«Do we lead our fate,
or is it fate that leads us?»
Diderot
Victor Rodrigue was born in 1923. His mother was of Turkish nationality, and his father Bulgarian (both of Jewish descent), both were genuine lovers of France,where they moved when Victor was only one year old. So that he always felt deeply French. He was educated in the French schooling system ,but kept preciously the multicultural inheritage of his parents.The whole family got the French nationality in the mid- thirties.
Young Victor develops early a strong feeling for any kind of Art. He is specially interested by painting, a lot more than young people like him. His first stroke of heart was for « the spinners » of the painter Diego Velasquez. He specially admired the gracious shape of one of the characters’nape.
He is also quite involved in hearing music,and reading. A zealous reader of Proust and Diderot, a well- informed music lover, Victor Rodrigue is actually an all-round artist. Before entering in active life, he already had a passion for every field of art.
But movies remain the passion of his life. As a young man,he already knows he wants to develop his professional activity in that field.But the second world war goes against his projects. He just turns twenty years when the german army invades France. His whole family is deprived of french nationality and has to move down South in the so-called « Free zone », then finds a shelter in the Alps moutains ,when Germans occupy Southern France.
Viscerally opposed to german occupation ,Victor joins the communist resistance movement (FFI,French Internal Forces).At the end of the war,he is back to Paris,and active in political fights.This will help him to improve his photographic skills, first working in a news agency, then as a free-lance journalist.
He will, afterward, abandon communist militancy but still keep a strong sense of progressive ideas .He started working ,for a while,in the family electric company,but was quickly absorbed by his photographic activity,and registered in a photography school ,soon after Liberation of France.
He walks around the streets taking pictures, organises at his parents apartment a dark room to develop his pellicules together with Willy Ronis .He had met him at the communist party, then they developed a strong friendship, though Willis was somehow older than Victor. But similancies in their lives trend,and a common taste to music, held them together. Some years later,in 1952, they will cover jointly, as photographers ,the Peace Congress of Varsovia ,organized by the Soviet Union.
Still fascinated by movies, Victor Rodrigue has to work hard before being formally recognized as Stage Photographer. He participates to the shooting of movies or actors. Well informed cinephil, Victor Rodrigue follows zealously the last movies production,and admires the main actors of the time. He knows everything about movies and main humanist characters, such as Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Ernst Lubitsch, Fred Astaire ,Jean Renoir, Marcel Carné…That many artists he will admire his life long. He is then well connected with that artistic group. The French movie « la règle du jeu « ( the game´s rule) will deeply impress him.
The war had stopped the promissing rise of the French movies’industry, so that,at liberation of France, theaters are mostly projecting American movies. Like most people , Victor discovers Orson Welles when « citizen Kane « is projected in 1946. He will then keep a strong admiration to that great movies figure.He will eventually meet him twenty years later,when shooting « Paris brule-t-il? » ( Is Paris burning?).
To support the production of French movies,the French Government creates the National Counsil for Cinematography and The Cannes Festival where Victor is participating as a reporter. That will help him to find his place in the quickly growing movies industry.
In the years fifty, the French movies resume their development in the world industry, thanks to the « Qualité Française » of the scenarios ,as François Truffaut describe it. But things are changing quickly. In 1956 appears a rising star, Brigitte Bardot. Meanwhile, » La Nouvelle vague »(the new wave) breaks with the traditional academic style.
That is in 1963,only, that Victor formally becomes Stage photographer,working on the shooting of » dragées au poivre »( sweet and peppered almonds) ,notably with Guy Bedos and Jean Paul Belmondo. Then on, Victor will give us ,through his photos,a precious testimony of the changes affecting that circle.
The shooting of some sixty movies will follow.
He will succeed in creating a confidence relationship with the stars in the shootings he participate. Alain Delon,among others, regularly insisted on Victor’s assistance,and both of them will develop on stage a strong relationship, each of them respecting the working habits of his partner.He first met Alain Delon on the shooting of « la tulipe noire »( the black tulip), his second shooting as a stage photographer. He will then work with the star on about twenty movies, among them « le clan des Siciliens »(the Sicilian clan),» Borsalino » , » Monsieur Klein », » La veuve Couderc »( the Couderc widow).
Numerous actors respect his works,so that he quickly improves his reputation in the movies circles.On the sixty movies he worked on, he met the greatest stars of the time: Simone Signoret, Yves Montand, Jean Rochefort, Philippe Noiret, Gérard Depardieu, Jean Gabin, Louis de Funès, Bourvil. John Huston, Sidney Pollack, Joseph Losey, among others will also draw Victor’s inspiration.
All this help us,through Victor’s photos,to understand the evolution of the french movie business in the after war period,but also to grasp the background of french society in that time. Thanks to his photos, Victor Rodrigue appears to be an witness of the second half of the twentieth century who can’t be ignored. He tells us the renewal, the rise,the evolution and eventually the consecration of the French movies industry.
