Pierre Clémenti

 Pierre Clémenti 

Bandiera Rossa

by Helen Donlon

"A mainstream career? I don't have the will to be part of films that don't even deserve to be made... I've always worked alone and I ruined nothing but myself." --Pierre Clementi

Pierre Clémenti died in December 1999; days before the end of the century. He discovered poetry at reform school as a young teenager, and his love of it lasted a lifetime.  On the Paris streets he was fatefully sidetracked into an acting career that became symbolic of so many aspects of European cinema of the time: experimentalism, anarchy, androgyny, anti-heroism, surrealism and pariah culture.  This trajectory began in underground and cafe theatre in the early 1960s when Bulle Ogier and Jean-Pierre Kalfon introduced him to fringe director Marc'O, who quickly invited Clémenti into his avant-garde troupe, later to achieve marginal fame under the guise of their act "Les Idoles".  After Alain Delon took him on the spur of the moment to Rome to meet Visconti, where he was immediately cast in The Leopard, Clémenti went on to star in the films of Buñuel, Garrel, Bertolucci, Pasolini, Cavani, Merchant Ivory, Glauber Rocha, Gillies Mackinnon and others; and along the way became the darkly beautiful sex siren of his era, thanks largely to his much-improvised role in Belle de jour.  

Clémenti was a child of the 1968 countercultural Paris-Rome express, and in 1971 he was arrested in Rome on false charges of possession, and imprisoned for 16 months. The experience marked him profoundly. Many of his friends in the world of cinema believe he was really imprisoned for his political leanings, as he was very much on the side of the extreme Italian left.  One of the witnesses in Clémenti's trial was Federico Fellini, despite Clémenti's earlier refusal to work with him on Satyricon (choosing instead to work with Philippe Garrel on Le Lit de la vierge).  While incarcerated he wrote a beautiful prison diary, in which he recounted his great love for Italian workers and peasants as well as describing in wonderful anecdote what it was like to be a part of the Italian cinema world in the 1960s. On his release from prison, Clémenti was devastated to find that he was now ordered to leave Rome as he was considered "undesirable" and "a threat to public order".  

This first biography in any language of the rebellious and iconic actor and intellectual outlaw takes a close look at Clémenti's film career as well as exploring the socio-cultural context of his times, and his adventures and misadventures with friends such as Philippe Garrel, Tina Aumont, Nico, Zouzou, Valerie Lagrange, Frédéric Pardo and Bernardo Bertolucci.   

--Helen Donlon, edited extract from a Habits of Waste feature on Clémenti

The Ship's Cabin, 

Hardback £15, Kindle edition £5 

Autumn 2012, 278pp


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