Johnny By Laeticia: A Moving Portrait On M6
Fans of Johnny Hallyday will receive a Christmas present a little early thanks to a documentary to be broadcast on Thursday, December 8 on M6. The film, entitled Johnny par Laeticia, paints an intimate portrait of the greatest French rocker through never-before-seen private images.
Unpublished archive images
Laeticia shared Johnny Hallyday's life for 23 years. In the documentary Johnny by Laeticia, she reveals for the first time archives of their family films.
The documentary was developed from 700 hours of previously unseen personal archive and it's a real success. We see Johnny on vacation with his wife and adopted daughters, but also sometimes at work during rehearsals.
These private images shot with a camcorder and then with a cell phone trace the daily life and the fragility of the man behind the rock'n'roll legend. We discover a facetious, funny and tender Johnny, especially with Jade and Joy who are the other stars of this film.
A testimony of great sincerity
From the meeting between Johnny and Laeticia in 1995 in Miami was born an unusual complicity. This improbable love at first sight has caused a lot of ink to flow. But it has especially allowed them to build a life together, without ever leaving each other, despite their 31 years apart.
In the documentary Johnny by Laeticia, the point of view of the one who shared the life of the boss gives an exceptional access to the daily life of Johnny Hallyday...
In front of the camera, the singer's widow tells the intimacy of their couple with simple and direct words. The interviews she gave in December 2021 and March 2022 from the house she lived with Johnny in Marnes-la-Coquette constitute the red thread of this documentary.
She does not hesitate to reveal the infidelities of her husband, their separation after the adoption of Jade and the difficult moments, especially after the failure of Johnny's one-off concert in Las Vegas ... But these moments of doubt were followed by moments of recapture as the famous concert of Johnny at the Stade de France!
For this project, the director William Karel specifies that he received no instructions from Johnny's widow: 'Laeticia did not want to see the film during editing, she saw it only when finished. When she saw it, she did not ask any withdrawal, neither images nor words.' It took 3 months of viewing and as much editing to make this exceptional documentary.
An extremely endearing portrait
The documentary Johnny by Laeticia, broadcast on M6 on the occasion of the 5 years of the rocker's death, will undoubtedly upset his fans. But, whether or not one is a fan of Johnny Hallyday, one can only be touched by this particularly endearing portrait.
The images revealed are the heart of the film and its main interest. Besides Laeticia, only two other witnesses intervene in this documentary: Jean-Claude Camus, Johnny's historical producer and Daniel Rondeau, the writer and friend who conducted a memorable interview with the singer in the newspaper Le Monde in 1998.
Some have not failed to point out the near absence of David Hallyday and Laura Smet in this film... This documentary focused on the story of Johnny and Laeticia allows us to discover a little-known facet of the life of the man and the artist, while carefully avoiding topics that anger, especially the legal battle that followed his death.
From this atypical film, which gives an intimate and partial image of Johnny Hallyday, we will especially remember the emotion of discovering him in his role as a family man, far from his crazy years of the decades 1960 to 1980. In the last minutes of this documentary, his two adopted daughters, now teenagers, read in voice-over a text to their daddy. Emotion guaranteed!
This portrait enamelled with exceptional unpublished images is to be discovered on M6 on Thursday, December 8 at 21h10.
