Schonderffer, Pierre

Schönderffer was born in a family of immigrants from Alsace , who decided to choose French citizenship. He spent his childhood in Annecy , where his father led the hospital ^[1] . At the age of 19, he enlisted in a Swedish cargo ship as a sailor and spent two years in the North and Baltic Seas . Then he served a year in the army on conscription.

After demobilization, Schönderffer decided that he wanted to work in cinema, but without experience he could not get anywhere. After reading in a newspaper about cameraman Georges Kowale, who died on February 20, 1952 in Indochina, he enlisted in the Military Cinematographic Service (SCA) to cover the First Indochina War . There, one of his colleagues was Raul Kutar - the future cameraman of the main films of Godard and Schönderffer himself ^[2] . Schönderffer shot the decisive battle at Dienbienf (1954) from the first days (at the very beginning he was wounded and was evacuated, but returned ten days later). Before the surrender of the French in May 1954, he destroyed all his films except six reels , which he hoped to keep when escaping from captivity, but was caught by the Vietnamese ^[3] . Schonderffer was captured by the Soviet documentary writer Roman Carmen , who interviewed him and several other prisoners for his film “ Vietnam ” (this interview was not included in the film, perhaps Carmen’s goal was to save a colleague) ^[4] . The saved bobbins came to Carmen, and frames from them were included in his film. Schönderffer remained in captivity for several more months until he was exchanged ^[1] .

Over the next few years, Schönderffer worked as a photojournalist in South Asia for Time and Paris Match . In Hong Kong, he met writer Joseph Kessel , who suggested that he put on a film in Afghanistan according to his script. The film "Devil's Gorge" (1958), shot jointly by Schönderffer and Jacques Dumont, also became the first camera work of Coutard and entered the competition of the Berlin Film Festival ^[5] .

The following year, Schönderffer filmed two novels by the author of adventure prose Pierre Loti “Ramuncho” and “ Icelandic Fisherman ” ^[1] . These films went unnoticed, but Schönderffer convinced their producer Georges de Beauregard to give him the opportunity to make a film on Indo-Chinese material. The 317th Platoon (1965, a film adaptation of the Schönderffer novel), the story of the French detachment retreating through the hostile jungle, became a model of a military film, the influence of which was later told by the Platoon director Oliver Stone and the writer of Apocalypse Today John Milius ^{[1] [6]} .

In 1966, Schönderffer went to the Vietnam War , where he was assigned to an American platoon under the command of Lieutenant Joseph Anderson, who was part of the 1st Cavalry Division of the United States . Schönderffer documented the platoon weekdays for a television film commissioned by the French television channel ORTF . Anderson ’s Platoon brought Schönderffer an Oscar for best feature film .

In 1976, Schönderffer received the French Academy Grand Prize for his novel “Crab Drummer,” the recollections of the old members of the colonial wars about his brave colleague. A year later he filmed a book; the film “ Crab Drummer ” (1977) was nominated for six Cesar awards and won three nominations.

The penultimate film of the director was the joint Franco-Vietnamese military drama " Dienbienfu " (1992) about the decisive battle for the French decisive battle of the First Indochina War . The shooting took place in Vietnam itself, with the participation of soldiers and equipment of the Vietnamese army. The first Vietnamese female film director Bat Ziep actively helped in organizing the filming of Schönderffer. The battle events in this autobiographical film are presented with almost chronological accuracy. In the modest role of the frontline cameraman Pierre Schönderffer, his son Louis Schönderffer starred.

The last film, “ The King Above the Clouds, ” a screen version of another novel of his own, Pierre Schönderffer shot in 2003.

Mikhail Trofimenkov calls Schönderffer "the singer of the" lost soldiers "of colonial wars, of heroic defeats." In addition to the war in Indochina, he sang the Algerian war , making the heroes of his films Oasovites , with whom he was proud of friendship. The protagonist of the “Crab Drummer” prototype was Oasovian Pierre Guillaume , who played an episodic role in the film, and in the film “ The Captain 's Honor ” (1982) Schönderffer supported the position shared mainly among the right-wing circles and among the intelligentsia that the French military in Algeria did not use torture ^[7] .

• 1963 - La 317e Section ("317th Platoon")
• 1969 - L'Adieu au Roi (Goodbye King)
• 1976 - Le Crabe-tambour ("Crab Drummer")
• 1981 - Là-haut (filmed as "King Above the Clouds")
• 2003 - L'Aile du papillon

• Trofimenkov, M. S. Cinema of military operations. - SPb. : Workshop "Session", 2013. - 656 p. - ISBN 978-5-905669-12-5 .