june 26 - july 16. 1998

photo: THE GOLDEN COACH

This series was curated by Joanna Ney.

Note: all films are subtitled in English except as noted.

calendar

program notes and times

THE GOLDEN COACH / LE CARROSSE D'OR
Jean Renoir, Italy, 1952; 105 minutes
En route from the serenity of The River (India) to the exuberance of his homecoming film FRENCH CANCAN, Renoir detoured to 18th-century South America--to film a magnificent Technicolor adaptation of Prosper Merimée's one-act play. Vivaldi's baroque music inspired the screenplay, about a tempestuous leading lady (Anna Magnani) of a slightly stranded commedia dell'arte troupe, who finds herself embroiled simultanteously in three love affairs. When one of her lovers presents her with a golden coach, the actress must choose between the theater and a conventional life. Friday, June 26: 2, 6:15 and 10 pm
Saturday, June 27: 6:10 pm

FRENCH CANCAN
Jean Renoir, France, 1955; 105m
Fifteen years after Rules of the Game was violently rejected by French audiences, Renoir returned triumphantly to gift France with one of his most exuberant and most gorgeous films. FRENCH CANCAN re-creates the world of La Belle Époque in telling the story of the Moulin Rouge and the dance that made it legendary. Love, dance, color, music, theatricality are lyrically interlayered in a vibrant celebration of art in life and a life in the arts. Few films can match Renoir's for sheer exhilaration--ultimately even the audience is included in the dance. (With the incomparable Jean Gabin, and cameos by Edith Piaf and Patachou.)
Friday, June 26: 4 and 8:15 pm;
Saturday, June 27: 4 and 8:10 pm

CHILDREN OF PARADISE / LES ENFANTS DU PARADIS
Directed by Marcel Carné and written by Jacques Prévert,
1945; 195m
One of those legendary masterworks that never lets you down, a glorious celebration of life and art, specifically 19th-century French theater and its "gods and goddesses." Out on the teeming Boulevard of Crime or alone on a stage, beautiful Garance (ineffable Arletty) glows like a luminous moon around which the dramatic action swirls. Loved by an ethereal mime (Jean-Louis Barrault), lusty actor Lemaître (Jean-Pierre Brasseur), a wealthy nobleman (Louis Salou), and even Lacenaire, the gangster-dandy (Marcel Herrand), Arletty's Garance manages to be both theatrical muse and flesh-and-blood objet d'art. Shot in the midst of WWII in occupied France, LES ENFANTS DU PARADIS is a miracle of art on all fronts.
Sunday, June 28: 4 and 7:30 pm; Monday, June 29: 2 pm

CYRANO DE BERGERAC
Jean-Paul Rappeneau, 1990; 135 minutes
The old, but enduringly resonant love story: CYRANO is a peerless hero, as adept with sword as with poetry--but the poor soul has a horrendously long nose! The woman he loves, the beauteous Roxane, is madly in love with a good-looking, inarticulate officer--so our good-hearted Cyrano provides the words that win Roxane's heart. Truth will out, but unfortunately the unmasking comes too late. The Faber Companion to Foreign Films ranks this film as "epic and impressive. Handsomely mounted and well acted, it captures the 17th-century French atmosphere in a series of rumbustious set pieces--particularly effective in the opening sequence, set in a theatre, which introduces the main characters. Depardieu plays Cyrano with sincerity, vigor, and clarity...the pain inherent in the character is ultimately very affecting." (English language subtitling by Anthony Burgess.)
Wednesday, July 1: 2 and 6:30 pm

