“I’m so pleased that PBS has run all my films since 1968,” acclaimed documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman shared during a TCA press conference for his latest masterpiece, Menus-Plaisirs – Les Troisgros. The four-hour film is already an award winner, named Best Documentary by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the New York Film Critics Circle, and on the best films of the year list by The New York Times film critics. While the film will make its PBS broadcast debut on March 22nd, it’s available to stream early through the PBS app and website.
(Rahoul Ghose/PBS)
“I looked in Le Guide Michelin for a good restaurant,” Wiseman explained about this film’s origins. He was living in Paris, which was under lockdown during the pandemic, and he was invited to visit friends in Burgundy. “I found Troisgros, which is about an hour away, and went there for lunch. After lunch, César Troisgros, who's a fourth-generation and was taking over the control of the restaurant, came to our table. The chefs work the room, really. And without thinking about it in advance, I blurted out, ‘I'm a documentary filmmaker. Would you ever consider my making a film here?’ And he said, ‘Well, let me talk to my father.’ He came back half an hour later and said, ‘Why not?’ I always assumed that he talked with his father, but when I showed him the final film a year later, he told me that his father wasn't there that day. He looked me up on Wikipedia. And Wikipedia gave me the Good Housekeeping seal of approval.”
Menus-Plaisirs – Les Troisgros follows the Troisgros family and their three restaurants in France – particularly their flagship restaurant Troisgros, which has held three Michelin stars for 55 years. “I'm always impressed with a restaurant that has three stars,” Wiseman shared. “I think there are only seventeen or eighteen in France. I like to eat good food. I've been to a three-star restaurant maybe once or twice in my life. I didn’t know anything about the family dynamic before I started. I just assumed that the day-to-day operation of a three-star restaurant would make an interesting film.” It was a gamble that paid off, and to Frederick Wiseman’s surprise, the restaurant fed him every day, on the house. “I haven't submitted my claim to the Guinness Book of Records yet, but I ate seventy times at Troisgros.”
“The film is as much in an abstract way about the creation of art, even though the art is transitory and ephemeral as it is about literally the cooking and preparing,” Wiseman explained, whose lens has often focused on the arts. “The product resembles great art, and it reminded me of the experience I had in making a movie about the Comédie-Française, or seeing the paintings in the National Gallery in London, or the American Ballet Theatre. Because the art was not only in inventing or imagining the recipes, but also in presentation. You see in the film that either César or Michel inspected every plate before it left the kitchen. If a kidney bean was a sixteenth of an inch off-center, you see them with tweezers making sure that the design is right, or the color combinations on the plates are right. There's one point in the film where Michel was talking to his sous chefs and he said, ‘You have to think that you're arranging a beautiful bouquet of flowers.’ The combination of being concerned about the quality of the taste as well as the quality of the presentation, I thought, made them great artists.”
“Fred is a force unto himself,” added John Bredar, vice president of GBH National Programming, who co-funded Menus-Plaisirs – Les Troisgros and Wiseman’s most recent films. “We don't have any editorial involvement with Fred's work, we're entirely in a supportive role.” Wiseman and a small crew spent seven weeks shadowing father and son Michel and César Troisgros, accumulating one hundred and forty hours of footage, which was refined into the four-hour film that can now be enjoyed through PBS. “[Fred Wiseman] is indefatigable, and he is so life of mind and spirit that you can see many more films to come,” John Bredar concluded.
Menus-Plaisirs – Les Troisgros is now streaming on PBS, and will holds its broadcast premiere on March 22nd. Check local listings for exact timing in your area.