Il Dialogo di Roma, dir. Marguerite Duras, France 1983, 61 min.

The theme of the film would be a conversation between a man and a woman, a couple of lovers or perhaps a married couple. This is of little importance. There would be no evidence of the couple’s social status, their age, or how long they have been together. The conversation itself would know no starting point, it would follow on from a detail concerning their private lives. 

During the lovers’ conversation, all we will be able to see is Rome. I do not want to choose the Rome I am going to show. I would like to choose a route through the city and follow it, no matter what it happens to run into. 

As the film unfolds, the difficulty of the lovers’ love, which is an impossibility, will take on a seemingly clearer, more concrete form. Just as Rome, in my opinion, cannot be described or filmed, this difficulty between the lovers can never be known clearly. 

Il dialogo di Roma was a commission from the Italian broadcaster RAI. After her short film Césarée, Duras paid another tribute to Berenice, “queen of the Jews”, through the impossible love story between a Roman soldier and the Queen of Samaria. Around the Via Appia and the Piazza Navona, Duras films the landmarks of Rome’s city centre in the early eighties, in dialogue with her own partner, Yann Andréa. On the soundtrack, the 14th of the 33 Diabelli variations play, as in India Song and Godard’s Sauve qui peut (la vie) (1980). * 

Preceded by Césarée, dir. Marguerite Duras, France 1978, 12 min.

Composed, as with Les mains négatives, from unused footage originally shot for Le Navire Night, Césarée evokes the city of Caesarea, in Palestine, and Berenice, the "queen of the Jews", "repudiated for reasons of state". Images alternate between fixed shots of statues in the Place de la Concorde, hieroglyphics on the Obelisk, and travelling shots in the Jardin des Tuileries, with particular focus on the statues of Maillol.