BEAUMARCHAIS, THE SCOUNDREL
Edouard Molinaro, France, 1996; 116 minutes
"A thinking man's swashbuckler, a fun lover's history lesson, and everybody's civilized entertainment." -- John Simon
Best known in the U.S. for directing the smash-hit La Cage aux folles (1978), Edouard Molinaro here dramatizes the high life and wild times of Pierre de Beaumarchais--popular playwright (The Barber of Seville, The Marriage of Figaro), notorious rake, often-jailed defender of the common man, confidante of kings. This adaptation of a Sacha Guitry play has elements of Amadeus and The Scarlet Pimpernel, and overflows with lovely ladies and sumptuous period design (the film was partly shot at the Palace of Versailles). The multifariously talented playwright Beaumarchais (Fabrice Luchini) created the character of aristocrat-bashing Figaro, smuggled guns to American rebels, and may have offed his first two (titled) wives for their fortunes. Michel Piccoli, Jean-Claude Brialy and Janne Yanne make cameo appearances.
Wednesday, July 1: 4:30 and 9:10 pm

THE CURTAIN RISES / ENTREE DES ARTISTES
Marc Allégret, 1938; 90 minutes
Two young drama students (Odette Joyeux and Janine Darcey) at the Paris Conservatory fall in love with--and vie for--a handsome colleague of theirs (Claude Dauphin). When one of the women is murdered, the object of their affections becomes a prime suspect. What wonderfully enriches the texture of this romantic melodrama is the fascinating gestalt of time and place: the cafes, the school itself, and acting instructions delivered by the great French star Louis Jouvet, playing himself as drama teacher. And what a cast! Along with the lovers' triangle and Jouvet come Bernard Blier, Dalio, Carette and Sylvie.
with
ADOLESCENCE
Vladimir Forgency, 1966; 22 minutes
"A kind of masterpiece. Never have I seen so well captured the sad and rough poetry which pervades those resonant, bare, cold rooms, where the pianist plays Chopin while marking time, and where the teacher, a star become old, sits beside the heater, bundled up with shawls and neckerchiefs. The teenagers work, serious, intent, almost ethereal. But brilliant, svelte, superb, in spite of the wool leggings and the raveled slippers. The eyes of the fallen star reflect the vanished splendors which there before her are reclaiming body and soul. A small and poignant film, 30 minutes of truth about the devotion and the grandeur of the dance." -- Le Soir (Paris)
Thursday, July 2: 2 and 6:30 pm
Friday, July 3: 4:10 and 8:40 pm

LE BAL
Ettore Scola, 1982; 112 minutes
Events in France from 1936 to the present day are reflected inside a ballroom by the changing music and characters who have frequented the place over the years. A sort of "La-Vie-en-Roseland" view of modern French history, drawing much of its imagery from movie mythology. But behind myth and over-the-top performances, one senses the pain of real events underlined with the potency of cheap music. Films speak in many ways: Le Bal achieves eloquence without a single line of dialogue. -- Faber Companion to Foreign Film
Thursday, July 2: 4:20 and 8:50 pm
Friday, July 3: 2 and 6:30 pm

IRMA VEP
Olivier Assayas, 1996; 97 minutes
Assayas' follow-up to Cold Water (NYFF 1994) is self-reflexive cinema at its most intriguing. Truffaut's alter ego, Jean-Pierre Léaud, and Hong Kong's greatest star, Maggie Cheung, head the cast of this metacinematic tale about a temperamental director in a slump who attempts a remake of Feuillade's silent classic, Les Vampires. As the production moves from disorder to chaos, the director drifts toward a nervous breakdown. Boundaries blur as Maggie Cheung's character in the framing story--also named "Maggie Cheung"--perpetrates a burglary á la Irma Vep, Les Vampires' anagrammatically named jewel thief, at the hotel where she is staying during the shooting.
Saturday, July 4: 4:30 and 8:20 pm

LA VIE DE BOHÈME
Aki Kaurismäki, 1992; 100 minutes
Kaurismäki loves to show the minutae and mundanity that fill the days of his characters--who seem always to live as though they believe that, really, "life is elsewhere." Whether it's a Soviet-bloc roots-rock band leaving its native 'hood (Leningrad Cowboys Go America) or a downtrodden factory worker waiting for a life-changing phone call (The Match Factory Girl), Kaurismäki always finds absurd humor and pathos in his characters' crises, courting but never quite crossing the line to bathos. In this Finnish updating of the Murger text (source for the Puccini opera), Kaurismäki follows three middle-aged artists--writer, painter and composer--through the inevitable misadventures of la vie quotidienne.
Saturday, July 4: 6:20 & 10:10 pm

