Mystère Babilée (Le)

Patrick Bensard dedicates a full portrait of remarkable dancer Jean Babilée, with many interviews and archive documents.

The film begins with rare images, shot just before the Premiere of a piece that would become a major work of 20th century repertoire, Le Jeune Homme et la Mort. Roland Petit’s ballet based on the libretto by Jean Cocteau revealed an astonishing 23 year-old interpreter: Jean Babilée. Thus the legend of this extraordinary dancer was born. Patrick Bensard dedicates a detailed portrait to him, including many interviews and archive documents. 

“He’s a cat, he has the charm, suppleness and independence of felines”, Yvette Chauviré, one of the many personalities interviewed, said of him. A diptych, Le Mystère Babilée first focuses on the creation of Le Jeune Homme et la Mort. The archive documents and the comments by Jean Cocteau and Leslie Caron contribute to the reconstruction of this immediate post-war period and testify to the innovations of the work and to the extraordinary success it enjoyed right from the start. In the second part, Jean Babilée himself takes over. A fantastic storyteller, the dancer transmits his passion for artistic adventures, evoking with modesty some more intimate memories. These interviews, interwoven with testimonies and extracts from choreographies, recompose the unusual career of an artist who, from the word go, was known as the “enfant terrible of dance”.