Friday, February 15, 2019
605 - The Age of the Medici, Part 1, Italy, 1972. Dir. Roberto Rossellini.
Part 1: The Exile of Cosimo de Medici.
Rossellini is in the final stages of his life. He was born in 1906 and will die in 1977. He made his groundbreaking neo-realist films in the 1940s and 50s. Now in the 70s, and he in his 60s, he wants to give back to his viewers by bringing them the history of the great civilization in which they live.
Thus, he has devoted himself to making teaching films. The purpose of these films is to help provide the viewer with a classical liberal arts education, to fight again the narrowing of specialization, and to help liberate the viewer to live a broader, more all-encompassing life. He is putting together a Great Books of cinema.
His production values are as rich and vibrant as ever. As you watch this film, it is a marvel to realize that it was made for television. Especially in a time when many people still have small, square, black-and-white TV sets. It is rich with color. And with exquisite wardrobe.
As with yesterday's film, Blaise Pascal, we have people standing around talking. The focus is less on the art of living the part and more on the art of literature and history delivered orally and in performance. People make speeches. Sometimes they are aware of the camera and the audience. The camera is often still, sitting on a tripod, and in a wide shot. But the artistry is not necessarily less excellent for it. It is just focused on different things. It is a kind of a hybrid between acting and a history lecture--an engaging and informative history lecture.
While learning history, one is also exposed to science and art, philosophy and medicine, painting and sculpture, architecture and music, mathematics and civics. The humanities.
Through the lives of the Medici.
The great director Vittorio de Sica's son, Manuel de Sica, composed the score to this film.
Friday, February 15, 2019
Thursday, February 14, 2019
604 - Blaise Pascal, France, 1972. Dir. Roberto Rossellini.
Thursday, February 14, 2019
604 - Blaise Pascal, France, 1972. Dir. Roberto Rossellini.
Since today is Valentine's Day, we shall make you aware that it was Blaise Pascal who said, "The heart has reasons which reason knows nothing of."
And yet, if we do that, then we shall also make you aware that he was not talking at all about some sappy romantic sentimentality.
He was talking about the limits of reason and the need for humans to go beyond it in acquiring understanding. He was talking about matters of faith.
Blaise Pascal was a great reasoner. He had one of the greatest minds in the history of Western Civilization. He began his career as a mathematician at age 16 and continued work as a scientist and inventor before eventually turning to theology, the Queen of the Sciences.
He worked with conic sections, vacuums, and pressure. He invented calulating machines. He developed Pascal's law in fluid mechanics, Pascal's theorem in projective geometry, and Pascal's triangle in pure math. Then he developed Pascal's wager in philosophical theology.
His most known work is the book published in 1670 called Pensees, which means Thoughts.
Roberto Rossellini filmed, among other things, stories about historical figures, so it was natural and appropriate for him to film a take on the life of Blaise Pascl
Etienne Pascal is the new Royal Intendant of the Rouen Province.
He arrives and sets up his office.
He is a devout man. Before work he reads.
"Moses was tending his flock on the mountain of God and the Lord appeared to him as a flame of fire from the midst of a bush. He saw the bush was burning with fire, but the bush was not consumed. Then Moses said, "I will see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt." - Exodus 3:1-3.
Etienne's secretary was corrupted by a merchant of Rouen. So he fired him. Now he needs someone to help him bring the tax register of Rouville parish up to date.
His 17-year-old son Blaise is good with numbers. He hires him.
Blaise calculates the tallage quickly. His father is surprised. He warns him to be careful.
Father Marsenne has sent a book.
Rough Draft of Attaining the Outcome of Intersecting a Cone with a Plane. By a Lyonnais geometrician named Mr. Girard Desargues, Scholars find the work to be obscure. So they refer to it as the Lesson on Darkness.
Blaise will not find the work to be obscure.
Blaise wants to read it. His father tells him that he will not understand it. But he understands it. And he masters it.
While other family members do their chores outside, Blaise stays upstairs in his room calculating.
His sister Jacqueline wonders at his work. He is spending hours in his room.
She declares, "Your calculations will never rival the beauty of God's creatures."
He replies, "Aren't these also part of creation?"
He stays up all night.
His father is concerned for his health. And warns him that success could fill him with delusions of grandeur. Blaise assures his father that he understands the need for humility.
"Father, I know a man is truly great when he knows he is nothing."
"Hold fast to that idea and you will prosper."
His father likes geometry too. So he takes Blaise's work to study it so that they can discuss it together. He loves his son and wants to spend time with him.
After reading the work, Etienne secretly sends it to Father Marsenne.
Father Marsenne admires it and intends to publish it.
Mouline, the master tanner of Rouen, comes to call on Etienne. Mouline cannot pay his tallage. The townspeople have decided his maid is a witch. They have stopped buying his tanned hides.
Mouline believes it is a valid accusation due to the spell cast on his son. The authorities have already arrested her, but there are so many witch trials already scheduled that it will take months before her case comes to trial. By then he will be ruined.
Perhaps, Etienne Pascal can help move the trial forward and help spare Mouline.
We see the witch trial.
Roberto Rossellini plays it straight. He does not present the judge, or the jury, or the prosecution, as religious fanatics or hypocrites but as otherwise reasonable people who are stuck in a world of superstition, attempting to find justice according to the limited understanding they have.
He presents the trial itself as absolutely ridiculous. It is shocking how they think and what they do. But they are earnestly doing the best they know how. Blaise himself is confused by it, and his attempts to understand these strange traditions lead him to a more rational approach that dispenses with unfounded superstitions.
Blaise has drawn up plans for a calculating machine. He has given them to the cabinetmaker in order to build the machine. He shows his father. His sister is not interested but his father is.
"God does not condemn those who seek to understand Nature's marvels in order to share them with mankind."
Chancellor Seguier is awakened by his attendant, who then reads to him.
"O righteous Father, the world hath not know thee, but I have known thee., and these have known that thou hast sent me. And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith thou hast love me may be in them, and I in them." - John 17:25-26.
His servants wash his feet.
Father Marsenne has arrived, along with the geometricians, Etienne and Blaise Pascal.
As he is putting on his socks, he has them show them in.
They have brought the calculating machine. It performs addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division of all whole numbers without error.
Chancellor Seguier is impressed. He will show it to his majesty the King. Who himself is the most excellent craftsman in all the land. When the gunsmith Pomerol retired, he showed his secrets only to the King, whom he believed was the most worthy to learn them.
Seguier has heard of the young Pascal, who wrote the treatise on conic sections, and he says that Cardinal Richelieu has heard of his sister Jacqueline, who has a gift for poetry and acting. She had been under the patronage of the Duchess of Guillaume when she was 12 or 13 and enchanted Cardinal Richelieu with one of her performances.
Then he states that she thereby obtained from the Cardinal a pardon for her father, "who had lost our favor."
It is because he is too zealous in his studies. It has gone to his brain.
Though we are experts at fixing broken bodies, a science learned on the battlefield, we know nothing about such humors.
He is given, while ill, the letters of Saint-Cyran, a disciple of Jansen.
He works on his idea for the vacuum. Mercury tube. Air pressure.
He discovers the value of dipping one's feet in brandy, of applying heat to the feet.
Then he turns to philosophy.
"If I seek a void in nature, it is to discover its mirror in the heart of man."
Can you know or love someone through reason alone?
Not the God of the philosophers but the living Christ.
Read the Gospels.
There is an infinity in things beyond our grasp.
Take that away and try to be less superstitious.
"But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken by God, saying, 'I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.'" [God is not the God of the dead but of the living.] - Matthew 22:31-32.
