But Jean Becker has talent and sensitivity, and his version does not do injustice to Pialat. Naturally, filmed by Becker, "The Green Shutters" does not really look like a Mautice Pialat film, it is less naturalistic, less paroxystic than it would have been. Miracle! Completion was achieved: Pialat's project, Depardieu's dream, had finally come to life. Shooting took place, without any hitch this time, in August and September 2021. Only modifying Dabadie's work to a small extent, adding his personal touch, he gallantly set his cameras rolling. Veteran director Jean Becker (88 years old at the time of filming), the hired director, was shaken but undaunted. Fate was to interfere again with the sudden death of Dabadie in 2020.
This he did, transposing the action from the early 1950s to the 1970s, a time when larger-than-life actors still existed (Delon, Gabin, Belmondo.), a race of which the dinosaur Depardieu is one of the last representatives, if not the last. Enthusiastic at the idea, they hired the talented Jean-Loup Dabadie to write the adaptation. That is how in 2017, still bearing the project in mind, he wound up proposing it to producers Michèle and Laurent Pétin. Jules Maugin, an aging, eccentric, alcoholic, hyper-sensitive and egocentric sacred monster, that was him, nobody else but him! So much so that the idea never left him. He therefore felt quite frustrated when the project finally failed. Gérard Depardieu, who was persuaded that he was cut out for the role, was slated to be the lead.
It had long been a project of Maurice Pialat, which unfortunately never came to fruition. The Last of a Sacred Monster "Les Volets verts" ("The Green Shutters") is a novel by Georges Simenon, written in 1950 while he was living in the United States.
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