It’s fascinating to inadvertently track the transformation of Claude Lelouch’s 1976 tracking shot tour de Paris and/or force C’etait un Rendez Vous go from mythical underground film to rediscovered classic to Google-mapped puzzle to demythologized YouTube entertainment–and now to mainstream mash-up material.
Snow Patrol, aka the Scottish Coldplay, has licensed Lelouch’s film and used it–portions of it, anyway, as the video for their single, “Open Your Eyes.” My knee-jerk reaction was, “well, that’s a lazy-ass way to make a music video,” but I have to say, it generally works, so I guess I’m cool with it. Mostly because I like to think that hundreds of people have already done the same thing themselves and swapped out Lelouch’s phony engine roar for their favorite roadtrip music anyway.
But to Snow Patrol’s credit, they appear to have actually reworked–or, as the credits put it, “remastered”–the original to their own artistic ends. Sure, they chop four minutes off and edit out the shoot-the-Louvre segment, but it seems like they also pumped up the contrast as well. I thought they even added some CG-flashes of flame toward the end, but then I realized they were the fleeing pigeons, picked out in headlamps of Lelouch’s Ferrari Mercedes 450 SEL 6.9.
One thing that hasn’t changed, though, is the easy, factcheck-free laziness surrounding Rendez Vous‘ myths. In this age of Google, it takes a real commitment to keep ahold of romantic-but-made-up details; Very Short List can take comfort in knowing they’re part of a long tradition of not Googling the little stuff.
You can watch Snow Patrol’s “Open Your Eyes” on the YouTube. [via vsl, thanks michael!]
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the making of, by greg allen