So long to our dear Léon. It’s been quite a month mulling over your cinematic contents. On to the noir and The Third Man then?

Before you go, here are a few links to continue your studies of Luc Besson and Léon.

If you’ve seen a film that credits EuropaCorp with it’s production, chances are very good that you’re seeing a film that Léon director Luc Besson had a hand in developing. Besson started EuropaCorp with longtime business partner Pierre-Ange le Pogam in 2000. Since then, the company has produced a string of hits known to audiences around the world. With his writing partner, Robert Mark Kamen, many of EuropaCorp’s most successful productions have even been scripted or were born from an original story by Besson (Taken, From Paris With Love, The Transporter films). Known in cases to be an exceedingly “hands on” producer, some of the films he’s produced even bear the indelible hallmarks of Besson’s cinematographic and editing sensibilities (Kiss of the Dragon). Even if only a few Besson directed films feel like his work, more than most seem eager to appeal to a larger global audience, as Besson’s own work has, purposefully or otherwise.

For those of you who only know Jean Reno through films like Godzilla, The DaVinci Code or, of course, The Professional, it’s easy to think the actor has a decidedly limited range. After all, the 6′3″ gravel voiced thespian more than fits the part of a stoic bulk. Had he worked his way up the Hollywood food chain, he might have had a decidedly limited career based entirely on his scarred, hang-dog visage. I imagine him regularly accepting roles as “that guy”, playing characters named “Henchman”, “Thug 2″ or “Luca Brasi”.

While the translation from script to screen is often a tumultuous journey for any film, Léon is one that may have seen a drastically different reception in cinemas without some adjusting. In a previous article, I discussed the differences between the domestic and international versions of Léon; Primarily the addition of twenty minutes of footage in which Mathilda accompanies Léon to a number of hits, gets drunk, threatens suicide and attempts to seduce him. If you’ve never seen the extended version of the film, this hunk of footage sits neatly and squarely in the center of the film. It’s a decidedly harried and demanding few minutes of film for the young Natalie Portman in her first performance.

This article complements it’s predecessor, “Luc Besson: A Deconstruction of Style”. This installment is a video deconstruction of the themes inherent in Besson’s films by Stuart Fernie, of Invergordon Academy of Scotland. Fernie expertly dissects the commonalities between the plot and characters of Besson’s work in his nearly 40 minute long investigation of the French auteurs cinematic intent.

The term “auteur” gets thrown around a lot these days. In essence, an auteur director has created an identity that it so synonymous with their work as to become indistinguishable. Cubism is to Picasso as Italian-American cinema is to Scorsese. The work, and the artist, are one.

I have to say that I love fan art.  There’s no greater sign for the enduring popularity of a movie than to go plug your favorite title into the Deviant Art archives and see what comes up.

This interview with Natalie Portman was included on the 10th anniversary release of the film. Look for a brief glimpse of her original audition tape. She also admits to being terrified of Gary Oldman on set. Glad to see I wasn’t alone.

It’s no secret that something was lost in translating Luc Besson’s film from page to screen. Two short years after it’s 1994 debut, an extended version of Léon cropped up in French cinemas. Roughly 25 minutes of footage had been restored, all of it taking place in the latter two-thirds of the film. To say that this new version of the film deviated radically from the original version would be an understatement. Then once the original screenplay came to light, we began to understand just how radically the film had changed even from Besson’s original vision. But we’ll save that topic for another article.

Filmmakers go to drastic lengths to create enduring cinema. To create a film that is truly timeless is an art unto itself. I believe Léon accomplishes just this. Unfortunately behind the scenes documentaries often breath a startling amount of context into the time in which the film was made. HBO’s making of documentary is no exception. Behold a younger, startlingly less rotund Luc Besson, an oddly bespectacled Gary Oldman and a young Natalie Portman looking like a newly wedded sister-wife.

For me, Léon represents a milestone in my development as a cinephile. Though the film came out in 1994, I wouldn’t see it for four full years. Truth be told, I’d heard little about the film at all, though everyone and their brother had lauded Bessons’ previous film, La Femme Nikita as the second coming. One afternoon, my friend and I were perusing the video store when he suggested we pick the film up. “It’s great!”, he told me.

A few hours later I was a changed man.

Léon wasn’t like anything I’d ever seen before. It was an effortless mix of drama, style and action, subversion and mainstream. It didn’t feel like Hollywood films and featured a New York unlike any I’d ever seen. It was like a film from another world.