Jacques Demy
Lola and Model Shop (the ‘sequel’)
Lola- 1961, B&W, french w/subtitles, Anouk Aimee, set in Nantes
This was Demy’s debut film. A note – the version I saw had bad subtitling, so that by the end of the film the subtitles often did not match the person speaking, it was very disconcerting by the end, however an excellent movie. 1.5H.
Model Shop- 1963, Colour, English, Set in low-rise 1960’s LA. Anouk Aimee and Gary
Lockwood, who was in 2001 A Space Odyssey. A surprise – colour and America, and pop music. 1.5H.
Viewed at Cinematheque Ontario, Aug 11/05, a double-header. Alone for the first film. I had thought Rosalind would come – she had wanted to when She, Darren and I saw Une Femme Est Une Femme on Tuesday PM and went over to ‘The Village Idiot’ for a couple glasses of wine afterwords. However I could not reach her and she did not call.
Pierre and Georg from Knox (Pierre: from Montreal, philosophy PhD studying Federalism, Georg from Frankfurt, last evening of his 2 month stay in Canada as placement from his Medical degree). Very pleased to see that Pierre and Georg both very much liked the film (Georg: Gay-org). See review below. Afterwords the three boys went and had a drink at the Idiot and than finished off Georg’s Molson Canadian and peanuts while playing cutthroat three-man elimination billiards in the basement of Knox. See photo.
(In Canada, we explained to Georg, all one needs for a good time is a six pack of Molson’s, a poorly lit basement and a pool table. We are a simple country, and this, for us, is the height of luxury).
Lola –
The attractive and almost frail Aimee is in Nantes, I think, although one might think it was Paris. She is in a Cabaret, chased by a straightforward and disarming sailor. He likes her very much, and must be leaving for America, so they are having a ‘romance’ while the other sailors visit the cabaret to dance with the leggy women ‘on demand’ (it is not a whorehouse). Lola has a young boy, blond hair, and 7 years ago her man left, without marriage. And yet – faithful Lola waits for his return expectantly, with a stringent yearning. Her childhood friend is a sort of cynical intellectual who gets fired for not caring about his work, for not liking his city or his time: he is an interesting disillusioned young man. Lola – her stage name, she is Celine, I think – and he are charmed to see one another again. He wants to take her away with him. But at the last moment, who shows up? and so she drives off, seeing her childhood friend on the street, walking, not knowing that he will not see her and that his suddenly declaration of love, out of nowhere, will be just as suddenly unrequited.
A very nice little film, with a sort of sedate enigmatic quality to Lola especially, but to the other characters as well. It is like the ‘gap’ in life is being filed, the spot between what we know and what we feel, and what we don’t know and what we don’t know we are feeling. Something like that, in any case. These characters do not ‘know’ what they want, as a business manager does: however they have a longing, and they go directly after whatever it is when it presents itself before them in circumstance.
A lovely musical score and footage.
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Model Shop.
1969
Pierre, Georg and I all admired the driving sequences as we follow the American around, for the whole movie. It’s like we see everything he does, and the music kicks in while he drives his little convertible MG through old LA. The pop music, by some band called ‘Spirit’ (featured as friends in the film) is rested from with classical sections, a great relief from the turgid swirl of 1960.
And Lo! There is Lola, from Paris, her son left behind her, and it has been, I believe, another 7 years. The young man is about 24, an architect, who has just quit his job as he cannot be bothered to wok on ‘plumbing’ when he wants to make something real, something definitive.
Henri-Georges Clouzot, France 1953, BW subtitles
Grande Prix from Cannes, 1953. Best Film from British Film Group, 1954.
Viewed at Nathan/Justus’ house, March 2004. Rented as a guess.
A Latin America suspense masterpiece. 4 men stranded in a dead end town loaf all day on the porch of a local tavern. An accident occurs at the oil wells, and they need a delivery of tonnes of nitroglycerin. It can only be delivered, over three hundred miles, by two old trucks with antique suspension…our four disposed suddenly become would be heros, or would-be dead men.
Clouzot’s suspense is very very good. The slowness of the trucks, and visual build-up in the streets of the small town, and the harrowing scenes on the journey so full of risk. If this movie does not thrill one, if it does not deserve five stars, if it does not plumb the depths of these desperate men and turn them into9 magnificent possibilities – than what will?
*****
Filed under: 1970's, Audran, Stephane, Chabrol, Cinematheque, French, Huppert, Uncategorized
Violette
Claude Chabrol 1978
Isabelle Huppert and Stepahne Audren
Audran is the mother; Huppert is Violette – the notorious Violette – the daughter.
