Le Cousin Jules

With steadfast dedication, Dominique Benicheti visited Jules and his wife, Eugénie, at their home in Burgundy for five years, from 1968 to 1973. It is perhaps the quintessence of documentary filmmaking to capture a world before it disappears. The television director, passionate about technology, records this “peasant profile” in a profoundly paradoxical move. To follow the path to the well, he installs rails to execute a precise circular tracking shot. He employs the modern widescreen Techniscope format to capture the beauty of the colours. We sense that, with Jules, the blacksmithing techniques passed down through the generations will finally be lost. The filmmaker makes their sounds resonate within a complex score. Words are scarce in the dance of the two spouses, which creates the full “spectacle of the everyday”, in the words of cinematographer  Pierre William Glenn. Multiple shooting sessions are edited almost to appear like a single day, where the passage of time is nearly imperceptible and leaves no room for an off‑screen space that can only be imagined: the social unrest that, beyond the fields, is transforming the world.

Raphaëlle Pireyre

Le Cousin Jules, 1972