Blaise's sister Jacqueline goes to the Convent of Minims. Blaise is at first skeptical of their motives, but they prove true to him. Later he goes to hear Rene Descartes, who is the invited guest.
Pascal and Descartes exchange ideas while there.
He presses through reason to faith.
He will go on to write his Thoughts, as he gets sicker, takes the viaticum, and eventually dies.
The film itself is deceptively simple and straightforward. Passing from point to point in Pascal's life. And for a director known as the father of Italian Neo-Realism, there is a bit of a lack of realism in the period costumes. It often looks like 20th century people dressed in 17th century clothes.
Yet Rossellini wisely takes the time to trust actor Pierre Arditi to speak long passages from the Pensees as extended monologues and soliloquies. In context. While grounded in physical behavior. So that the viewer can witness this mind on fire as he contemplates important ideas.
If you have never read Pensees, take some time to check it out and get to know Pascal for yourself. It is worth your time. And check out the movie.
And see a man born into a superstitious society, rejecting it for a life of science and math and reason, who, now free of superstition, through that reason most reasonably returns to the faith of his heritage.
Peace to this house, and to all who dwell therein.
* * * *
Reason seems unsure in its place in the world.
It isn't a chain of reasonings but intuition.
They are not quantifiable. They are infinite.
But the infinite universe we live in will never cease to be infinite.
The geometric method.
Is it not better to begin with the infinite and move down to the simple?
Only God can know them because only he is infinite. Christians profess a religion for which they cannot give a reason, and even declare that any attempt to do so would be foolishness.
Certainly, it is in lacking proofs that they are not lacking in sense.
What do you mean?
Since God is infinitely incomprehensible, then understanding him by means of reason is a contradiction in terms. It is not because our reason is limited that we should have a limited idea of God. God is, or he is not. Reason can decide nothing here, except to admit there is an infinity of things beyond understanding. You are not a skeptic, because skeptics know man has a deep need for certitude, and a man like you would not be satisfied with less. Nor dogmatic, because we all know that life is uncertain and in constant flux. Where does that leave us? God is, or he is not. To which side shall you incline? Since this game could be played forever without outcome, you must wager. It is not optional. You are embarked. But neither to the reason nor to the heart is it satisfying to wager on what is finite. Why? Because if you wager on what is finite and limited, and you win, you gain nothing, and if you lose, you lose all. If instead you wager on the infinite, if you win, you gain all, and if you lose, you lose nothing.
But aren't we still uncertain?
Yes, of course, but you hope. And instead of counting only on your own strength and risking despair, you place your hope in the reality of a superior existence.
And if I lose?
You will have fought the good fight, and will have become a charitable and sincere friend. And, in the meantime, God might reveal himself to you.
"The year of grace 1654. Monday, November 23, feast of Saint Clement, pope and martyr, and others in the martyrology. The eve of Saint Chrysogonus martyr and others. From about half-past 10:00 in the evening until about half-past midnight. Fire.
God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob. Not of philosophers and intellectuals. Certitude, certitude, feeling, joy, peace. God of Jesus Christ. Deum meum et Deum vestrum. Your God will be my God. Forgetfulness of the world and of everything except God. He can only be found by the ways taught in the Gospels. Greatness of the human soul. O just Father, the world has not known you, but I have known you. Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy. I have cut myself off from him. Dereliquerunt me fontem aquae vivae. 'My God wilt thou forsake me?' Let me not be cut off from him forever! This is eternal life, that they may know you and the one true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. I have cut myself off from him. I have run away from him, renounced him, crucified him. Let me never be cut off from him. He can only be kept by the ways taught in the Gospel. Sweet and total renunciation. Total submission to Jesus Christ and my director. Everlasting joy in return for one day's effort on earth."
Hear us, holy Lord, almighty Father, eternal God, and be pleased to send thy holy angel from heaven to guard, cherish, protect, visit and defend all those who dwell in this house through Christ our Lord. Amen.
May almighty God have mercy upon you, forgive you your sins and bring you everlasting life. Amen.
May you be pardoned and absolved of all sins by almighty God. Amen.
Receive, brother, the viaticum of the body of our Lord, Jesus Christ. May he keep ou from the malignant foe and bring you to life everlasting. Amen.
The Lord be with you.
And with thy spirit.
Let us pray.
O holy Lord, Father almighty and eternal God, we pray thee in faith that our brother may benefit from the holy body of our Lord Jesus Christ, thy son, which he receives as an everlasting remedy for body and soul from him who lives and reigns with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.
May God never abandon me.
604 - Blaise Pascal, France, 1972. Dir. Roberto Rossellini.
Since today is Valentine's Day, we shall make you aware that it was Blaise Pascal who said, "The heart has reasons which reason knows nothing of."
And yet, if we do that, then we shall also make you aware that he was not talking at all about some sappy romantic sentimentality.
He was talking about the limits of reason and the need for humans to go beyond it in acquiring understanding. He was talking about matters of faith.
Blaise Pascal was a great reasoner. He had one of the greatest minds in the history of Western Civilization. He began his career as a mathematician at age 16 and continued work as a scientist and inventor before eventually turning to theology, the Queen of the Sciences.
He worked with conic sections, vacuums, and pressure. He invented calulating machines. He developed Pascal's law in fluid mechanics, Pascal's theorem in projective geometry, and Pascal's triangle in pure math. Then he developed Pascal's wager in philosophical theology.
His most known work is the book published in 1670 called Pensees, which means Thoughts.
Roberto Rossellini filmed, among other things, stories about historical figures, so it was natural and appropriate for him to film a take on the life of Blaise Pascl
Etienne Pascal is the new Royal Intendant of the Rouen Province.
He arrives and sets up his office.
He is a devout man. Before work he reads.
"Moses was tending his flock on the mountain of God and the Lord appeared to him as a flame of fire from the midst of a bush. He saw the bush was burning with fire, but the bush was not consumed. Then Moses said, "I will see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt." - Exodus 3:1-3.
Etienne's secretary was corrupted by a merchant of Rouen. So he fired him. Now he needs someone to help him bring the tax register of Rouville parish up to date.
His 17-year-old son Blaise is good with numbers. He hires him.
Blaise calculates the tallage quickly. His father is surprised. He warns him to be careful.
Father Marsenne has sent a book.
Rough Draft of Attaining the Outcome of Intersecting a Cone with a Plane. By a Lyonnais geometrician named Mr. Girard Desargues, Scholars find the work to be obscure. So they refer to it as the Lesson on Darkness.
Blaise will not find the work to be obscure.
Blaise wants to read it. His father tells him that he will not understand it. But he understands it. And he masters it.
While other family members do their chores outside, Blaise stays upstairs in his room calculating.
His sister Jacqueline wonders at his work. He is spending hours in his room.
She declares, "Your calculations will never rival the beauty of God's creatures."
He replies, "Aren't these also part of creation?"
He stays up all night.
His father is concerned for his health. And warns him that success could fill him with delusions of grandeur. Blaise assures his father that he understands the need for humility.
"Father, I know a man is truly great when he knows he is nothing."
"Hold fast to that idea and you will prosper."
His father likes geometry too. So he takes Blaise's work to study it so that they can discuss it together. He loves his son and wants to spend time with him.
After reading the work, Etienne secretly sends it to Father Marsenne.
Father Marsenne admires it and intends to publish it.
Mouline, the master tanner of Rouen, comes to call on Etienne. Mouline cannot pay his tallage. The townspeople have decided his maid is a witch. They have stopped buying his tanned hides.
