Julien Duvivier Press Release
THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART PRESENTS A 22-FILM RETROSPECTIVE OF THE FRENCH DIRECTOR AND SCREENWRITER JULIEN DUVIVIER Exhibition Features Four Films Starring the Legendary Actor Jean Gabin, Including the Celebrated Pépé le Moko (1937) Composer Stephen Sondheim Will Introduce Un Carnet de bal (1937) on May 14 Julien Duvivier May 1 – 28, 2009 The Roy and Niuta Titus Theaters New York, April 7, 2009—The widely varied and influential career of French director and screenwriter Julien Duvivier (1896-1967) is rediscovered in Julien Duvivier, a month-long, 22-film retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art, from May 1 through 28, 2009. Working consistently for four decades, both in Europe and Hollywood, in a darkly poetic realist style, Duvivier made popular melodramas, thrillers, religious epics, comedies, wartime propaganda, musicals, and literary adaptations of novels by Emile Zola, Leo Tolstoy, Irène Némirovsky, and Georges Simenon. This exhibition features the New York premieres of four films that have either been recently restored or are shown in Duvivier’s preferred versions, as well as new translations of 14 films. On May 14, at 8:00 p.m., the composer Stephen Sondheim will introduce Duvivier’s classic sketch film Un Carnet de bal (1937), which he once intended to adapt as a Broadway musical. The retrospective Julien Duvivier is organized by Joshua Siegel, Associate Curator, Department of Film, The Museum of Modern Art, and Lenny Borger, film historian and translator. Jean Renoir once proclaimed, “If I were an architect and I had to build a monument to the cinema, I would place a statue of Duvivier above the entrance… This great technician, this rigorist, was a poet.” Duvivier, who was also championed by other estimable filmmakers and writers, including Ingmar Bergman, Claude Chabrol, Graham Greene, Elaine May, Agnès Varda, and Orson Welles, is largely known for his collaborations with the great actor Jean Gabin in the 1930s.
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