Her mother wishes her to be prim and sophisticated, and has ambitions for her. “You wish you’d married a train engineer, instead of a car man” says her husband, affectionately. Violette has affairs, sneaks out of her racy street clothes in the bathroom half way up the stairs to the apartment, and devotes herself slavishly to worthless me who bleed her dry for money. She is infinitely needy, but iron in her will for – something, at the same time.
Very good, like a still life on moving film. The two women are great, and the husband is a very nice backdrop. Their tiny apartment, which is nevertheless well furnished, embeds you in the frenzied psychological state of, in any case, two of the inhabitants. Violette wants more, but she does not know what it is she wants, she wants it too soon, and most of all, it is not a want a need, but a compulsive, dangerous, immediate need.
Chabrol as always, pulls no punches, and his knowledge of the hidden operations of the human mind is alarming because he makes no mistake, and makes it all natural, even when the results are so unexplained and disagreeable.
Chabrol, Claude (master of suspense)
Merci Pour le Chocolat
(Nightcap)
2000, France/Switzerland, colour w/ subtitles
Isabelle Huppert, Jacques Dutronc
Cinematheque, Nov 07th 2005, late film, by myself. Sent out a invite at last minute to Adrienne, Nathan and Guilia, but none showed.
A great film – Chabrol loses nothing, but perhaps has become – more subtle?
This review gives away the whole plot.
The heiress of a Swiss chocolate company remarried her ex husband, a piano teacher, now established in his fame. She id Mika Muller.
It is crossing of two families – a beautiful young girl, who looks like Liv Taylor, is a piano player who was, for a moment, mistakenly switched in the hospital for the Pianist’s son, when the child was being presented to the father. (The Pianist’s son by a former wife, now deceased from a car accident, and Mika’s prior close friend). There is something mysterious here, it causes tension, which is explained through he revelation that the daughter is born from artificial insemination – her father was sterile (not impotent). Thus when blood tests were used to ensure that the children were switched back correctly the mother had obscured the tests, as it was kept from the daughter that the man who raised her was not her biological father.
In any case the crux comes in that this sharp eyed girl, staying at the house for a few days to study with the pianist, sees the wife, Mika, spill the evening liquid chocolate on purpose. Something is afoot! Perhaps – a young girl’s imagination? Or perhaps more.
The girl’s boyfriend works for her mother- a forensic scientist. The spilled chocolate is on her sweater, and is analyzed, and contains – a drug! And the Pianist can only sleep when he takes a drug. And the girl is staying at the house – the same house that the Pianist’s first wife was staying at, the night she dies, as they were friends and always stayed there when the Pianist and his wife were in Switzerland. And that night the wife had to drive out for the sleeping pills, and first had her customary drink of cognac, and than crashed, and died. Her system was full of alcohol and the sleeping drug – which she never ever took! The mystery has never been settled.
But the Pianist feels something afoot. It is all too the same, too disturbing. The beautiful young girl is like his dead wife, staying as well at the house, going out to purchase the drug late, like his dead wife – because Mika ‘forgot’. And Mike also – poured the coffee (the maid, it seems, suddenly to her fortune had the night off”.
“You are washing the cups!” says the Pianist.
“Why are you washing the cups?” – “What have you done!”
“What do you mean. I am washing the cups because…”
“You washed the cups that night too!”
And it is all true. It is reconstructed. And the young girl is getting sleepy at the wheel, and crashes the car, with the son beside her. But they are OK. The Pianist gets the call. “Are they dead?” asks Mika. “No”, he says, “you were unlucky this time.” He is not angry, but now he knows all, and Mika admits it. “I am nothing” she says – not artist, not drivin. “But you have helped me so much” the Pianist says – a humane and thoughtful man. “Yes, always others. I say ‘I love you’ but I do not love. Everything for me is so calculated.”
So we have our brilliant and subtle psychological model. She is obsessed with the possession of her husband. The attraction of her friend, his wife, was unbearable, as is the connection to the young girl. She is fond of his son, who is likewise directionless. She destroys the wife, and it seems is keeping the son drugged regularly. Perhaps she preserves his lack of ambition in this way. They must be like her, or belong to her.
But – and here is the interesting part – she is not really evil as some would think of it. She is pathetically evil, tragic and flawed. She is calculating but not in intention — only in action! Quite a model, quite a film.
Filed under: 1950's, Bresson, Robert, Cinematheque, French, Uncategorized
Robert Bresson
France 1959 BW
Disappointing film. Loosely and poorly based on Crime and Punishment. Plot bad – filmmaking worse.