Mouline believes it is a valid accusation due to the spell cast on his son. The authorities have already arrested her, but there are so many witch trials already scheduled that it will take months before her case comes to trial. By then he will be ruined.
Perhaps, Etienne Pascal can help move the trial forward and help spare Mouline.
We see the witch trial.
Roberto Rossellini plays it straight. He does not present the judge, or the jury, or the prosecution, as religious fanatics or hypocrites but as otherwise reasonable people who are stuck in a world of superstition, attempting to find justice according to the limited understanding they have.
He presents the trial itself as absolutely ridiculous. It is shocking how they think and what they do. But they are earnestly doing the best they know how. Blaise himself is confused by it, and his attempts to understand these strange traditions lead him to a more rational approach that dispenses with unfounded superstitions.
Blaise has drawn up plans for a calculating machine. He has given them to the cabinetmaker in order to build the machine. He shows his father. His sister is not interested but his father is.
"God does not condemn those who seek to understand Nature's marvels in order to share them with mankind."
Chancellor Seguier is awakened by his attendant, who then reads to him.
"O righteous Father, the world hath not know thee, but I have known thee., and these have known that thou hast sent me. And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith thou hast love me may be in them, and I in them." - John 17:25-26.
His servants wash his feet.
Father Marsenne has arrived, along with the geometricians, Etienne and Blaise Pascal.
As he is putting on his socks, he has them show them in.
They have brought the calculating machine. It performs addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division of all whole numbers without error.
Chancellor Seguier is impressed. He will show it to his majesty the King. Who himself is the most excellent craftsman in all the land. When the gunsmith Pomerol retired, he showed his secrets only to the King, whom he believed was the most worthy to learn them.
Seguier has heard of the young Pascal, who wrote the treatise on conic sections, and he says that Cardinal Richelieu has heard of his sister Jacqueline, who has a gift for poetry and acting. She had been under the patronage of the Duchess of Guillaume when she was 12 or 13 and enchanted Cardinal Richelieu with one of her performances.
Then he states that she thereby obtained from the Cardinal a pardon for her father, "who had lost our favor."
It is because he is too zealous in his studies. It has gone to his brain.
Though we are experts at fixing broken bodies, a science learned on the battlefield, we know nothing about such humors.
He is given, while ill, the letters of Saint-Cyran, a disciple of Jansen.
He works on his idea for the vacuum. Mercury tube. Air pressure.
He discovers the value of dipping one's feet in brandy, of applying heat to the feet.
Then he turns to philosophy.
"If I seek a void in nature, it is to discover its mirror in the heart of man."
Can you know or love someone through reason alone?
Not the God of the philosophers but the living Christ.
Read the Gospels.
There is an infinity in things beyond our grasp.
Take that away and try to be less superstitious.
"But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken by God, saying, 'I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.'" [God is not the God of the dead but of the living.] - Matthew 22:31-32.
Blaise's sister Jacqueline goes to the Convent of Minims. Blaise is at first skeptical of their motives, but they prove true to him. Later he goes to hear Rene Descartes, who is the invited guest.
Pascal and Descartes exchange ideas while there.
He presses through reason to faith.
He will go on to write his Thoughts, as he gets sicker, takes the viaticum, and eventually dies.
The film itself is deceptively simple and straightforward. Passing from point to point in Pascal's life. And for a director known as the father of Italian Neo-Realism, there is a bit of a lack of realism in the period costumes. It often looks like 20th century people dressed in 17th century clothes.
Yet Rossellini wisely takes the time to trust actor Pierre Arditi to speak long passages from the Pensees as extended monologues and soliloquies. In context. While grounded in physical behavior. So that the viewer can witness this mind on fire as he contemplates important ideas.
If you have never read Pensees, take some time to check it out and get to know Pascal for yourself. It is worth your time. And check out the movie.
And see a man born into a superstitious society, rejecting it for a life of science and math and reason, who, now free of superstition, through that reason most reasonably returns to the faith of his heritage.
Peace to this house, and to all who dwell therein.
* * * *
Reason seems unsure in its place in the world.
It isn't a chain of reasonings but intuition.
They are not quantifiable. They are infinite.
But the infinite universe we live in will never cease to be infinite.
The geometric method.
Is it not better to begin with the infinite and move down to the simple?
Only God can know them because only he is infinite. Christians profess a religion for which they cannot give a reason, and even declare that any attempt to do so would be foolishness.
Certainly, it is in lacking proofs that they are not lacking in sense.
What do you mean?
Since God is infinitely incomprehensible, then understanding him by means of reason is a contradiction in terms. It is not because our reason is limited that we should have a limited idea of God. God is, or he is not. Reason can decide nothing here, except to admit there is an infinity of things beyond understanding. You are not a skeptic, because skeptics know man has a deep need for certitude, and a man like you would not be satisfied with less. Nor dogmatic, because we all know that life is uncertain and in constant flux. Where does that leave us? God is, or he is not. To which side shall you incline? Since this game could be played forever without outcome, you must wager. It is not optional. You are embarked. But neither to the reason nor to the heart is it satisfying to wager on what is finite. Why? Because if you wager on what is finite and limited, and you win, you gain nothing, and if you lose, you lose all. If instead you wager on the infinite, if you win, you gain all, and if you lose, you lose nothing.
But aren't we still uncertain?
Yes, of course, but you hope. And instead of counting only on your own strength and risking despair, you place your hope in the reality of a superior existence.
And if I lose?
You will have fought the good fight, and will have become a charitable and sincere friend. And, in the meantime, God might reveal himself to you.
"The year of grace 1654. Monday, November 23, feast of Saint Clement, pope and martyr, and others in the martyrology. The eve of Saint Chrysogonus martyr and others. From about half-past 10:00 in the evening until about half-past midnight. Fire.
God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob. Not of philosophers and intellectuals. Certitude, certitude, feeling, joy, peace. God of Jesus Christ. Deum meum et Deum vestrum. Your God will be my God. Forgetfulness of the world and of everything except God. He can only be found by the ways taught in the Gospels. Greatness of the human soul. O just Father, the world has not known you, but I have known you. Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy. I have cut myself off from him. Dereliquerunt me fontem aquae vivae. 'My God wilt thou forsake me?' Let me not be cut off from him forever! This is eternal life, that they may know you and the one true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. I have cut myself off from him. I have run away from him, renounced him, crucified him. Let me never be cut off from him. He can only be kept by the ways taught in the Gospel. Sweet and total renunciation. Total submission to Jesus Christ and my director. Everlasting joy in return for one day's effort on earth."
Hear us, holy Lord, almighty Father, eternal God, and be pleased to send thy holy angel from heaven to guard, cherish, protect, visit and defend all those who dwell in this house through Christ our Lord. Amen.
May almighty God have mercy upon you, forgive you your sins and bring you everlasting life. Amen.
May you be pardoned and absolved of all sins by almighty God. Amen.
Receive, brother, the viaticum of the body of our Lord, Jesus Christ. May he keep ou from the malignant foe and bring you to life everlasting. Amen.
The Lord be with you.
And with thy spirit.
Let us pray.
O holy Lord, Father almighty and eternal God, we pray thee in faith that our brother may benefit from the holy body of our Lord Jesus Christ, thy son, which he receives as an everlasting remedy for body and soul from him who lives and reigns with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.
May God never abandon me.
Wednesday, February 13, 2019
603 - Personal Shopper, France, 2016. Dir. Olivier Assayas.
Wednesday, February 13, 2019
603 - Personal Shopper, France, 2016. Dir. Olivier Assayas.
