Paul in Mayerling, a portrait is the personal and joint narrative about the end of an existence inextricably linked to cinema. In the mid-2000s, I had the chance to meet Paul Vecchiali online. From this moment began a relationship marked by a lively confrontation on cinema and life. In 2009 I asked him to document the shooting of his next movie. This is how Paul in Mayerling, a portrait began.
Slowly, step by step, the project reaches the goal in early 2025, with the help of so many friends who, as in a relay, contributed to the realization of this film-documentary.
Mayerling is the title of Anatole Litvak's 1936 movie, starring Danielle Darrieux, which marked the fate of Paul Vecchiali as a filmmaker. Mayerling is also the name of the villa in the south of France where he lived and made his last movies. A house transformed into a set, cinema factory, home, hotel, studio.
A place where the characters add up, overlap, tell stories, intertwine, leaving their memory within the same walls in which they were generated.
Stories of a cinema that has always been different from the common context: "For me daily life is burdened by this need to make exist the imagination that I have constantly moving in my head. Constantly, constantly. I think I would die if I don’t let my imagination speak”. Thirteen years later, Paul observes himself and his collaborators talking about him, he integrates missing parts, he is moved, he gives further explanations. With the same passion of the past he tells his cinema.
An idea of cinema, aesthetics, relationship and responsibility with art and life.