DAY FOR NIGHT / LA NUIT AMERICAINE
François Truffaut, 1973; 115 minutes
One of the best-loved films of the 1970s, DAY FOR NIGHT is Truffaut's valentine to the movies--not so much the art of the cinema (though the film itself is a shining example of that) as the screwy, maddening, communal, playful, workaholic, repetitious, accident-prone day-to-day business of making pictures. Truffaut himself plays director Ferrand, a man entrusted with shooting a romantic potboiler (Meet Pamela) on the Riviera while coping with a Pirandellian love affair, an inconveniently pregnant sex star, a veteran actress whose memory is deserting her, a matinee idol whose personal life clashes with his image, and--by no means least--a kitten that refuses to be kittenish on camera. Dedicated to Lillian and Dorothy Gish, DAY features a glorious cast--the Oscar-nominated Valentina Cortese, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Jacqueline Bisset, Jean-Pierre Aumont, Nathalie Baye, Alexandra Stewart.
Sunday, July 5: 4:30 pm
Monday, July 6: 2 and 6:15 pm

MAN ABOUT TOWN / LE SILENCE EST D'OR
René Clair, 1947; 89 minutes
After nearly a decade and a half of making movies in England and Hollywood, René Clair returned to his native land--and native language--following WWII. LE SILENCE EST D'OR looks back past "the recent unpleasantness" to 1906 and the origins of the French cinema. "Silence is golden" takes on any number of meanings as veteran showman Maurice Chevalier, trying his hand at the new business of being a film impresario, also finds himself in love with the same young woman as his protégé. Clair's intricate Chinese box of a screenplay recalls the ingenuity of his late-silent / early-talkie comedy classics The Italian Straw Hat and Le Million. With François Périer, Marcelle Derrien, Dany Robin, Raymond Cordy, Paul Ollivier.
Sunday, July 5: 6:45 pm
Monday, July 6: 4:20 and 8:30 pm

SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR
Malka Robowska, Josée Dayan, 1982; 110 minutes
A candid portrait of a remarkable woman: De Beauvoir discusses her political views, the student uprising of 1968, sexual fidelity, aging and death. Interwoven with the interviews are photographs and film clips of events--personal and historical--that have shaped the thinking of the author of the groundbreaking The Second Sex.
Tuesday, July 7: 8:15 pm; Wednesday, July 8: 4 pm

BEAUTIES OF THE NIGHT /
LES BELLES-DE-NUIT
René Clair, 1952; 89 minutes A small-town music teacher (Gérard Philipe) escapes from the frustrations of anonymity and hectic modern life by dreaming about being a celebrated composer in ever-more-distant historical periods: fin-de-siècle Paris, 19th-century Algeria, the French Revolution, the era of Richelieu and the Musketeers....And every dream incorporates and re-casts one of the young women so out-of-reach in his waking life (Gina Lollobrigida and Martine Carol among them). Clair's last purely light-hearted comedy.
with
GLORY TO FELIX TOURNACHON
André Martin and Michel Boschet,
1967; 20 minutes
A film portrait of the man who made the first, enduring photographic portraits of France's leading 19th century artists--among them Honoré de Balzac, Victor Hugo, and the divine Sarah Bernhardt.
Tuesday, July 7: 6:15 pm; Wednesday, July 8: 2 pm

JULES AND JIM
François Truffaut, 1962; 104 minutes
As a youthful New Waver in love with the art of filmmaking, Truffaut pulled out all the stops in J & J: homages to Renoir, Griffith, and Ford, helicopter and crane shots, irises in and out, freeze frames, dissolves, and handheld camerawork abound in this soaringly romantic movie about two writers (Oscar Werner and Henri Serre) and la belle dame sans merci they both love (Jeanne Moreau). Catherine--their muse--believes and acts in terrible, beautiful absolutes, as though every moment of her life was in the process of becoming novel, painting, film. Her lovers, lesser artists than she, cherish the printed page, the painted canvas, the sculpted stone--art contained--but cannot cope with the creative/destructive power of a woman who ruthlessly demands of life that which it can rarely deliver: consistent meaning and form, in fact, art. J & J pulses with Truffaut's transcendently joyful identification of woman with cinema.
Friday, July 10: 2 pm; Saturday, July 11: 4 and 8 pm

