Tchao Pantin is 40 years old: the story of a film that no one wanted

Coluche’s unforgettable performance in front of Claude Berri’s camera was released in cinemas on December 21, 1983.

Rare are the films that have so shaken up the image of their main actor. Tchao Pantinthe drama of Claude Berri which earned Coluche the César for best actor in 1984 is now celebrating its fortieth anniversary. A total of five prizes were awarded to the film at the time, including two Richard Anconina (best supporting actor and best hopeful), as well as those of photography and sound.

With 3.8 million entries, Tchao Pantin was also a great success in theaters, then on television. Multi-broadcast on the small screen, this story of revenge has left its mark on several generations of spectators. It is now available on VOD, including on Première Max.

Tchao Pantin has no more secrets for you? Really ? However, here are three manufacturing anecdotes that are worth the detour about this unforgettable film.

Coluche and cinema, true love

The adaptation of a book by the co-writer of The swimming pool

Tchao Pantin depicts a nocturnal friendship between two solitudes: an alcoholic and depressed gas station attendant and a young drug trafficker. A friendship for life and death because we will see the first not shy away from any danger to avenge the second after his brutal assassination.

At the origin of this story, there is a novel published in 1982 by Alain Page, who also co-wrote the screenplay. And this was not his first attempt on the big screen. Fourteen years earlier, in 1968, he had taken his first steps there by co-signing the screenplay for The swimming pool by Jacques Deray with Jean-Claude Carrière, under the pseudonym Jean-Emmanuel Conil. And the one who will create the characters of the famous series for television The Cordiers, judge and copwill even go behind the camera once in 1986, for a feature film for the cinema: Taxi boy with Richard Berry and Claude Brasseur. Alain Page is now 94 years old.

A lack of enthusiasm… yet rewarded

It’s the story of a film… that no one wanted. Starting with its director Claude Berri who doesn’t quite see what to do with this story when producer Christian Spillmaecker offers it to him. Except for one detail that will change everything.

Berri perfectly imagines in the role of the depressed gas station attendant an actor he has already directed twice (in The Pistonné And The Schoolmaster) and that Spillmaecker has just produced in Banzai : Coluche. But the latter also begins to kick in, explaining that he doesn’t want such a dark role, while in his life he is on the verge of hitting rock bottom. Since his aborted candidacy for the Presidential election in May 1981, everything has gone from bad to worse for him. His wife left the family home with their two children Marius and Romain, Patrick Dewaere committed suicide with the help of the rifle he had given her and he, the number one public entertainer also undermined by enormous money worries, fell into drugs. This character of a gas station attendant worn out by life therefore has everything of the mirror in which he refuses to look at himself.

And when he finally agrees to play him, Coluche will take this character and the film even further than the script let him guess. The critics will praise the performance, the public will be there (3.8 million admissions, the eighth biggest success of 1983 in France) and the profession will offer him his only César of his career (heads, sorry, to Gérard Depardieu, Yves Montand, Michel Serrault and Alain Souchon) with a memorable show on stage to celebrate the triumph of this Tchao Pantin who will leave in total with 5 statuettes (including two for Richard Anconina alone, therefore).

The first soundtrack by Charlélie Couture

In 1981, he had his first public success with a 45 RPM from the album Rock poems : Like a plane without wings. And two years later, Charlélie Couture reached a new milestone. He wrote his very first film score for Tchao Pantin. A first that will not go unnoticed. He has since composed more than 15 soundtracks for cinema, including Taxi boy, Like a plane by Marie-France Pisier or the French versions of Randy Newman’s songs for Toy story (the first and fourth episodes).