Unknown: I know You
Maureen is alone. She works as a personal shopper for a fashion model named Kyra. But she rarely sees her, and they rarely talk. They text. And Kyra leaves Maureen notes for when she drops off her clothes.
Maureen is good at what she does. She knows Kyra's tastes. She buys her dresses, pants, accessories, jewelry, and shoes. She knows what Kyra will like. She knows what Kyra will love. She knows what Kyra will despise. And she makes quick decisions that prove to be right.
But Maureen is also alone in that she has lost her twin brother Lewis to death by congenital heart disease, a disease which Maureen shares. She and Lewis promised each other that whoever died first would return to leave the other one some sign of the afterlife.
Lewis considered himself a medium. He was sensitive to spiritual forces. So Maureen followed him and claims now to be a medium herself. Though she is less confident. The couple who wants to buy the house in which Mauren and Lewis grew up has hired her to test the large, empty, dark place for the presence of spirits. They do not wish to purchase a haunted home.
So Maureen goes and spends time there alone. Searching for Lewis. She senses something. She hears strange noises. Creaks and moans. And water faucets seem to turn themselves on. Yet when she does finally see the spirit in the house, it is not Lewis. It is a woman. Who emits ectoplasm. Who is angry. Who seems lost.
Whose presence scares Maureen. Induces fear in her. Causes her finally to flee. Leaving her lost in Paris, not going to Oman to visit her boyfriend Gary, holding on to her "stupid job" so that she can stay and wait. Hoping to find her brother. To seek and sense the sign he might leave for her.
Until she finally finds a companion.
Sort of.
In the person named "Unknown."
Who begins texting her.
You know Unknown. He is kin to Anonymous. You yourself have received his texts and calls.
It is just that this Unknown knows her. Knows her whereabouts. Knows her actions. From Paris to London. Aboard the train. Around town. And back from London to Paris.
Giving Kristen Stewart the opportunity to showcase some of her finest acting. With her cell phone.
She lays bare her soul. Delves the deeps. Exposes her vulnerabilities. Invites the audience to love her as she embodies the unguardedly human.
As The Devil Wears Prada suddenly morphs into The Talented Mr. Ripley. Before it turns into The Shining.
As this motorscooter-driving, leather-jacket-wearing, deadpan-talking, cynically-minded pokerfaced smoker faces her deepest fear.
A fear far greater than spending the night alone in a large, dark empty house with an angry spirit.
The fear of facing herself.
And finding herself.
And trying to decide if she likes herself.
By crossing the threshold into doing the forbidden.
As her Unknown companion encourages her.
Practically pushes her into it.
Maureen wants to be someone else. Wants to be feminine. Wants to be pretty. Wants to be elegant. Wants to be attractive. Wants to be desirable. Wants to be loved.
She indulges her desires.
We are not necessarily saying that Maureen does to Kyra what Tom Ripley did to Dickie Greenleaf. Nor that Ingo functions as her own Freddie Miles.
After all, Ingo himself may be . . . well . . . we will let you see it and decide.
Though we might throw in for good measure that there may be a bit of Swimming Pool in here as well. Or that Maureen might have a beautiful mind.
If only she could hear from Lewis.
He has the answers she is looking for.
Of who she is.
And what there is to come.
Unless . . .
Unless.
* * * *
It's extremely difficult to find a portal into the spirit world. That's just the way it is.
Her works were made before the creation of abstract art. But Hilma af Klint kept her art secret.
In her will she decided that the earliest they would be viewed would be 20 years after her death. So 100 years ago, Hilma af Klint painted for the future, and that future is now.
The idea that there is a world beyond our world.
You already have a stupid job. It wouldn't change a thing, but the pay is better.
Love? It never crossed my mind, no. It's just physical.
I'm a medium. He was a medium. I'll just know it.
Lewis thought they were spirits. I'm less sure. But yes, somewhat. I mean, there are invisible presences around us always, and whether or not they're the souls of the dead, I don't know. And when you are a medium you're just attuned to a vibe. It's an intuition thing. It's a feeling. You see this door, slightly ajar.
I have to give his spirit, or whatever you want to call it, a chance to prove him right.
That's why I'm still waiting. Then I guess I'll live my life and let it go.
I need more from you. I'm gonna need more from you.
You're not my brother. You're not my brother.
603 - Personal Shopper, France, 2016. Dir. Olivier Assayas.
Unknown: I know You
Maureen is alone. She works as a personal shopper for a fashion model named Kyra. But she rarely sees her, and they rarely talk. They text. And Kyra leaves Maureen notes for when she drops off her clothes.
Maureen is good at what she does. She knows Kyra's tastes. She buys her dresses, pants, accessories, jewelry, and shoes. She knows what Kyra will like. She knows what Kyra will love. She knows what Kyra will despise. And she makes quick decisions that prove to be right.
But Maureen is also alone in that she has lost her twin brother Lewis to death by congenital heart disease, a disease which Maureen shares. She and Lewis promised each other that whoever died first would return to leave the other one some sign of the afterlife.
Lewis considered himself a medium. He was sensitive to spiritual forces. So Maureen followed him and claims now to be a medium herself. Though she is less confident. The couple who wants to buy the house in which Mauren and Lewis grew up has hired her to test the large, empty, dark place for the presence of spirits. They do not wish to purchase a haunted home.
So Maureen goes and spends time there alone. Searching for Lewis. She senses something. She hears strange noises. Creaks and moans. And water faucets seem to turn themselves on. Yet when she does finally see the spirit in the house, it is not Lewis. It is a woman. Who emits ectoplasm. Who is angry. Who seems lost.
Whose presence scares Maureen. Induces fear in her. Causes her finally to flee. Leaving her lost in Paris, not going to Oman to visit her boyfriend Gary, holding on to her "stupid job" so that she can stay and wait. Hoping to find her brother. To seek and sense the sign he might leave for her.
Until she finally finds a companion.
Sort of.
In the person named "Unknown."
Who begins texting her.
You know Unknown. He is kin to Anonymous. You yourself have received his texts and calls.
It is just that this Unknown knows her. Knows her whereabouts. Knows her actions. From Paris to London. Aboard the train. Around town. And back from London to Paris.
Giving Kristen Stewart the opportunity to showcase some of her finest acting. With her cell phone.
She lays bare her soul. Delves the deeps. Exposes her vulnerabilities. Invites the audience to love her as she embodies the unguardedly human.
As The Devil Wears Prada suddenly morphs into The Talented Mr. Ripley. Before it turns into The Shining.
As this motorscooter-driving, leather-jacket-wearing, deadpan-talking, cynically-minded pokerfaced smoker faces her deepest fear.
A fear far greater than spending the night alone in a large, dark empty house with an angry spirit.
The fear of facing herself.
And finding herself.
And trying to decide if she likes herself.
By crossing the threshold into doing the forbidden.
As her Unknown companion encourages her.
Practically pushes her into it.
Maureen wants to be someone else. Wants to be feminine. Wants to be pretty. Wants to be elegant. Wants to be attractive. Wants to be desirable. Wants to be loved.
She indulges her desires.
We are not necessarily saying that Maureen does to Kyra what Tom Ripley did to Dickie Greenleaf. Nor that Ingo functions as her own Freddie Miles.
After all, Ingo himself may be . . . well . . . we will let you see it and decide.
Though we might throw in for good measure that there may be a bit of Swimming Pool in here as well. Or that Maureen might have a beautiful mind.
If only she could hear from Lewis.
He has the answers she is looking for.
Of who she is.
And what there is to come.
Unless . . .
Unless.
* * * *
It's extremely difficult to find a portal into the spirit world. That's just the way it is.