Horrible trait of presenting the characters on screen and than narrating all their actions and thoughts, rather than allowing the scenes to present themselves (in the first person). Thus he stands: thoughts are narrated. He walks: the narrator describes where he is going. He goes to the racetrack: the film contains not a single shot of a racing horse.
Fortunately the film forgets Dostoevsky at some points, forgets to be clever, and produces some rather effective and exciting scenes of various pick-pocketing methods, in particular in very clever sequences with three pickpockets working together. These scenes are what must account for the status and description of this as a remarkable film. I have seen worse – I have seen far better.
Cinematheque
aug 2009
Rohmer
1968
One of the moral tales – and again , the message is indistinct. I think it may be Rohmer’s intension to bring out subtle, ambiguopus moral situations in contrast to the typical moral situation which involves and unambiguopus rule and a simple, applicable situation. In this case, it is the question of young, unmarried French persons, in 1968, over the age of 30 (at least some of them) – and catholic. As the lead character himself says – he treats his persaonl life and his religious morality entirely separately.
It is a movie of clever talking people, and romantic and sexual tension. Our hero is caught between his ‘morality’ and the opportunities before him. But it is difficult to tell – it appears his concern to remain true to his own feelings of love and romantic affection have more sway than his religious background, when it comes to the offer of a night of pleasure.
So a delicate little film, and very nice to watch.
Chabrol
2007
Cinematheque, Aug 2007.
Late Chabrol, and highly developed, as expected. The death as we expect from the late films is less gory, and more startling and effective. And – there is a whole story surrounding it. The music is by, I assume, his son, and written by the daughter.
The characters are wealthy, and drift – they do not live by principle, but on passion. I’m not quite sure what it was ‘about’. The characters are of varying ages, so we can see the passions spread across the demographics. However I don’t think that’s the point. It was perhaps about love, as the characters show a fidelity to love independent of puritan physical proofs; even when they hate each other for what they have done, the characters do not flinch in standing by the strongest emotion of the heart. It’s admirable, even when the actions of the actual characters are not.
The characters are beautifully cast, and the camera work, with great mise-en-scene and great depth of field close-ups, is superb. In all, it’s so well crafted, and retains Chabrols slightly twisted, but certainly engaging and penetrating view.
The old goat still has it.
Claude Chabrol
1958
His first film. Now I hate to spoil it, but there are not multiple murders in this film.
It’s very good. A young man returns to his Rural hiome town; but he is now something of an urban sophisticate. His old best friend is a young drunk, and the passions of the rural environment are raw and unbridaled. They are ‘animals’ – and as his friend points out (the drunk friend) – it’s normal, for them. So it’s a good contrast study, of the urbanite who returns home, and in a way fits in as he always did. A Tarzan story, in rural France, but backwards, as he returns to his primevil roots.
I don’t like that lead actor – I believe he is Jean-Claude Brialy, but he works in this roll, except in the scene where he is running, which makes you want to punch him in the face, as usual.
Went to both films that night (Aug 2009), ran into Darren at the second, which was Chabrol’s newest film, LA FILLE COUPÉE EN DEUX (A GIRL CUT IN TWO).
Jacques Tati
1949
viewed at Cinemateque, Aug 2009.
I thought I’d seen a Tati before, but was not sure. Now I’m sure. It’s slapstick, and looks like it’s from 1930. Now I like physical comedy, but this is heavily over-emphasized (like the early dramatic transitions from silent to sound film) and has no clever angle or subtlety to counterbalance the ‘blockheaded-ness’ of the physical aspect. It’s the three stooges, done by some other three guys. Not so good. The audience, though, liked it. I guess they knew what they were in for. I myself don’t think it’s funny to watch a person flail around in the air for 2 minutes to try and hit a fly, and then to have a cyclist go by and watch him flail around in the air as the fly has transferred to him. There’s nothing funny in that, at least the way Tati does it. It’s just ’signs’ of comedy, without the comedy itself. But I was glad to see it, so I cross him off my list of ‘film makers to look out for’.
La boulangère de Monceau. 1962, Rohmer, first of the 6 moral tales. Cinematheque, July 2009, at the the end of sign of Leo – a short.
Nice little film. The moral issue is a bit tough to figure out. He claims to be true to himself, in being unfair to another. It’s French, I’d say; an Englishman would put the societal norm first, and find pride in doing it the right way, right down the line. But the Frenchman is more cavalier; his pride is in defying the norm, even if it means being brusque, to prove (or make) the right of their own independent judgment.
So it’s clever. Makes you think, if you want, and of course is very nice to watch. Little romance. Paris, and cookies.
