Contact Jim Kitses, my film history teacher in the 1990's at SFSU. ( he was a friend of the screenwriter for the guy whose name escapes me at the moment, I think it's Paul Schrader, the guy who wrote, most memorably, "Taxi Driver", and Travis Bickel as a character terrified me because of the terror we were unnerved by.....
Salut les Cubains is my favourite short of hers! Check out Le Bonheur as well! I watched Jane B par Agnes V but I couldn’t really make sense of it, I’d love to hear anyone’s thoughts on it!
Love how you compressed this 😊 it's a amazing movie. It came out two years before the Nazis came into official power. The movie is both a critic on the later years of Weimar Republic and the Nazis, especially their rhetorics and voilent potential. Its a amazing foreshadowing of how the Nazis would handle things after they came to power.
About the critic towards nazism: the movie came out two years before the party took power. Lang"s critical and documentary thesis is towards the latter Repubblic lack of law enforcement, even though the Mordersechtion demonstrated to be well capable of solving cases ( dec. Lohmann represents chief policeman Ernst Gennat, the inventor of psychological profiling).
All That Heavens Allows is the opposite of ironic. Everything about it is beautiful and true, and isn't it so true to the reality that people tend to live dull conformist lives when they could be happy if they just chose to "be a man"? Not a movie that makes fun of itself, no way.
fabulous job, i've been hearing the name Sirk, now i know! it's great when long lost auteurs are found. it's quite fascinating what may be his critique of the 50s, the beginning in the modern domestic world in most ways. ty !
Sirk fans should look for the movie What Q Way To Go! A box office failure in the mid-1960's, it consisted of a series of sections that parodied then-current movie styles. Hilarious in Hollywood, no doubt, but puzzling to the average moviegoer. That said, one section, "Imitation of Mink," was a perfect Sirk mini-movie.
I watched written in the wind recently, some of it had me in stitches but at the same time I found the sets and colour and cinematography beautiful. In a weird way I think combined with all the impressive technical the bizzare plot and bad acting (or at least bad to me) was more valuable to the film then a good script or performance. It was such a surreal experience, like watching an unironic lynch film
I'll have to look into her movies since I've enjoyed samples of various "French New Wave" film over the years. Never heard the name until a few dozen clicks backwards on YTube on a search for Godard themes.
A perceptive, in depth analysis of a film tragically overlook by today's generation! I wonder how many films have pulled inspiration from this piece of artwork...
Filmakers like Varda were so far ahead of their time. As we lose some of these great filmakers it's like we only had them for a blink of an eye and did not get the full body of their potential work. I really like Vagabond. It's truly a cinematic work of art. There were truly some great independent films from the 80's and 90's.
Don't forget about her brilliant films of the 1980s -- arguably her best, in my view: Vagabond, Documenteur, Mur Murs, Ulysses. Her greatest concern across all of her films is really the practice of image-making itself and of course, empathy for her subjects.
Dang. This was exactly the kind of video I was hoping for when I searched her name on RU-vid. It was so perfect that I excitedly went to see what other videos the channel had, to my dismay, this is it.
Demy wasn’t technically part of the New Wave, neither was Varda, but they were from the same region and time period. Her style was a blend of documentarian observation merged with scripted storytelling and an emphasis on humanity. Even in Vagabond, a tragic story about an unsympathetic drifter, she captures small moments of humanity and even humor. Cleo from 5-7 is about a self-absorbed singer who is passing the time as she waits to receive the results of a health checkup and she’s convinced that the tarot reading has foretold an unfortunate result. Yet the film is shot in a way that feels like a travelogue around the city, taking excursions and deviations in a way that feels both familiar yet completely new and singular. Her documentaries and short films are full of joy as she injects her own perspective on a number of different subjects whether it’s meeting a relative in California, getting to know “gleaners”, her “vlogging series” meeting different artists and filmmakers. Her voice is such a breath of fresh air no matter her subject or format.
It's true that she wasn't really a part of the New Wave, but La Pointe Courte kicked off a great deal of the techniques and idiosyncrasies that it would become famous for -- hence why she is credited as its grand/mother (a somewhat condescending and exclusionary designation, if you ask me). But I totally agree right that she otherwise followed the beat of her own drum.
She was part of the "Left Blank" movement, a group of filmmakers that distinct themselves from the new wave Cahiers du Cinema critics turned directors, by being considerably less "movie crazed" relatively older, having a passion for left wing politics and instead of having a critic background, they were either documentalists or writers from the "new novel" literary movement. This group also included Alain Resnais, Chris Marker, Marguerite Duras and Alain Robbe-Grillet.
