Coffret Jacques Brel and suddenly, Mathilde is back

The creation of Mathilde on the scene in 1963, and the goodbyes at the Olympia in 1966 : two slices of the myth of Jacques Brel are offered with images and sounds restored to a cabinet available this Thursday.

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first, there is the tower of song filmed at the Casino de Knokke in Belgium on July 23, 1963, including the first version of Matilda, on a tempo slower than the final shape."This is the song that took him the most time, I heard him repeat it two summers in a row before presenting it on stage," told AFP one of his daughter France Brel, at the head of the " Fondation Jacques Brel, the institution to the origin of this output (DVD/Blu-ray/CD/Universal Music).

"there is no time to write specific for Brel, he is all the time on tour and to write, it is the wire of the kilometers. At one point, he had the courage to present it to the Casino public, a public that is not easy, drinking, eating during the show," she continued.

"Sense of drama"

France Brel will say that two times "my father" during the exchange, speaking most of the time to "Jacques" or "jacques Brel". "I put myself in the height of the interlocutor, who speaks of Jacques Brel. And then, at Antwerp, on his boat, at the time of launch for his world tour, he had said to me, "Oh, no, don't call me daddy, tell James like everyone else!". I am a great obedience", she smiled when we pointed out to her.

To France Brel, the strength of the song Matilda is that the narrator "knows very well that it is going to be the disaster, going to be with this woman, and he does it anyway, it is universal". "Brel has a sense of drama extraordinary, in this song, we find its orality, close to the cry, that in his work, is a poetry," elaborates.

""Matilda", it is a tube, and then a classic, then a terminal undeniable in his work, explains to the AFP Bertrand Medical, journalist and specialist in French song. There is an energy completely crazy, victorious, to say a defeat. This is a great idea".

Jacques Brel has a special history with the Casino of Knokke. In August 1953, he had finished second-to-last of a singing competition. Another room, another time, the box also has the evenings of the entries in the history at the Olympia, the famous goodbye - even if this is not his last concert-formal - filmed on 28 and 29 October 1966.

"Etat second"

The singer will return to seven times - including in a bathrobe with large stripes - greet between the curtains the audience remained standing ovation. You see during the songs big plans for grabbing the artist, lived in a trance.

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"I am having each time at different times," says France Brel. There is one, when even fleeting: Jacques ends "Madeleine", he backs off, the curtain comes in, closes, reopens and it is not dropped on earth, it is in a second state. It takes him a few seconds to find himself in the present."

"These farewell in the song are not sad, he is very cheerful, it closes a chapter", describes Bertrand's Association, a former journalist of le Figaro, voices on Radio France signature and News Tank Culture. "When he decides to stop the song, he just wants to have the time to live, he does not know what he will do next, that is why it is so joyful. The cinema, it will only come because it will be a first film by chance", sheds light on France Brel.

A filmed interview from 1971 completes the ensemble, served by a choice of 13 languages subtitled. The two concerts had been projected in cinemas in 2018, the year of the 40 years of his disappearance.

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