CÉLESTE
Percy Adlon, 1981; 107 minutes
Based on the memoir of Céleste Albaret, who kept house for Marcel Proust during the decade he completed The Remembrance of Things Past, this is one of the most mysterious and satisfying films of the '80s. The wife of Proust's chauffeur, Céleste is content to sit for hours awaiting the tinkle of the bell cuing her latest service for Monsieur; she seems the last person who would understand what her employer is up to, yet in her ineffable fashion she becomes his indispensable collaborator. The performances of Eva Mattes and Jürgen Arndt are as uncanny as their characters' rapport, and Percy Adlon's direction is a miracle of exquisite judgment.
Friday, July 10: 4 pm; Saturday, July 11: 6 and 10 pm

VAN GOGH
Maurice Pialat, 1991; 155 minutes
For his remarkably idiosyncratic and understated portrayal of Van Gogh, Jacques Dutronc earned a César for Best Actor. Unlike Kirk Douglas in Vincente Minnelli's Lust for Life, Tim Roth in Robert Altman's Vincent and Theo, and Paul Cox's documentary take on Vincent, Dutronc and Pialat show Van Gogh not as tortured soul, but as lover of women, art and every pleasure of the senses. This gorgeously visualized picture focuses on his last days in Auvers-Sur-Oise, giving us a glimpse into the hungry heart of a painter whose canvases are 3-D windows onto the banquet of the world.
Sunday, July 12: 4 pm; Monday, July 13: 6:30 pm
Tuesday, July 14: 2 pm

LA BELLE NOISEUSE
Jacques Rivette, 1991; 240 minutes
A young couple travel to an isolated country house where the great painter Frenhofer (Michel Piccoli) has gone to ground. Inactive for a decade, Frenhofer becomes interested in the young woman (Emmanuelle Béart) who, at the urging of her boyfriend, agrees to pose so that the aging artist can complete his long-interrupted masterpiece. No film has ever probed the creative process so deeply, or better conveyed the physical and the psychic agony--the sheer work--of producing art. The collaboration evolves from a battle of wills and bodies to a fierce mutual obsession. Béart and Piccoli are magnificent, and Jane Birkin is a revelation as the artist's wife and former model.
Sunday, July 12: 6:50 pm; Monday, July 13: 2 pm

QUAI DES ORFÈVRES (JENNY LAMOUR)
Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1947; 102 minutes
Just after the war, when French film critics were just coining the term film noir to describe the darker strain of movies being made in Hollywood, H.G. Clouzot co-wrote and directed this pungent homegrown specimen set against a memorably sleazy showbiz backdrop. Suzy Delair plays the (U.S.) title character, a cabaret songstress whose compulsive flirtatiousness and obsessively jealous husband (Bernard Blier) add up to a recipe for murder. The peerlessly phlegmatic Louis Jouvet is sublime as the police inspector who picks up the pieces.
Wednesday, July 15: 2 and 6:15 pm
Thursday, July 16: 4 pm

THE GATES OF PARIS / PORTE DES LILAS
René Clair, 1957; 95 minutes
Set--like his early sound classics Under the Roofs of Paris and Le Million--in a working-class neighborhood populated with colorful and eccentric characters, this late film by René Clair finds the master mellowed, even a tad melancholy. The principal characters are Juju (the great Pierre Brasseur), the neighborhood buffoon; Maria (Dany Carrel), a young girl he adores; and Pierre (Henri Vidal), a crook whom Juju rescues and then...well, see for yourselves. With Georges Brasens (L'Artiste), Raymond Bussières, Amédée.
Wednesday, July 15: 4 and 8 pm
Thursday, July 16: 2 and 9 pm