Film reviews usually written at 1AM . By B. Stanton, 24. From Chaplin to Godard, One A.M.
Le Train En Marche, made in 1971 by Chris Marker and his SLON group, is the precursor in many ways to a more well-known Marker film; the 1992 feature The Last Bolshevik (Le Tombeau d'Alexandre). The latter film is a more complete reckoning with the life and work of Soviet film-maker Alexander Medvedkin, but … Continue reading Le Train En Marche (Chris Marker, 1971)
Bosphore (1964) Byzance (1964) La Corne d'Or (1964) Istanbul (1964) Maitre Galip (1964) Pehlivan (1964) On assignment Maurice Pialat and cameraman/cinematographer Willy Kurant go to Turkey, in disguise as the Lumiere brothers (less than a decade after Louis died), and send back a series of actualities, six in total. The opening trio work more in … Continue reading Pialat in Turkey
“There are a million places to put the camera, but there is really only one.”- Ernst Lubitsch Robert Bresson’s Le Proces De Jeanne D’Arc is a film about two things; the distance between and overlapping of separate worlds, and the reconstruction of a young woman freed from myth. What’s remarkable is the clarity of these … Continue reading Near to Here: Le Proces De Jeanne D’Arc (1962, Robert Bresson)
“But, my friend, happiness is not a joyful thing.” Was Max Ophuls the greatest, the most perfect of the classical film-makers? In a series of masterpieces throughout three decades (the 1930s, 40s and 50s) he composed images with the soft luminescence, hazy or precise, of Degas (with a similar feeling of constant movement), and stories … Continue reading Le Plaisir (1952, Max Ophuls)
La Poison represents Sacha Guitry condemning a perfidious public, and then gifting that condemnation to them in form of the bleakest, the sourest of comedies. This is not the sort of dark comedy which relies on infantilism, the adolescent or the easy expression (ironic or not) of bigotries and predjudices to make its effect, in … Continue reading La Poison (1951, Sacha Guitry)
Every so often a film just blindsides you. I have been a fan of Claude Chabrol almost as long as I’ve been a cinephile, my admiration stemming from early, formative viewings of Le Boucher and La Ceremonie, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Chabrol work quite like this one and was not expecting … Continue reading La Rupture (1970, Claude Chabrol)
Make no mistake: this is a beautiful film, beautiful for its modesty, its respectfulness, its clarity and piquancy of image both sundraped and nocturnal. Rendez-Vous de Juillet is a young film about young characters. It was not made by a young man, but it keeps its spirit and feeling of youthfulness because, like the young, … Continue reading Rendez-Vous de Juillet (1949, Jacques Becker)
This was Maurice Pialat’s feature film debut at the age of 43. Eight years before he had made L’Amour Existe, an angry, mournful short film-poem about the working-class Parisian suburbs. Francois Truffaut, impressed by the short and relating to Pialat’s ambition to create a work that presented the unvarnished reality of life for orphans and … Continue reading L’Enfance-Nue (1968, Maurice Pialat)
If this is not where Bresson becomes the Bresson we recognise, stereotype and speak of the power of in hushed whispers, this is nonetheless where Bresson becomes a master. He is a melodramatist still at this point, supported by the timeless, literary dialogue of Jean Cocteau, but he is a melodramatist of pure grace and … Continue reading Les Dames Du Bois De Boulogne (1945, Robert Bresson)
For all the acclaim he has received, both popular and critical, how can it be that Jacques Tati still features so rarely on lists of, say, the ten greatest film directors? Is the reason as simple as the comedian’s curse, that condition that means that, no matter the greatness of the work itself, it will … Continue reading Trafic (Jacques Tati, 1971)
