The producer Klaus Hellwig suggested to Resnais that he should make a film with the British playwright
David Mercer. The two men met in London and, overcoming the obstacle that neither of them spoke the language of the other fluently, they began a series of discussions of drafts and redraftings which extended over a year. Mercer's original idea concerned the situation of political prisoners held in a sports stadium, symbolising a world in collapse. Gradually the outline shifted to the imagination of an aging writer seeking the material for a novel. Resnais proposed making the whole film into a metaphor of creation and disintegration; he also made extensive alterations to the chronology of the scenes as written by Mercer. The title of the film was also supplied by the producer, signifying both the name of the estate where the ageing novelist lives and also the controlling hand with which he arranges the fate of his characters. The name evoked further associations with the American city of
Providence, the home of the fantasy writer
H. P. Lovecraft whose gothic stories inspired some of the imagery in the film. The original intention was to shoot the film in the United States in New England but for reasons of cost this became impracticable. Certain exterior scenes were filmed in Providence and in Albany in the US, while others were done in Brussels, Antwerp, and Louvain; these were used in conjunction with each other to form a composite cityscape for the background of certain scenes. Studio scenes were filmed in Paris. The final birthday party sequence was shot on location at the château de Montméry at
Ambazac near Limoges. Filming took place between April and June 1976. The set designs were created by Jacques Saulnier, a regular collaborator with Resnais, and he won a
César award for his work. In order to create a funereal atmosphere, grey and dark shades predominated in the design and strong colours were excluded. Saulnier recalled that Resnais made him read Lovecraft in order to imbue Langham's house with the presence of death: "I imagined it like a family tomb". In some scenes (created in Clive Langham's imagination) the layout of a set changes between one shot and another (for instance, the door in the corner of a room in one shot appears at the bottom of a flight of stairs in another; a conversation between four characters alone in one scene continues in the midst of a party in the next). Some settings use a painted backdrop which has a deliberately theatrical appearance; one of them portrays a seascape in which artificial waves surge up among the painted rocks (achieved by blowing bursts of polystyrene foam pieces from beneath the set).
Providence was Resnais's first film in English, and a prestigious cast of British and American actors was engaged despite the restrictions on the budget. Resnais held a longstanding ambition to cast John Gielgud in a substantial film role, having seen him performing on stage, and was encouraged to approach him by Dirk Bogarde. Gielgud later described the project as "by far the most exciting film I have ever made", and noted the impressive calmness of Resnais throughout filming which made him "wonderful to work with". He also recalled the contribution made by Florence Malraux, Resnais's wife, who spoke fluent English and helped overcome the director's limitations in that respect. The original intention had been to make the film in French, translating it from the English. Resnais however soon felt that it would not work in French: "I could hear it so clearly in English and anyway, Mercer's writing depended on the English inflection." The producers agreed, but insisted that there should also be a French version." The process of dubbing the completed work into French was undertaken with particular care: the voice actors included
Claude Dauphin as Clive,
François Périer as Claude,
Gérard Depardieu as Kevin,
Nelly Borgeaud as Sonia, and
Suzanne Flon as Helen. For the music Resnais turned to the Hungarian-born Hollywood composer
Miklós Rózsa, whom he had admired especially for his work on the 1949 version of
Madame Bovary. Rózsa later cited Resnais as one of the few directors in his experience who really understood the function of music in film. Soundtrack albums were eventually issued on LP and CD.
Themes Resnais described the film as a "
macabre divertissement", insisting that he wanted it to be funny despite the darkness of its themes. He also said that one of the questions which the film poses is whether we are the people we think we are or whether we become what others make of us in their judgments. A central theme is the process of artistic creation: "[
Providence] is a meta-film, a film about the making of films, a work of art about the fabricating of art works." Expanding this idea: "The film suggests some symbiotic relation between creator and created script.... The characters are [Clive's] creations, yet he speaks to them as if they were wilful children. Their status is ambiguous since they a composite: they are dream figures, created characters and also individuals who are part of Clive's proximate reality." In counterpoint with creativity, the theme of death recurs constantly, not so much as a subject in itself but in Clive's struggle to avoid it: Resnais described the film as telling the story of the old writer's determination not to die, and his continual drinking and imagining are the evidence of his refusal to let go. As well as the funereal aspects of the decor and the scenes of autopsy, the repeated instances of metamorphosis of a character into a werewolf is linked to the advent of death, with the implication that the process of dying reduces man to animal. Clive also has an obsession that the young are trying to push him aside, to kill him, which he visualises in the scenes of the stadium/concentration camp where the old are rounded up by soldiers who are all young. As several writers about the film have observed, the opening sequence mirrors the beginning of
Citizen Kane: the plaque outside the house, the camera closing in on a lighted doorway, the breaking of a glass object, the close-up of the lips of Clive as he curses. Whereas the personality of Kane is explored through the separate 'versions' of people who knew him, in
Providence it is the central figure of Clive who draws the characters of the members of his family and gives a reflection of himself through them. One of the thoughts on his own style of expression that was written for the character of Clive by David Mercer has been noted by many critics as especially applicable to Resnais himself. Citing a criticism of his own creative work that the pursuit of style has often resulted in a lack of feeling, Clive then argues back that "Style is feeling—in its most elegant and economic expression." ==Reception and influence==