"Captain Marleau" is back: behind the cult series, the vision of Josée Dayan

At 81, director Josée Dayan has lost none of her wit. With her machine-gun delivery, everything has to go fast with the director and creator of the Capitaine Marleau collection, the 39th episode of which airs this Friday on France 2. It all began in 2013 when Josée Dayan directed the fiction film Entre vents et marées, in which Corinne Masiero is introduced in the atypical guise of Captain Marleau, an unfiltered cop with supersonic wordplay and a keen sense of observation.

Very fond of the character of Marleau, Dayan pulled the sleeve of Anne Holmes, the director of fiction at France Télévisions, and proposed a slightly crazy project: to create a collection around Marleau/Masiero. "I had a vision, we had to make a series around this character ," remembers Josée Dayan. "It wasn't easy because Corinne wasn't very well known, her character is atypical and it could have been a risky adventure, but I believed in it. For it to work, we needed a star to play her in each episode, to avoid a form of habit, that's the DNA of the series. Very quickly, there was Gérard Depardieu, then Isabelle Adjani and the public was quickly hooked."

Corinne Masiero, controlled improvisation

Viewers gradually discover this colorful character, with a very pronounced northern accent, a fur hat, and boots that are firmly attached to her body. The guest appearances continue, but Masiero definitively establishes herself as the star of the series. "She has extraordinary inventiveness," Dayan emphasizes. "She has disturbing moments, flashes of brilliance, she has a lot of references and writes a lot of her improvisations. When she opens up to you, with complete confidence, it's a joy."

Between the two women, who have more than 40 projects together, there's no pronounced bond. "We don't see each other outside of filming," Dayan says simply. "But she gives herself to me when we're on set. There's a real mutual professional respect. You don't do 40 episodes of a series with someone without a minimum of trust."

Dayan has a certain reputation. She doesn't beat around the bush, is direct and works quickly (two weeks per episode of Marleau , for example). "I like to shoot in a hurry, not taking the time to breathe so that my actors don't spread themselves too thin. I like to work like this, it keeps everyone constantly focused." To avoid falling into comfort, Josée Dayan knows how to do it. "You have to renew the actors. Here, on the last opus, I worked with Florence Thomassin who is very moving and Catherine Hiegel who needs no introduction. And then I discovered Philippe Bas, a real favorite. That's the advantage of the format with Corinne who is a free electron and around whom we have to develop many characters in each episode."

Cinema in the blood

Especially since legend has it that many actors raised their hands to appear in Marleau . A natural adventure for Dayan who, from the age of 7, knew that she was going to embrace the profession of director. "I had this deep conviction," she admits. "It's inexplicable, I wanted to do this job and even after 60 years of career, each film is a new adventure, you have to constantly question yourself. I have a deep admiration for Orson Welles who, at 25, directed a masterpiece like Citizen Kane and who, despite everything, would experience failures thereafter. I have done many things during my career, including successful literary adaptations like The Count of Monte Cristo, The Accursed Kings, Diane de Poitiers or Balzac but the Marleau adventure is special in this journey, it is an atypical, original series." It is above all the story of a meeting with Corinne Masiero, an unclassifiable actress just like Josée Dayan.

this Friday at 9:10 p.m., on France 2.