Her works were made before the creation of abstract art. But Hilma af Klint kept her art secret.
In her will she decided that the earliest they would be viewed would be 20 years after her death. So 100 years ago, Hilma af Klint painted for the future, and that future is now.
The idea that there is a world beyond our world.
You already have a stupid job. It wouldn't change a thing, but the pay is better.
Love? It never crossed my mind, no. It's just physical.
I'm a medium. He was a medium. I'll just know it.
Lewis thought they were spirits. I'm less sure. But yes, somewhat. I mean, there are invisible presences around us always, and whether or not they're the souls of the dead, I don't know. And when you are a medium you're just attuned to a vibe. It's an intuition thing. It's a feeling. You see this door, slightly ajar.
I have to give his spirit, or whatever you want to call it, a chance to prove him right.
That's why I'm still waiting. Then I guess I'll live my life and let it go.
I need more from you. I'm gonna need more from you.
You're not my brother. You're not my brother.
Tuesday, February 12, 2019
602 - Clouds of Sils Maria, France, 2014. Dir. Olivier Assayas.
Tuesday, February 12, 2019
602 - Clouds of Sils Maria, France, 2014. Dir. Olivier Assayas.
Cloud Phenomena of Maloja.
Its harbingers.
The clouds wind up the Maloja Pass.
The so-called Maloja Snake.
Rosa is showing Maria footage from the 1924 silent documentary film Cloud Phenomena of Maloja by Arnold Fanck, with subtitles. Maria's personal assistant Valentine looks on while leaning in the doorjam behind them. She shows interest. She moves forward to get a better look.
The baroque orchestra plaintively plays Handel's Largo de Xerxes underneath.
Rosa explains to Maria, "Wilhelm was fascinated with this film. He used to marvel at the fact that the true nature of the landscape revealed itself in these images."
Rosa is Wilhelm's recent widow. The playwright Wilhelm Melchior.
Wilhelm Melchior gave Maria her first big role twenty years ago. He gave her a career. He made her a star. She has always felt grateful.
So grateful, in fact, that when they hear of his death, Maria and Valentine continue on to Zurich anyway, for Maria to give a speech in his honor and to receive an award on his behalf.
Henryk Wad is present.
Henryk is a man Maria cannot stand. She says. She slept with him when she was 18 and they were working on a film together. But she later felt she was too young to understand what she was doing, and he took advantage. A few years later, she says, they working on a film together again. By the time the third film came around, she was a star and suddenly he was interested
But Maria loved Wilhelm Melchior. He gave her her career. He was a warm and generous man, as well as a genius. She reveals to Valentine, after they have been drinking, that she was in love with him but she knew that their professional, working relationship was too important to risk losing over desire.
If only he had lived.
Valentine has invited hot young director Klaus Diesterweg to meet with Maria.
He meets with her.
He offers Maria to play the older woman Helena this time around and to allow a newcomer to play Maria's original role, the character Sigrid.
The newcomer will be Jo-Ann Ellis, a girl with classical training and a theater background who has just done a superhero movie. She respects Maria Enders and is willing to give up her other commitments to work with her. He says.
Rosa invites Maria and Valentine to stay in the Melchior house, in the hills above the Maloja Pass, while Rosa leaves to grieve away from home and its memories.
Valentine proves to be a good rehearsal partner as well as a personal assistant. She too memorizes her lines. The women speak them during both formal rehearsal times and while going hiking and swimming. They move back and forth between the lines and their own speech so that the distinctions between characters and real people become blurred.
They are living their roles.
And as Jo-Ann arrives to play Sigrid, Valentine transforms into Helena
As the clouds roll by.
Juliette Binoche had her break-out role(s) in 1985 in a movie Olivier Assayas co-wrote. She played Nina / Anne Larrieux in Andre Techine's Rendez-vous.
23 years later she worked with Assayas again, in his ensemble drama Summer Hours (2008). Which we have seen.
Now nearly 30 years after their first movie together, Ms. Binoche is starring in Olivier Assayas' film Clouds of Sils Maria.
Kristen Stewart has had a stellar career in a short amount of time. Everyone knows her as Bella Swan from the Twilight series, but she also had a career as a child actress and has played a wide range of characters in a good number of independent and studio films.
* * * *
I'm sick of acting hanging from wires in front of green screens.
He chose an unknown 18-year old actress.
In two months of shooting he gave me everything I needed to build a career on.
The cockroaches must have taken a later train.
I have to say my first reaction was to turn right back.
I can't deal with this; it's impossible.
So he was like in love with you or something?
Not at all. He was just furious I didn't gie in to him.
Look it up in the internet.
I thought we despised the internet.
But I try to be more elegant today.
The less he understands, the better he is. When he understands nothing, he's excellent.
We had an affair when we were shooting Maloja Snake.
Yeah, I couldn't tell.
I was 18, kind of dumb, and he really took advantage. After the shoot I never heard from him, and it destroyed me.
I'm sure you've run into him since.
We made another film together afterwards.
Which one?
Oh, you don't want to know. Tolstoy adaptation. German producers. Who cares? About ten years later I was famous. Then he was interested. And he kept harassing me, calling me in the middle of the night. I didn't give in, and that he hated, and he made me pay for it every single day of the shooting.
He was really amazing in that one movie, um, what was it called? He plays a Soviet defector with missile codes and s---. Do you know it?
No idea. No, I don't know. Never heard of it.
He's great in it. So intense. Especially in the more physical scenes. That stare. He is like, I like him.
Yeah, I kind of got it.
I mean, as an actor I really like him.
It's great to celebrate his work, especially today.
I played Sigrid in Maloja Snake when I was 18. For me it was more than a role. In some way I am still Sigrid.
That's my point. Sigrid seduces Helena.
And it has nothing to do with being a lesbian, by the way. I've always been straight.
That's not at all what I meant.
Sigrid is free beyond everything, and most of all she is destructive, unpredictable.
I know.
And right or wrong, I've always identified with that freedom. It's a way of protecting myself.
And for you, Helena embodies that opposite?
Helena's 40. She runs a company. She falls head over heels in love with a girl who doesn't love her. And commits suicide. Yes, she's completely the opposite.
But, what is it that attracts Helena to Sigrid if they are so different.
It's obvious. Her youth.
'
If you're telling me I'm Helena's age now, yeah, you're right. It's true. But that doesn't mean I can play her.
The way I see Helena is totally different.
She's not the epitome of order.
Sigrid revives tis hidden violence in Helena.
Was it hidden or tamed? Time's gone by and she can't accept it. Me neither, I guess.
There's no antagonism. It's the attraction of two women with the same wound. Sigrid and Helena are one and the same person. One and the same person. That's what the play is about. And because you were Sigrid, only you can be Helena now.
You know as well as I do that William Melchior had been working on a sequel for years.
Yes, but it was about Sigrid at 40 years old.
No, it was about Sigrid 20 years later became Helena.
So, who's gonna play Sigrid?
The role scares me. The role scares me. I'm in the middle of a divorce. I feel alone and vulnerable.
If you refuse, I understand, but it will be a missed opportunity, especially for William.
I should get going.
I have another reason.
Susan Rosenberg. She played Helena with me. She died in a car accident a year after. It's a superstition. I've always associated her death with a Helena suicide.
She was a lousy actress who didn't understand a thing about the role, and her conventional style of acting highlighted the modernity of your performance. You should be grateful to her.
Helena's love for Sigrid makes her stupid, and blind to what everybody in the audience can see right away. . . .
