My American Uncle (1980)

Roger Pierre: Jean Le Gall

Photos 

Quotes 

• Janine Garnier : What's that?

  Jean Le Gall : Pictures and documentation for a book I've wanted to write. But with the wife, the children...

  Janine Garnier : A book?

  Jean Le Gall : About the sun. The history of the sun. Men's ideas about the sun since the dawn of time.

  Janine Garnier : A Renaissance man. You told me you wanted to be Prime Minister. Now you are writing a book.

  Jean Le Gall : They're not incompatible. In fact, they go together. Think of Blum, Herriot, Edgar Faure or Pompidou.

• Jean Le Gall : I was sure a treasure chest was buried here. I got a shovel, and I dug and I searched for days on end. I kept hearing about an uncle who'd gone off to America. I was sure he'd come back to tell me where it was. For me, he was the Gold King, my uncle in America. I'm still searching.

• Jean Le Gall : Everyone in my family had ideas about what I should read. Grandfather favored Jules Verne. Father, the lives of French heroes: Lyautey, Père de Foucauld. Mother's choice was Racine's tragedies, which she adored. Instead of these masterpieces, I read adventure stories perched in a tree. "The lad left the car and entered with confident step. Tall, strong, honest and bold, he was none other than the Gold King, Samuel Knight, orphan and millionaire who in the true American way, on this August 1, 1914, was giving a party at a restaurant to celebrate his 18th birthday."

• Janine Garnier : Did you bring your whole library?

  Jean Le Gall : The problem of the wayward intellectual: what to take? Balzac or Stendhal? Lenin or Trotsky?

• Janine Garnier : You read "The Gold King" up there?

  Jean Le Gall : No. You missed. My reading place was the top of a tree. I'll show you. I was forbidden to climb trees. Since they trusted me - mistakenly - they never looked for me up there. It was great. All I could see was sky.

• Jean Le Gall : Only you and I know these awesome secrets.