Cinema and drama · 1978
Vas-y maman
(Take It from the Top)
In 1978 Nicole de Buron shot her comedy starring Annie Girardot and put me on screen. That same year, in Rome, I was covering two conclaves and the Aldo Moro affair.
Nicole de Buron had a gift for describing French families with both tenderness and ferocity. In 1978 she stepped behind the camera for "Vas-y maman", a comedy carried by Annie Girardot, one of France's best-loved actresses.
I can be glimpsed on screen. At the time the public knew me from the television news, and the cinema liked to borrow television's familiar faces: slip one into a scene and the fiction instantly took on an air of truth. I had already played that game two years earlier, on television, in the series "Nick Verlaine ou Comment voler la tour Eiffel".
Two lives in one year
The contrast still amuses me. When the film came out I was TF1's permanent correspondent in Rome. In 1978 Italy lived through the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro, and the Vatican buried two popes before electing John Paul II. Between two live broadcasts from St Peter's Square, my name was therefore rolling in the credits of a French comedy.
The film travelled abroad under the title "Take It from the Top". The film databases, from IMDb to AllMovie, have kept it in my filmography.
Key facts
- A comedy by Nicole de Buron starring Annie Girardot, released in 1978.
- International title: "Take It from the Top".
- It followed two appearances in television series in 1976.