I think your reading is simplistic. I know Sigrid, and believe me, she's more interesting than that. Yes, she takes advantage of Helena. Yes, she fascinates her, and she knows it. Well, you can decide not to look any further, but I had to because I played her. You're just talking about what's on the surface. The play is about what attracts them to each other, and it's harder to see and it's more profound and truer. The impossibility of their relationship is as cruel for Sigrid.
I'm sure she'll get over it.
What do you know?
Time. Youth. She has her life ahead of her.
Well, Helena's young too. I mean, she's not old. She has her life ahead of her too. But she decides to give it all up.
Helena's not used to be turned down. She discovers her own frailty and she can't accept it.
I had a dream we were already rehearsing and the past and the present were blending together. I'm confused.
No kidding.
He is a sick director. Jo-Ann's a superstar. It pays well.
I don't need the money.
Stay as long as you want. I like the fact that you are working on the part here where it was written.
You promised no ghosts.
Is that the Maloja Pass, right there? The snake?
I was fine with just feeling attraction. . . . Anything more would have endangered our relationship, which my intuition told me was much more important than desire.
Maybe I only remember what suits me to remember.
There are werewolves involved, for whatever reason. - Valentine, played by Kristen Stewart.
I didn't know you at 18, but I'm almost positive Jo-Ann's a lot worse.
I think she probably got jealous of Hollywood trash. TMZ deemed her the A-list actress that dreampt of making it to the Z-list.
You could have told me sooner.
You despise internet gossip.
This is not gossip; it's information.
It's celebrity news. It's fun.
I thought you liked her a lot.
I do. I love her. She's not completely antiseptic like the rest of Hollywood.
You just said she's a self-destructive crazy girl.
I didn't say that.
Sorry, I must have misunderstood then.
She's brave enough to be herself. At her age, I think that's pretty f-ing cool. I think she's got a bright future. In fact, I think she's probably my favorite actress.
Oh. You mean more than me.
No. I didn't mean that.
Defeated by age, by her insecurities.
This poor woman is ready to kill herself before the play even starts. She's using Sigrid as a weapon. That's how.
I'm Sigrid. I want to stay Sigrid!
Sigrid is 20.
I don't care. I know I'm right. It doesn't interest me anymore.
If you find my view uninteresting, I don't really know what I'm doing here. I can run lines with you, but I don't really see the point. You can find anyone to do that.
All I'm saying is that thinking about a text is different from living it. It's nothing against you.
You hate the play and you hate her. You don't have to take it out on me. I'm just doing my job.
I don't know why I should be helping to bring it to life.
I bet you weren't saying stuff like this when you were playing Sigrid.
I was a kid when I was playing Sigrid. I wasn't asking those kinds of questions.
Like Jo-Ann and her science fiction film?
Yeah, probably.
Don't you want to get that innocence back?
You can't get innocent twice.
You can. If you just accepted Helena the way you accepted Sigrid. Obviously, it's easier to relate to strength rather than weakness. Youth is better than maturity. Cruelty is cruel. Suffering sucks. She's mature and she's innocent. She's innocent in her own right. That's what I like about her.
You didn't answer me. You have your interpretation of the play. I think mine's just confusing you. It's frustrating me. It's uncomfortable. It's not good.
Stay.
No, no.
Please, stay. I need you.
602 - Clouds of Sils Maria, France, 2014. Dir. Olivier Assayas.
Cloud Phenomena of Maloja.
Its harbingers.
The clouds wind up the Maloja Pass.
The so-called Maloja Snake.
Rosa is showing Maria footage from the 1924 silent documentary film Cloud Phenomena of Maloja by Arnold Fanck, with subtitles. Maria's personal assistant Valentine looks on while leaning in the doorjam behind them. She shows interest. She moves forward to get a better look.
The baroque orchestra plaintively plays Handel's Largo de Xerxes underneath.
Rosa explains to Maria, "Wilhelm was fascinated with this film. He used to marvel at the fact that the true nature of the landscape revealed itself in these images."
Rosa is Wilhelm's recent widow. The playwright Wilhelm Melchior.
Wilhelm Melchior gave Maria her first big role twenty years ago. He gave her a career. He made her a star. She has always felt grateful.
So grateful, in fact, that when they hear of his death, Maria and Valentine continue on to Zurich anyway, for Maria to give a speech in his honor and to receive an award on his behalf.
Henryk Wad is present.
Henryk is a man Maria cannot stand. She says. She slept with him when she was 18 and they were working on a film together. But she later felt she was too young to understand what she was doing, and he took advantage. A few years later, she says, they working on a film together again. By the time the third film came around, she was a star and suddenly he was interested
But Maria loved Wilhelm Melchior. He gave her her career. He was a warm and generous man, as well as a genius. She reveals to Valentine, after they have been drinking, that she was in love with him but she knew that their professional, working relationship was too important to risk losing over desire.
If only he had lived.
Valentine has invited hot young director Klaus Diesterweg to meet with Maria.
He meets with her.
He offers Maria to play the older woman Helena this time around and to allow a newcomer to play Maria's original role, the character Sigrid.
The newcomer will be Jo-Ann Ellis, a girl with classical training and a theater background who has just done a superhero movie. She respects Maria Enders and is willing to give up her other commitments to work with her. He says.
Rosa invites Maria and Valentine to stay in the Melchior house, in the hills above the Maloja Pass, while Rosa leaves to grieve away from home and its memories.
Valentine proves to be a good rehearsal partner as well as a personal assistant. She too memorizes her lines. The women speak them during both formal rehearsal times and while going hiking and swimming. They move back and forth between the lines and their own speech so that the distinctions between characters and real people become blurred.
They are living their roles.
And as Jo-Ann arrives to play Sigrid, Valentine transforms into Helena
As the clouds roll by.
Juliette Binoche had her break-out role(s) in 1985 in a movie Olivier Assayas co-wrote. She played Nina / Anne Larrieux in Andre Techine's Rendez-vous.
23 years later she worked with Assayas again, in his ensemble drama Summer Hours (2008). Which we have seen.
Now nearly 30 years after their first movie together, Ms. Binoche is starring in Olivier Assayas' film Clouds of Sils Maria.
Kristen Stewart has had a stellar career in a short amount of time. Everyone knows her as Bella Swan from the Twilight series, but she also had a career as a child actress and has played a wide range of characters in a good number of independent and studio films.
* * * *
I'm sick of acting hanging from wires in front of green screens.
He chose an unknown 18-year old actress.
In two months of shooting he gave me everything I needed to build a career on.
The cockroaches must have taken a later train.
I have to say my first reaction was to turn right back.
I can't deal with this; it's impossible.
So he was like in love with you or something?
Not at all. He was just furious I didn't gie in to him.
Look it up in the internet.
I thought we despised the internet.
But I try to be more elegant today.
The less he understands, the better he is. When he understands nothing, he's excellent.
We had an affair when we were shooting Maloja Snake.
Yeah, I couldn't tell.
I was 18, kind of dumb, and he really took advantage. After the shoot I never heard from him, and it destroyed me.
I'm sure you've run into him since.
We made another film together afterwards.
Which one?
Oh, you don't want to know. Tolstoy adaptation. German producers. Who cares? About ten years later I was famous. Then he was interested. And he kept harassing me, calling me in the middle of the night. I didn't give in, and that he hated, and he made me pay for it every single day of the shooting.
He was really amazing in that one movie, um, what was it called? He plays a Soviet defector with missile codes and s---. Do you know it?
No idea. No, I don't know. Never heard of it.
He's great in it. So intense. Especially in the more physical scenes. That stare. He is like, I like him.
Yeah, I kind of got it.
I mean, as an actor I really like him.
