Baquet’s Comeback
In July 1956, the actor and cellist Maurice Baquet, along with the mountaineer Gaston Rebuffat, made the first ascent of the south face of the Aiguille du Midi (3842m), a magnificent red granite wall that rears up like a rampart above the Vallée Blanche, in the Mont-Blanc range…
32 years later, as if in tribute to the memory of his friend Gaston, Maurice Baquet once again climbs this wall hanging between sky and earth, this time with Christophe Profit.
Photography Laurent Chevallier, Denis Ducroz • Sound Olivier Schwob, Bernard Prud’homme • Editing Marie Quinton • Mix Julien Cloquet • Production manager Françoise Buraux • Executive producer Yves Jeannneau • With the assistance of the guides Michel Arrizi, Richard Bozon and Frédéric Folliguet • Footage from the film “Etoiles et Tempêtes” by Gaston Rebuffat, with the kind permission of Françoise Rebuffat • Co-produced by Les Films d’Ici and Antenne 2 • With the participation of Sandoz-France.
Grand Prize at the “Snow and Ice” Festival, Autrans, 1988 • Audience Prize, World Festival of Mountaineering Films, Antibes, 1988 • “Best Mountainfilm Spirit”,Mountain Film Festival in Telluride (USA), 1989 • Special Jury Prize, Mountain Film Festival, Banff (Canada), 1989.
First TV broadcast : January 1989, Antenne 2
Le Come-back de Baquet by Barbara Levendangeur
(Taken from the catalogue of the 2005 “Visions du réel”, International Festival in Nyon, Switzerland)
Nicolas Philibert’s last sports adventure film, Le Come-back de Baquet, is the only one in the series that was initiated by the director. This song of the mountains relates the reiteration of a feat and of a friendship linking two periods and two events : thirty-two years after the first ascent of the south face of the Aiguille du Midi with his mountaineer friend Gaston Rebuffat, now deceased, the actor and cellist Maurice Baquet climbs the rock face again, this time roped to Christophe Profit – a mountaineer to whom Nicolas Philibert has already dedicated three films.
The filmmaker’s world is already clearly identifiable : a pronounced taste for the comic and for staging situations – the documentary is filled with short scenes that make fun of Maurice’s clumsiness – but also an unfailing sense of sharing and solidarity. The rope takes on a both real and symbolic dimension : it connects, reassures and imposes responsibility. It participates in a climb intended to reconnect with the departed, a suspended moment, quasi-mythical, in which death is cast aside. A healing virtue which passes through the filmmaker’s work in the same way as his skill at making bodies and space interact and his attention to framing and depth of field: when we view these bodies clinging to the rock face or suspended between sky and earth, in harmony with the mountains around them, we can tell that a great documentary filmmaker has been born.
