Case file
The Last Reel
The premise
An island in the Aegean, September 1962. Day thirty-nine of a forty-day shoot: a French-Italian picture, a crew of eleven, one village street — and one telephone on the whole island, up at the chapel. The producer Léon Vaury — the man who paid for the picture and holds the insurance on its negative — climbed the ninety steps every night at 01:00 to call Paris.
Last night the squall came in and the night shoot was abandoned. Vaury went up at 01:00, as always. The exchange has the call: placed at 01:03, ended at 01:19. At 06:00 the chapel keeper found him at the foot of the steps.
Nobody left the island — the last boat goes at 07:00 and the sea was closed until dawn. The police come over from Syros on the evening ferry. You have three rounds.
Who is at the table
Everyone introduces themselves with one public line before a word is said. Nothing below is a clue — this is only what the whole table already knows.
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Colette Barre
The script supervisor. She writes down every take, every minute and every lamp, so that a picture shot out of order still adds up. The unit's memory sits in her notebook.
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Fabien Roux
The director, thirty-nine days into a picture he spent six years trying to make. He speaks to the crew in whole paragraphs and to the producer in half-sentences.
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Nikos Vlachos
The production manager: he hires the boats, pays the village and keeps the cash box and the books. Nothing on this island happens until he has paid for it.
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Kyra Anagnosti
The island girl who does every shot in the water for Ferri — the diving, the drowning, the long swim out to the rock. She knows this coast the way the crew know the call sheet.
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Béla Ferenczy
The cameraman, a Hungarian who left with one suitcase and one lens. He will hold a shot until the light is exactly wrong, and then tell you it is exactly right.
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Delia Ferri
The picture's lead, an actress the Italian papers have written off twice already. This is the film that decides which of the two obituaries was right.
Where you are
The village is one street: the harbour, the taverna, the equipment hut by the jetty. Above it, ninety steps up the rock, the chapel — the keeper's house, the telephone, and a terrace over the whole bay. The steps are unlit and the stone is loose. It rained from midnight until 01:40. Between 01:00 and 02:00 every one of you was somewhere on this hill.
Everyone at the table gets a character, three cards and one rule: you may hide things, you may not invent them. Between the acts a dossier appears on every phone with a new fact about somebody in the room — and it never clears anyone.
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