It's great to celebrate his work, especially today.
I played Sigrid in Maloja Snake when I was 18. For me it was more than a role. In some way I am still Sigrid.
That's my point. Sigrid seduces Helena.
And it has nothing to do with being a lesbian, by the way. I've always been straight.
That's not at all what I meant.
Sigrid is free beyond everything, and most of all she is destructive, unpredictable.
I know.
And right or wrong, I've always identified with that freedom. It's a way of protecting myself.
And for you, Helena embodies that opposite?
Helena's 40. She runs a company. She falls head over heels in love with a girl who doesn't love her. And commits suicide. Yes, she's completely the opposite.
But, what is it that attracts Helena to Sigrid if they are so different.
It's obvious. Her youth.
'
If you're telling me I'm Helena's age now, yeah, you're right. It's true. But that doesn't mean I can play her.
The way I see Helena is totally different.
She's not the epitome of order.
Sigrid revives tis hidden violence in Helena.
Was it hidden or tamed? Time's gone by and she can't accept it. Me neither, I guess.
There's no antagonism. It's the attraction of two women with the same wound. Sigrid and Helena are one and the same person. One and the same person. That's what the play is about. And because you were Sigrid, only you can be Helena now.
You know as well as I do that William Melchior had been working on a sequel for years.
Yes, but it was about Sigrid at 40 years old.
No, it was about Sigrid 20 years later became Helena.
So, who's gonna play Sigrid?
The role scares me. The role scares me. I'm in the middle of a divorce. I feel alone and vulnerable.
If you refuse, I understand, but it will be a missed opportunity, especially for William.
I should get going.
I have another reason.
Susan Rosenberg. She played Helena with me. She died in a car accident a year after. It's a superstition. I've always associated her death with a Helena suicide.
She was a lousy actress who didn't understand a thing about the role, and her conventional style of acting highlighted the modernity of your performance. You should be grateful to her.
Helena's love for Sigrid makes her stupid, and blind to what everybody in the audience can see right away. . . .
I think your reading is simplistic. I know Sigrid, and believe me, she's more interesting than that. Yes, she takes advantage of Helena. Yes, she fascinates her, and she knows it. Well, you can decide not to look any further, but I had to because I played her. You're just talking about what's on the surface. The play is about what attracts them to each other, and it's harder to see and it's more profound and truer. The impossibility of their relationship is as cruel for Sigrid.
I'm sure she'll get over it.
What do you know?
Time. Youth. She has her life ahead of her.
Well, Helena's young too. I mean, she's not old. She has her life ahead of her too. But she decides to give it all up.
Helena's not used to be turned down. She discovers her own frailty and she can't accept it.
I had a dream we were already rehearsing and the past and the present were blending together. I'm confused.
No kidding.
He is a sick director. Jo-Ann's a superstar. It pays well.
I don't need the money.
Stay as long as you want. I like the fact that you are working on the part here where it was written.
You promised no ghosts.
Is that the Maloja Pass, right there? The snake?
I was fine with just feeling attraction. . . . Anything more would have endangered our relationship, which my intuition told me was much more important than desire.
Maybe I only remember what suits me to remember.
There are werewolves involved, for whatever reason. - Valentine, played by Kristen Stewart.
I didn't know you at 18, but I'm almost positive Jo-Ann's a lot worse.
I think she probably got jealous of Hollywood trash. TMZ deemed her the A-list actress that dreampt of making it to the Z-list.
You could have told me sooner.
You despise internet gossip.
This is not gossip; it's information.
It's celebrity news. It's fun.
I thought you liked her a lot.
I do. I love her. She's not completely antiseptic like the rest of Hollywood.
You just said she's a self-destructive crazy girl.
I didn't say that.
Sorry, I must have misunderstood then.
She's brave enough to be herself. At her age, I think that's pretty f-ing cool. I think she's got a bright future. In fact, I think she's probably my favorite actress.
Oh. You mean more than me.
No. I didn't mean that.
Defeated by age, by her insecurities.
This poor woman is ready to kill herself before the play even starts. She's using Sigrid as a weapon. That's how.
I'm Sigrid. I want to stay Sigrid!
Sigrid is 20.
I don't care. I know I'm right. It doesn't interest me anymore.
If you find my view uninteresting, I don't really know what I'm doing here. I can run lines with you, but I don't really see the point. You can find anyone to do that.
All I'm saying is that thinking about a text is different from living it. It's nothing against you.
You hate the play and you hate her. You don't have to take it out on me. I'm just doing my job.
I don't know why I should be helping to bring it to life.
I bet you weren't saying stuff like this when you were playing Sigrid.
I was a kid when I was playing Sigrid. I wasn't asking those kinds of questions.
Like Jo-Ann and her science fiction film?
Yeah, probably.
Don't you want to get that innocence back?
You can't get innocent twice.
You can. If you just accepted Helena the way you accepted Sigrid. Obviously, it's easier to relate to strength rather than weakness. Youth is better than maturity. Cruelty is cruel. Suffering sucks. She's mature and she's innocent. She's innocent in her own right. That's what I like about her.
You didn't answer me. You have your interpretation of the play. I think mine's just confusing you. It's frustrating me. It's uncomfortable. It's not good.
Stay.
No, no.
Please, stay. I need you.
Monday, February 11, 2019
601 - Carlos, Part 3, France, 2010. Dir. Olivier Assayas.
Monday, February 11, 2019
601 - Carlos, Part 3, France, 2010. Dir. Olivier Assayas.
Budapest, 1979.
Carlos and Magdalena set up shop.
Hungary is a socialist nation. They tell him he can receive friends and move about Hungary as he pleases. But he has no right to set up operations there.
He goes to Tripoli, Libya.
He goes to Aden, Yemen.
Syria protects him.
He works with other countries and regimes.
Libya.
Romania.
Nicolae Ceausesu.
He sets up deals.
He smuggles guns.
He makes lots of money.
Until it all come crashing down.
Communism falls.
The Berlin Wall is dismantled.
Carlos must leave Syria.
He goes to Sudan.
He loses his supporters.
He watches as an outsider.
He gets ill.
He is captured.
Nothing lasts forever.
Not the least the life and work of a communist terrorist.
601 - Carlos, Part 3, France, 2010. Dir. Olivier Assayas.
Budapest, 1979.
Carlos and Magdalena set up shop.
Hungary is a socialist nation. They tell him he can receive friends and move about Hungary as he pleases. But he has no right to set up operations there.
He goes to Tripoli, Libya.
He goes to Aden, Yemen.
Syria protects him.
He works with other countries and regimes.
Libya.
Romania.
Nicolae Ceausesu.
He sets up deals.
He smuggles guns.
He makes lots of money.
Until it all come crashing down.
Communism falls.
The Berlin Wall is dismantled.
Carlos must leave Syria.
He goes to Sudan.
He loses his supporters.
He watches as an outsider.
He gets ill.
He is captured.
Nothing lasts forever.
Not the least the life and work of a communist terrorist.
Sunday, February 10, 2019
600 - Carlos, Part 2, France, 2010. Dir. Olivier Assayas.
Sunday, February 10, 2019
600 - Carlos, Part 2, France, 2010. Dir. Olivier Assayas.
Vienna, December 21, 1975.
The red and white tram turns the corner and comes to a stop. Sonderzug.
Carlos and his men get off. He smokes. He walks. He looks around. He wears the black jacket, the sunglasses, the beret, of his uniform.
Is the conference still on?
Yes.
They go upstairs. They unpack their bags. There are six of them. Including Nana.
