Despite the long, long hiatus since my last post, I figured I could start the new year off right by discussing les femmes, or actresses, since I've been quite remiss in covering them in this blog initiative...
I must recount how lovely Jeanne Moreau is, as well as how instrumental she has been in the world of filmmaking, for both mainstream and art house cinema. Her turn in Louis Malle's L'Anscenseur Pour L'Echafaud was just perfect. She often portrays distant, lonely women, but with such bite! and class...
I particularly enjoyed these classic Moreau-vienne films....
L'Ascenseur Pour L'Echafaud (1958)
Les Amants (1958)
La Notte (1961)
Jules Et Jim (1962)
Diary Of A Chambermaid (1964)
She was a true ingenue of gigantesque proportions, whipping directors like Louis Malle, François Truffaut, Luis Buñuel and Michelangelo Antonioni into shape (not to mention costars like Marcello Mastroianni, Alain Cuny), all the while establishing herself as a true player on the silver screen. Brava, chère Jeanne.
Oui, you guessed it: It's time to dissect the work of France's most well-known modern film director, and father of the Nouvelle Vague. Drumroll, s'il vous plait! It's Jean-Luc Godard!
He started as deftly employing Jean-Paul Belmondo as his affable, louche criminal in Breathless. The film is often noted as the first foray into the French New Wave of filmmaking --second maybe to to Truffaut's 400 Blows. [I won't go into what the French New Wave is in this post (view upcoming post devoted to it), but just know that it deals with 'jump cuts' and less conventional narratives, among other things like voiceovers and subversive topics --two of JLG's trademarks.] He also employed his then-wife, Swedish actress Anna Karina, as the femme protagonist in the majority of his 1960s films.
Godard's trademarks are his ridiculous non-narrative structure, forays into surrealism & use of philosophical tropes. When I watch I get the feeling I'm just listening to him recite Heidegger, Kant, Marx or Sartre, while Anna Karina bats her eyes in technicolor. It's unnerving sometimes, and that's why he is a true auteur in the filmmaking world: he doesn't bend to popular, conventional film themes or demands. Uniquely French, frankly unique. Amazing.
Breathless is a story about a petty thief, Michel Poiccard (Jean-Paul Belmondo), who tries to convince Patricia (Jean Seberg) to flee to Italy with him. She is an American student working for the New York Herald Tribune, and he steals cars & cash under an alias, Laszlo Kovacs. An unlikely pairing, but they prove to be a delight onscreen. He tough but sweet, she sweet but tough. Parfait!
Some of my other favorites:
A Woman is A Woman (1961)- Karina & Belmondo in musical-cum-love triangle narrative
Contempt (1963)- Brigitte Bardot & Michel Piccoli in the antithesis of romance in Italy
Band of Outsiders (1964)-Karina, Claude Brasseur & Sami Frey in a French take on American gangster movies
Alphaville (1965)- Karina & Eddie Constantine in a twisted, fascist-Sci-Fi -film noir
Pierrot Le Fou (1965)- Karina & Belmondo in a Bonnie & Clyde remake of odd proportions
Masculin Feminin (1966)- Jean-Pierre Léaud & Chantal Goya in "The Children of Marx and Coca-Cola."
Michelangelo Antonioni can be best remembered as an aesthete. His films were never lacking in beauty, and his long shots and sparse dialogue were some of his trademarks in cinema. He was the filmmaker's filmmaker, choosing visuals over dialogue and substance over form. In between his neorealist beginnings, and his later successful English film, Blowup (1966), lies a 'trilogy' of films devoted to love, life, and meaning. They are L'Avventura (1960), La Notte (1961), and L'Eclisse (1962).
L'Avventura starred a then-unknown Monica Vitti, as Claudia, a girl who goes on a yacht trip with her best friend, Anna (Lea Massari), Anna's boyfriend, Sandro (Gabriele Ferzetti), and some rich friends. Anna starts the film expressing her lackadaisical feelings for Sandro and her life situation. After swimming off the coast of Sicily, the crew ends up on a deserted volcanic island. Hours pass, and as the friends are ready to leave, Anna goes missing. As the party disperses on their search, Claudia and Sandro develop feelings for each other. Existential themes abound, Claudia expresses her confusion and inner turmoil, now that she is in love with her missing best friend's boyfriend. The two of them embark on a voyage that is part vacation, part search for Anna, part diversion from reality. The rest of the party goes on forgetting that Anna disappeared without a trace. This movie is particularly haunting because of the stark contrast of the beautiful imagery to the cold indifference of the characters. Sandro and Claudia exhibit ineffable feelings, pure and human. The film ends in sad portrayal of love and life lost.
In La Notte, we see a similar disconnect between man and woman. Marcello Mastroianni plays Giovanni, an established author, and Jeanne Moreau (speaking perfect Italian), his wife. The film surrounds a day in the life of the couple, where they visit a dying friend, go to a book party for Giovanni, a nightclub, and then a fancy party in the suburbs. Sparse dialogue, and beautifully cut scenes populate most of the film. Most scenes have at least one shot where the camera is docked at one focal point and the action flows in and out, as if we're observing rather than trailing the plot along. Jeanne's character appears disinterested, sad, and bored, while Marcello's Giovanni is pained and tired. Together they form 1/2 a couple, with neither really attempting to put in more effort to salvage their marriage. It resonates as a 1960s marriage set upon a post-industrial Italian modernist society, and the failures and existential issues each individual must deal with. Monica Vitti plays Giovanni's potential love interest, with great charm and success. Another beautiful story from a true modernist.
