Jours de mes années

The text and video excerpt below document the book by Philippe Langlois, Les cloches d’Atlantis, musique électroacoustique et cinéma archéologie et histoire d’un art sonore, éditions mf, Paris, first quarter 2012.

This experimental short film by the Dutch director Max de Haas evokes moments in the life of a man recreated by the magic of memory. Made from documents of varied provenance, the film is composed of several tableaux: the stages of the day and of life, between the joy and carefree spirit of youth, the cruelty of the world of work, the horror of war, and the final outcome set in perspective with the birth of a child, thus perpetuating the cycle of life. This assemblage of documents from diverse sources becomes the pretext for Bernard Parmegiani to imagine a collage music known as “patchwork music”, an adequate musical correspondence thus composed from several sources: an original composition, barrel-organ extracts by Roy DE WAARD and a piece of music by Michel Legrand.

After a first collaboration with the GRMC (Groupe de Recherches et de musique concrète) on the occasion of his film Maskerage – the first film, in 1950, to benefit from a musique concrète score signed by Pierre Schaeffer – Max De Haas returns to the studios of musique concrète to make the music of Jours de mes années, alongside Bernard Parmegiani.
Even before beginning to compose his study from the training course in 1961, Bernard Parmegiani was therefore already confronted with sound creation for the image with this film by Max De haas. A passion that would never leave him, with more than eighty film scores listed in his catalogue.

This film was awarded a prize at the Cannes festival in 1960, receiving the Honourable Mention.

This information notice was co-produced with INA/GRM for the creation of the multimedia fresco – Artsonores – L’aventure électroacoustique, in the category Films produced by the Service de la Recherche de l’ORTF from 1950 to 1975.