Laurent Boutonnat, a plagiarist?

[Corsaire]

Some have said that the work of LB has heavily been inspired from previous work. To a certain extent every artist is a thief and there is certainly nothing wrong with drawing inspiration from other artists. Plagiarism, on the other hand, is different as it is associated with appropriating ideas and concepts from others without providing much further creative input. Of the cases of plagiarism which have been cited against LB, I have found only one to be convincing and quite frankly, even troubling. An author who maintains a site dedicated to LB and who admires his work claims that the 1994 Giorgino movie is a blatant case of plagiarism. The original work that LB apparently copied is the 1979 Russian movie called ‘The Savage Hunt of King Stach’. Here is the case:

http://jodel.saint.marc.free.fr/king_stakh.htm

The side to side comparison video might not play well on this site and here it is on Dailymotion:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xeegzi_giorgino-est-il-une-imposture_shortfilms?start=236

If you can read French you will have understood that the plot of the two movies are quite similar, if not identical ,apart from some details. But what really make the case are the similarities between many of the scenes from both movies. Also, it seems that LB has/had an obsession with Russian movies.

If anyone has any other convincing plagiarism cases against LB, whether it is in his movies, videos, music or lyrics, it would be interesting to have them posted here.

[Jake04]

If you can read French you will have understood that the plot of the two movies are quite similar, if not identical ,apart from some details. But what really make the case are the similarities between many of the scenes from both movies. Also, it seems that LB has/had an obsession with Russian movies.

Nice thread, Corsaire! I'm not sure if Vladimir Nabokov's novel was made into a movie in Russia. But, I guess that explains his ML work.

[Corsaire]

Yes, the Russian reference also made me think about ML, but the book by Nabokov has inspired so many artists in many areas (Kubrick, Umberto Eco, Sting...), I am not sure that it is its Russian origin that attracted LB. :)

[off topic]

Even Céline Dion had a go at it. She had a huge success in Québec with a song named Lolita(Trop jeune pour aimer) - Lolita(Too young for love) - when she was 19. It was later revealed by Dion herself that she was then in love with her manager, René Angélil, who was 45 at the time. Many have claimed they were already in a relationship even before that. Even if Lolita(trop jeune pour aimer)'s lyrics are not as ingenious as ML, which contains many “hidden” erotic and even pornographic references, they are nevertheless quite explicit, considering what was going on in Dion’s personal life at the time:

http://www.metrolyrics.com/lolita-trop-jeune-pour-aimer-lyrics-celine-dion.html

[/off topic]