L'Eclisse, starring Vitti as Vittoria, and Alain Delon as Piero, glides along a similar theme of a woman's search for meaning in a reality less than spectacular. Vitti is engaged to Francisco Rabal, but their engagement ends within 15 minutes of the film's opening. Antonioni uses the camera well, by slowly focusing on images, faces, and stares, and holding our attention to his symbolism (an empty picture frame, the reflection of her shoes on the glossy lacquered floor of Rabal's apartment, etc). After dumping Rabal, Vitti ends up with stockbroker Delon, only to find that she's just as unhappy. This film is harder to analyse than his previous two, since the ending montage leaves much to the imagination. L'Eclisse (the Eclipse) could refer to the eclipse of Vitti's heart after two failed relationships, or the eclipsing of urban life by suburban ennui (she inhabits the lonely, dreary suburbs of Rome, full of apartment complexes, construction projects, vacant parking lots, and incessantly burning street lamps). Either way, this film is more morose than the others, yet we see Vitti smiling and laughing, which lightens it up towards the end. Regardless, it's a fitting end to a humanistic, modernist film trilogy.
Luis Buñuel was an amazing Spanish director who had a fine craft for surrealist film. In fact, you could even attribute the advent of surrealist film to him. Surrealist cinema's trademark is that it seeks to surprise, by creating strange objects & characters, illogical plotlines, bizarre costumes, freakish images, and above all, dream-like qualities, to shock and amuse the viewer. It was he, who, with his good friend Salvador Dalí, created the seminal and avant-garde film Un Chien Andalou in 1929. With a small budget, and nothing but images (sound was added later), they created a visual masterpiece. Set upon a story filled with imagery- death, love, dreams, bodies, man, woman- they depicted a world void of standards and conventional themes. They went on to collaborate on a second film, L'Age d'Or, with less success and critical acclaim.
Buñuel's career spanned half a century, and includes a mix of Spanish and French films. He directed some of foreign film's best-known movies [commentary for Nazarin, Viridiana, and La Voie Lactée coming soon].
In 1962 he started his collaboration with the famed French screenwriter, Jean-Claude Carrière, for Diary of a Chambermaid, starring Jeanne Moreau. Adapted from the Octave Mirbeau novel and filmed in gorgeous black-and-white, it focused on a bourgeois French family in the campagne. Scandal, lies, death and twisted characters abound, with Jeanne Moreau holding her own as a Parisian housekeeper who woos many men (including the devious Michel Piccoli) to get what she wants. My particular favorite was the patriarch, who, along with being bourgeois and snotty, happened to harbor a secret shoe fetish, and employs Moreau as a model for his shoe collection. In the backdrop lies the rise of French fascism in the 30s, which, in classic Buñuel fashion, is portrayed in a creepy, subversive way. This movie was the advent of the Buñuel-Carrière partnership that gave us 7 Buñuel masterpieces (3 of them I describe below).
One of his more popular films was the 1967 French film, Belle de Jour, that introduced the young Catherine Deneuve to stardom. The story is about a young Parisian housewife (full of ennui, not unlike a certain Flaubert character, Emma Bovary), and her entrance into a seedy, seclusive brothel. Aside from the fact that she was cloaked in the wonderful sartorial visions of Yves Saint Laurent, Deneuve shined as Buñuel's louche femme. Tragic interludes, somber moods and a stark portrait of love and life, this movie is as beautiful as Sévérine (Deneuve's character).
In the 1970s Buñuel and Carrière collaborated closely with the Spanish actor Fernando Rey. Together, all three made The Indiscreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and That Obscure Object of Desire. Buñuel & Carrière were nominated for Oscars, in best original screenplay and best adapted screenplay, respectively. These were beautifully made, full of satire & wit, all with a surrealist backdrop. In Indiscreet Charm, Fernando Rey plays an ambassador from a little-known (fake) Latin American country. He and his French bourgeois friends attempt to eat together for many meals, but get thwarted every time. Drugs, sex, scandals, and affairs mingle with imagery of war, death, religion, and, most importantly, dreams. Towards the end one isn't really sure if one is watching the visual representation of the characters' dreams, or a play. It's worth watching many times just to remember all the layered aspects to this film.
That Obscure Object has similar images, with fewer turns and less characters. Rey plays a rich businessman in Paris who falls in love with Conchita, played by two different actresses. One is a sexy, exotic, fiery girl, and the other, a reserved, quiet, and simple beauty. They appear back to back, from one scene to the next, as the same love interest. Ultimately the film focuses on the intangibility and inescapable death of love and passion. An interesting point to note is that Michel Piccoli, a frequent cast member of Buñuel's films, dubbed over the entire dialogue of Fernando Rey's character. (What strikes me as ironic is that Rey, who always spoke French with a Spanish accent, played the Frenchman in William Friedkin's The French Connection. He wasn't dubbed then, however...) This proved to be Buñuel's last and final film, and it was truly a masterpiece. In true Surrealism form, he wanted to burn all of his films upon his death. Thankfully for film admirers, they remain intact.
Scene from The Indiscreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie is below:
