Catherine Deneuve did not get along well with Robin Davis and was unhappy with him; so much so that Alain Delon had to direct the scenes where she appeared.
Catherine Deneuve said she did not enjoy her experience on the film because of disagreements with the director Robin Davis.
The atmosphere on the set was not in the right place, as Alain Delon remembers: Robin Davis found himself literally paralyzed in front of Catherine Deneuve - who was in a somewhat peculiar period and therefore not very available - and of Alain Delon, which made Le choc (1982) a catastrophe. "A set is like a boat." said Delon "It takes a captain. At some point, there must be someone who decides."
After the success of La guerre des polices (1979), Robin Davis did not want to be cataloged as a director of this genre and refused for two years many proposals to direct this type of film again. But when the producers Alain Sarde and Alain Terzian came to see him to ask him to make a film with Alain Delon, the idea interested him. There were no plans yet what the film would be. Robin Davis launched the idea of a French Bonnie and Clyde and the name Catherine Deneuve came quickly on the table. The director then read all sorts of novels and fell onto Jean-Patrick Manchette's "La position du tireur couché". He saw in the main character the opportunity to revisit the usual role for Alain Delon. "Terrier in the book was a totally crazy guy who lived in a cellar, ate cold spaghetti, was perpetually drunk and helpless, with a nihilistic relationship to women, in a completely crazy story. "
Robin Davis wrote a first draft that was close to the novel's depiction of Terrier and read it to the producers and the star. "At the end, this approach fell apart: Alain Delon is a myth. A myth does not eat cold spaghetti in a cellar. " He then reversed the polarities and the anti-hero became a hero, a classic character of the police genre, the killer who decides to hang up, a role already interpreted by the actor in No Way Out (1973) by Duccio Tessari. Dominique Robelet, Claude Veillot, and Alain Delon himself, as well as other writers who did not wish to be credited, all worked on the new adaptation.
Jean-Patrick Manchette, who had two of his other novels adapted by and starred Alain Delon, Three Men to Kill (1980) and To Kill a Cop (1981), was not worried about the different approach taken in the adaptation. As soon as Alain Delon embodied the hero of Le choc (1982), he was sure that the character was not going to end up invalid and spoiled as in the novel, and that did not bother him.
Robin Davis wrote a first draft that was close to the novel's depiction of Terrier and read it to the producers and the star. "At the end, this approach fell apart: Alain Delon is a myth. A myth does not eat cold spaghetti in a cellar. " He then reversed the polarities and the anti-hero became a hero, a classic character of the police genre, the killer who decides to hang up, a role already interpreted by the actor in No Way Out (1973) by Duccio Tessari. Dominique Robelet, Claude Veillot, and Alain Delon himself, as well as other writers who did not wish to be credited, all worked on the new adaptation.
Jean-Patrick Manchette, who had two of his other novels adapted by and starred Alain Delon, Three Men to Kill (1980) and To Kill a Cop (1981), was not worried about the different approach taken in the adaptation. As soon as Alain Delon embodied the hero of Le choc (1982), he was sure that the character was not going to end up invalid and spoiled as in the novel, and that did not bother him.
The chief operator and cameraman Pierre-William Glenn spoke about the film in an article of "Première" where he said: "Le choc (1982) is a film that started too fast and whose preparation was not sufficient."
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