The Films the Films

THE FRENCH NEW WAVE March 9 continued tions that were a signature of their LE BEAU SERGE (1958) Director: Claude work. Thus, their intellectual fer Chabrol. 97 minutes. With Gerald ment was translated into highly Blain, Jean-Claude Brialy, Bernadette spirited recombinations and in LaFont. troductions of new elements into the grammar of film. The first New Wave feature: a "moral" drama about a wanderer who Some of their main influences were returns to his roots to find his old American genre films, even B pic village friend a drunkard. In- tures (like Monogram Studios', fluenced by Hitchcock, Chabrol here dedicatee of Godard's BREATHLESS), displays his own style of critical with borrowings to various degrees detachment in dealing with the theme from Hitchcock, Lang, etc. These in of "exchange." The bucolic setting fluences were the staples of Bazin's would be reversed a year later in his "auteur" theory. Bazin stressed mise city mouse/country mouse {jrama THE en scene, the fabrication of a COUSINS, made with' the same leads. self-contained artistically con the escape into the House of Fiction trolled visual universe by the in CELINE AND JULIE ... , illustrates March 16 director (cf. Truffaut's DAY FOR the extremes of poetic inspiration NIGHT) as the center of creativity in and improvisation in the New Wave. THE SIGN OF THE LION (1959) Director: film. Rohmer and Chabrol, for exam Eric Rohmer. Approximately 90 ple, wrote a book on Hitchcock, as Unlike most films of their time, none minutes. did Truffaut later on, all ap of these turn into star preciating the moral dimensions of vehicles, either distanced or A simple Renoiresque story (cf. his particular "universe," previously derivative in their dependence of BOUDU SAVED FROM DROWNING) about ignored by "serious" critics. their effects upon "a tradition of Pierre, a violinist waiting for an quality," the well-made, smoothly inheritance, alone and isolated in a There was also a harkening back to edited, glossy films against which Paris "deserted" in August. He meets the classic and experimental films of they were so much in revolt. If, a tramp and forms a musical street the 1930s period: Vigo (ZERO FOR CON eventually, some of these directors' act for tourists so he can survive styles and ideas were to supplant or DUCT = THE 400 BLOWS) and Renoir until his friends return. Dec~ptively (Chabrot's LEDA). And though the even become the new mainstream in simple, the film is much about the films have the same naturalistic feel France, indeed, world cinema for a light, mood and atmosphere of a of early French sound films, there is time, it is still instructive to see particular place and time (e.g., FULL no slavishness to the literal; in fact, these early iconoclastic examples of MOON IN PARIS) with all the hallmarks there is a revelling, as in Vigo and the first crest of the New Wave. of Rohmer's later style. Renoir, in the self-reflexive nature of cinema. Elements of voyeurism, -David Schloss March 23 surrealism, histrionic manjpulations of reality abound. They admired THE FILMS OPHELIA (1962) Director: Claude energy combined with meaning, in Chabrol. 105 minutes. With Alida novation versus the gentility of the Valli, Andre Jocelyn, Claude Cerval. purely literary on film. March 2 A man imagines himself to be in The films in this series indicate Hamlet's situation and projects roles some of these trends. PARIS VU PAR ... SIX IN PARIS (1964) Directors: upon his mother and uncle. An is a paean to Paris itself, in which Chabrol, Douchet, Godard, Pollet, exploration of the nature of evil and each of the six sections is meant to Rohmer, Rouch. 98 minutes. With madness in a psychological depth exemplify the temper and spirit of a Stephane Audran, Claude Chabrol, beyond the Hitchcockian, with the particular Parisian quarter, a Joanna Shimkus, et al. particular brand of Chabrot's naturalistic un-studio-bound exercise perverse humor about high bourgeois in freedom. THE SIGN OF THE LION, as Six stories of Parisians, family circles. The film features a in most later Rohmer films, is a organized by neighborhood. Chabrot's film within a film produced by the study of a particular place and time LA MOUETTE, a typically funny/tragic progressively mad would-be Hamlet, of year as much as a "story." Here it devastating demonstration of one of many parallels to is slight, but layered and deepened bourgeois family life, stars Chabrol Shakespeare's text. with particularities of observation, himself and his wife. Godard's allowing the characters to follow 'MONTPARNASSE ET LEVALLOIS expands an March 30 their own random inclinations in the anecdote from A WOMAN IS A WOMAN freedom of Renoir's BOUDU, the light with typical Godardian playfulness: a CELINE AND JULIE GO BOATING (1974) and moods of summer mixed with woman mixes up letters to her two Director: Jacques Rivette. 195 Rohmer's usual intelligent talk. Both lovers (shot in cinema verite style minutes. With Juliette Berto, of Chabrot's films are exercises in by an American, Albert Maysles). Dominique Labourier. Subtitle: "cutting to the bone" moral iI Rohmer's PLACE DE l'ETOILE is as much Phantom Ladies Over Paris. IU,strations of dichotomies (e.g., the about its location, an enormous the city mouse/country mouse theme of circular hub of avenues, as the Two woman friends enter the House lE B~AU SERGE, which he would return guilt-ridden fastidious clerk at its of Fiction to save a child from being to often, as in lES COUSINS, lES center. Jean Rouch is best' known for murdered. Outside, it's Paris; BICRES, etc.) with a Hitchcockian CHRONICLE OF A SUMMER, an early inside, stories loosely based on Henry overlay of guilt and moral reckoning. cinem~ verite feature. James are being enacted. An aura of In OPHELIA he gives us another focus: mysticism prevails: themes of fiction the more pervers~ and flamboYClnt y- vs. reality, role-reversals, chological self-indulgence of the Pirandellan characters in search of characters, of Hitchcockian propor an author, abound in this beautifuliy tions, but with overtones of the photographed lyrical comic drama. schematic fatalisms of Fritz lang. Typically, Rivette expe(iments with Rivette, with his explorations of "real time" and the relation of the dream/reality, art versus life, with actor to his or her role. .

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