The co-author and co-director of Les Pirates du Rhône, Jean Aurenche (1904-1992), goes back over the project and the making of the film.

I had a cameraman friend, Pierre Charbonnier (a very good painter who then became Robert Bresson&rsquos set designer on many films). Charbonnier had taken me for the first time to the Rhone, to La Roche de Glun, a godforsaken place near Valence where he had a shack. I must tell you that La Roche de Glun has a geographic peculiarity: it spreads out along a bend of the Rhone.

It is in this very spot, where the river curves, that the people who have drowned are washed up. The mayor saw himself in the obligation to bury the corpses at the town&rsquos expense, which became burdensome for the small community. That is when he gave a poacher, a certain Darone, the responsibility of carrying the drowned people to the neighboring village. But one night, Darone was caught red-handed, and the two villages fought against each other.

We had met this poacher, an extraordinary guy of whom I could speak for hours. He was a pirate. He fished at dawn with a casting net and other forbidden methods &ndash but never with dynamite. He told us about his life in prison: fishing offence was no joke. One of his jobs was to teach the boys coming out of the clink to weave wicker baskets. He always had five or six around him and his daughter&hellip you see? The local people also came to see her: she had a following.

Pierre Charbonnier and myself liked the character so much that we wanted to do A Day with Darone. We just thought of it without writing a script. One day, Jean Wiener, a friend of mine, introduced me to a Pathé administrator: Simon Cerf a first-rate playboy. Later on he got in trouble, bankruptcy, but I rather liked him. I told him what it was about; he said, &ldquoHow much is this story going to cost?&rdquo and I said I would make the film &ndash five or six hundred meters long- with thirty thousands francs out of his pocket. In 1935, that&rsquos a lot of money (which can be multiplied by about 500). For a beginner, a chance of a lifetime.

I made the film, and Cerf was rewarded because the Pirates du Rhône worked very well, it was bought everywhere, even in Switzerland! Maybe the text was more important than the pictures. I wouldn&rsquot redo it this way today. But it was the first time a film was devoted to a character like Darone.

For a month we followed and filmed him everywhere he went, then we edited an interesting film, of a kind that was not being done back then (the documentaries were formal presentation of the Mont Saint-Michel or other architectural curious sights).

There was a fishing scene with dynamite. In fact, we didn&rsquot have dynamite or fish either! I had bought whiting at the market, and we threw them in the water. When shooting backwards, we would see them come up to the surface. No one ever noticed anything until Florent Fels; a newspaper director, who was, like our friend Tavernier a gourmet, saw it. Sitting next to me, he cried out &ldquoYou bastards, that&rsquos whiting!&rdquo

Excerpt from La Suite à l&rsquoécran
Conversation with Jean Aurenche
Institut Lumière / Actes Sud Editions