neuFFBlague's channel
Loading...
220
subscribers
188,294
video views
Featured Playlists
Ρіеrrοt lе Fοu 1965 Gοdаrd
"At the end of Godard's "Band of Outsiders" (1964), it's promised that the next film will be the further adventures of Franz and Odile in South America, in Cinemascope and color. Well, maybe they didn't get as far as South America, but "Pierrot le Fou" begins with Anna Karina dressed in her school girl outfit (with matching braided buns) from "Band of Outsiders": this film gets as far as the Riviera, but it is in Cinemascope and color, as Ferdinand and Marianne try to escape from the trappings of the bourgeoise world (as exemplified by the cocktail party, in which Ferdinand meets the American director Samuel Fuller, who tells him "What is Cinema?"). For Godard, "Pierrot le Fou" represented an important milestone in his career: in it, he would document the end of his relationship with Anna Karina. It is the most agonizingly romantic of his films: there are constant reminders as the narration insists on the ultimate mystery, the inability of one person to know another (there is the moment when Anna Karina is seen in close-up, as the narrator wonders when she says it's a nice day, does she really mean it's a nice day?), and the desolation of romantic desire.
"Yet the brilliant color, the rapid rhythms, even the song-and-dance numbers (there are three) color the unhappiness, making this a vibrant tragicomedy. The film veers between exuberance and exhaustion, yet for all its free-wheeling formal invention, this is one of Godard's most emotionally direct films, a piercing lament on the perils of love.
"(Godard would make two more films with Karina, the short "Anticipation", and "Made in USA", both films far more "formal" and less emotionally engaged; the end of the Godard-Karina marriage, the subtext of "Pierrot le Fou", would also inspire Jacques Rivette's "L'Amour Fou".) " (Daryl Chin on IMDB)
13 videos
Play all(13)
13 videos
Play all(13)
Lа Flеur du Μаl 2003 Сһаbrοl
Intriguing study of a French haute-bourgeoise woman who runs for mayor in spite of some inconvenient indiscretions in the family's past. Her husband is against the move, but seems to abide it stoically-- though his own family wonder if a nasty anonymous handout was his doing. One of the indiscretions involves an incestious love between Aunt Line, a very endearing older-woman role, and her brother-- the younger generation consists of the daughter of the mayorial candidate and the disgruntled spouse, and her son by an earlier marriage-- or, is he? Seems she was carrying on with her current husband at the time, and the young couple could be brother and sister.
The young couple seem fated to play out Aunt Line's story, including a horrific crime story that plays like comedy, as the 80-something Aunt Line pitches in to help dispose of the body. I don't know how Chabrol keeps such a light gallic touch when dealing with some of the story elements, or instance the issue of Nazi collaboration so prominent lately in French movies, where it once was strenst verboten.
Directed by Claude Chabrol and boasting a stellar cast, particularly an institution of French theater and cinema, Suzanne Flon who plays Aunt Line. Highly recommended in spite of some lukewarm reactions in IMDB comments.
11 videos
Play all(11)
11 videos
Play all(11)
Ѕаnѕ Τοіt nі Lοі (Vаgаbοnd) 1985 Varda
Much is made of the "unsympathetic" nature of the title character, but to me there is an internal consistency (and "integrity" in that sense of the word) in her life that so many more orderly lives lack. Here we have a tramp who hitchhikes, bums cigs and food and drink, and beds down where she can, most often outside-- you'd think it would be her and not the more "normal" characters whose life is a mad scramble. Yes, Mona Bergeron is volatile, anger is her emotional default setting, and human relations are most often a matter of snide disregard and outbursts of hostility that run both ways. But she doesn't care about what worries other people, she doesn't have the expectations that bring frequent disappointment to others, and doesn't fear going hungry, or being out in the cold, or having nothing to do-- that last one is something she never wastes a moment of worry on. She embodies apathy without anxiety, and suffers the absurdities of life with more serenity than others, for all her anger-- this to me gives her something to respect, and I get a chuckle out of the exasperation she causes everywhere she goes. I know that's not a sympathetic quality either, so maybe this character is more in sync with "normal" people than it first seems. She plays out an insouciance the rest of us cannot feel, because we have reasons, on so many levels, that we have to get along with people.
We have to watch ourselves and behave, so there's a vicarious interest in this character who doesn't-- plus we get the added satisfaction of surviving, which of course can't be said for Mona.
Directed by Agnes Varda, with Sandrine Bonnaire playing Mona.
11 videos
Play all(11)
11 videos
Play all(11)
Сœurѕ (Prίνаtе Fеаrѕ іn Рublіс Ρlасеѕ)
The "plot" of this film is a sort of meshwork of scenes that interconnect the lives of six characters, in both intimately personal and workplace interactions, mixing the crucial with the mundane-- and of course underscoring a pointlessness always latent in human endeavors, as well as the yearning that such were not the case. These characters seem singularly challenged by the task of doing what they all seem so earnestly to want to do, and watching them strain at communicating, connecting and meaning something to each other is-- well, très ennuyant, to borrow a phrase.
People like me who were floored by L'Année Dernière à Marienbad, without quite knowing why, will probably enjoy and admire this powerful but quietly heart-wrenching film. For people who hated that film, also without quite knowing why, Cœurs may be tough going. It is deliberately banal, static, and fraught with tiny contradictions and bits of illogic-- a nod to the classic Absurdist playwrights who were so cutting-edge when I was a young man. It is also dominated by a score that suffuses the action with a relentless, monochrome poignancy, and-- well, I'm starting to talk like a parody of a blurb-writer for Cahiers du Cinéma, so either I've found that elusive Resnais groove some people suspect doesn't really exist, or I've wandered off the set entirely. Is this thing on?
13 videos
Play all(13)
view all
13 videos
Play all(13)
Advertisement
About neuFFBlague's channel
more
less