Raoul Walsh ou le bon vieux temps

Walsh had just entered “voluntary” retirement—he had been offered some westerns to be shot in Yugoslavia but turned them down—at the moment when Labarthe and Knapp went to film him in his Los Angeles home. All around the city was smoldering: the Watts riots had broken out just a few days before the crew’s arrival, and tensions were still high. Perhaps not coincidentally, Walsh’s conversation remains firmly in the past: his work with D.W. Griffith; his beginnings at Warner Brothers; his adventures with Bogart, Flynn, Gable and Cooper. Questions about his films—illustrated by clips from High Sierra, Gentleman Jim, White Heat, et al.—inevitably lead to memories for a man clearly more comfortable in Hollywood’s past than present.