! Through 100 places of pop culture, walk its streets from another angle. Movies, TV shows, music, comics and novels, will allow you to spend a pleasant moment in the capital of Catalonia. With a folded format of 10 x 18 cm and an unfolded format of 60 x 54 cm, it can easily be put in your pocket or bag for consultation.
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Discover all the places Les Choses de la vie on our map
By Gilles Rolland
Passionné de cinéma, de rock and roll, de séries TV et de littérature. Rédacteur de presse et auteur des livres Le Heavy Metal au cinéma, Paroles de fans Guns N' Roses, Paroles de fans Rammstein et Welcome to my Jungle : 100 albums rock et autres anecdotes dépareillées. Adore également voyager à la recherche des lieux les plus emblématiques de la pop culture.