They enter the conference room and shoot up the ceilings. As well as the first couple men who try to stop them. Carlos shoots one, a Libyan delegate. Nana shoots another.
The world's oil ambassadors lie on the ground below the tables.
Nana shoots a third one.
Youssef straps explosives to the table legs.
Khalid: find Yamani?
Not yet.
Khalid does find Jamshid Amouzegar, the oil minister of Iran.
Carlos finds Dr. Hernandez Acosta of Venezuela. He appreciates the position of his government. "We are on the same side."
Then Carlos finds him: Ahmed Zaki Yamani, oil minister of Saudi Arabia.
Search them all. And confiscate any weapons.
The police get into a firefight in the hallway with a couple of Carlos' men. One of his men gets shot in the abdomen.
"I'm wounded. The situation's under control. One of the cops was hit. The others ran. Joseph is still in position."
"You have nothing to fear. Just sit hear; keep an eye on the hostages, okay?"
The neutral countries in the back to the left:
Gabon, Nigeria, Ecuador, Venezuela, Indonesia.
The friendly countries in the back to the right:
Iraq, Libya, Kuwait, Algeria.
The others are the enemies of our cause. In the center, quick:
Saudi Arabia, The Emirates, Qatar, Iran.
Carlos dictates a letter to a secretary.
To the Austrian authorities,
We have taken the OPEC Conference delegates hostage. We demand that the enclosed communique be read on Austrian state radio and television within two hours, and then at regular intervals every two hours. A bus with curtains at its windows will be provided to take us to Vienna Airport tomorrow morning at seven o'clock.
Carlos' wounded colleague falls to the ground. He has lost plenty of blood.
Belaid Abdessalam, oil minister of Algeria, is a doctor.
There a DC-9 and a three-man crew will be ready to take off to carry us and our hostages to our final destination. Any delay, provocation, or unauthorized attempts to approach us will endanger the lives of our hostages.
Signed,
The Armed Wing of the Arab Revolution,
Vienna, December 21st, 1975.
The secretary goes out to deliver the communique and the letter to the police. Along the way, she lifts the wounded policeman and helps him make it outside to get help.
Dr. Abdessalam says the wounded colleague's wound is serious. He needs to be operated on immediately.
Otto Roesch, Minister of the Interior, Home Secretary, arrives by helicopter.
It seems Qaddafi is furious.
Carlos lets it being
President Carlos Andres Perez.
who nationalized the oil industry as well as the mines.
He redistributed wealth to the needy. Considered education the third world's main weapon.
* * * *
"Sit down. I'm going to kill you. Not yet. You're a smart man, and you know the ins and outs of politics the same way I do. You know that at the end of the day we're just pawns in the game of history. Aren't we? Me, I'm a soldier. I don't have a home, not even a tent. My only mission is to lead my men to victory. Today, I have 40 commando groups around the world, ready to act as soon as I give the order. They are men with determination, and they're ready to sacrifice themselves for the cause and for the final victory. That's who I am.
"As for you, you are a strategist. And the chessboard you played on is as big as the planet. And I totally respect that, because actually you and I have found ourselves many times on the same side. The side of the anti-imperialist struggle and the Palestinian cause. But unfortunately, today, we are not on that same side, because by lifting the oil embargo you betrayed our cause. You sided with Washington.
"There always comes a time for a man to take responsibility for his acts. And that time, Sheikh Yamani, has come for you today. You are going to have to pay for Saudi Arabia's political decisions. And you know what's the treatment reserved for traitors--death. Now you pray. You know what? I'm going to be straight to you, because you and I are men of the same caliber. You and I know that if the Austrian Government doesn't respect our ultimatum, I will have no choice. And with no hesitation, I will execute you personally and throw your body out the window.
"But I also know that a man of your intelligence won't hold that against me, because you know, after all, our struggle very well. You are aware of its greatness and nobility."
"Relax. Only Amouzegar for Iran and Yamani for Saudi Arabia will have to pay. The others will be spared."
"It is now clear for everyone that the crucial Arab cause concerning he Palestinian question and subjected to its consequences is the object of a major plot aiming to legitimize Zionist existence on our land and to consolidate division, weakness, and dissension in the Arab world, and particularly in the region neighboring the occupied Palestinian territory in order to allow the aggressive Zionist state to execute its expansionist projects. In addition to these maneuvers aimed at forcing Arab and Palestinian recognition regarding its legality, the Zionist state . . . "
The doctor who examined your colleague said he cannot be moved. . . . He will die during the journey.
Dead or alive, I don't care.
"Don't you think what the revolution needs is money and not corpses? . . . Your hostages are more valuable alive than dead."
"I am very well paid. I have nothing to gain by sparing these dogs."
600 - Carlos, Part 2, France, 2010. Dir. Olivier Assayas.
Vienna, December 21, 1975.
The red and white tram turns the corner and comes to a stop. Sonderzug.
Carlos and his men get off. He smokes. He walks. He looks around. He wears the black jacket, the sunglasses, the beret, of his uniform.
Is the conference still on?
Yes.
They go upstairs. They unpack their bags. There are six of them. Including Nana.
They enter the conference room and shoot up the ceilings. As well as the first couple men who try to stop them. Carlos shoots one, a Libyan delegate. Nana shoots another.
The world's oil ambassadors lie on the ground below the tables.
Nana shoots a third one.
Youssef straps explosives to the table legs.
Khalid: find Yamani?
Not yet.
Khalid does find Jamshid Amouzegar, the oil minister of Iran.
Carlos finds Dr. Hernandez Acosta of Venezuela. He appreciates the position of his government. "We are on the same side."
Then Carlos finds him: Ahmed Zaki Yamani, oil minister of Saudi Arabia.
Search them all. And confiscate any weapons.
The police get into a firefight in the hallway with a couple of Carlos' men. One of his men gets shot in the abdomen.
"I'm wounded. The situation's under control. One of the cops was hit. The others ran. Joseph is still in position."
"You have nothing to fear. Just sit hear; keep an eye on the hostages, okay?"
The neutral countries in the back to the left:
Gabon, Nigeria, Ecuador, Venezuela, Indonesia.
The friendly countries in the back to the right:
Iraq, Libya, Kuwait, Algeria.
The others are the enemies of our cause. In the center, quick:
Saudi Arabia, The Emirates, Qatar, Iran.
Carlos dictates a letter to a secretary.
To the Austrian authorities,
We have taken the OPEC Conference delegates hostage. We demand that the enclosed communique be read on Austrian state radio and television within two hours, and then at regular intervals every two hours. A bus with curtains at its windows will be provided to take us to Vienna Airport tomorrow morning at seven o'clock.
Carlos' wounded colleague falls to the ground. He has lost plenty of blood.
Belaid Abdessalam, oil minister of Algeria, is a doctor.
There a DC-9 and a three-man crew will be ready to take off to carry us and our hostages to our final destination. Any delay, provocation, or unauthorized attempts to approach us will endanger the lives of our hostages.
Signed,
The Armed Wing of the Arab Revolution,
Vienna, December 21st, 1975.
The secretary goes out to deliver the communique and the letter to the police. Along the way, she lifts the wounded policeman and helps him make it outside to get help.
Dr. Abdessalam says the wounded colleague's wound is serious. He needs to be operated on immediately.
Otto Roesch, Minister of the Interior, Home Secretary, arrives by helicopter.
It seems Qaddafi is furious.
Carlos lets it being
President Carlos Andres Perez.
who nationalized the oil industry as well as the mines.
He redistributed wealth to the needy. Considered education the third world's main weapon.
* * * *
"Sit down. I'm going to kill you. Not yet. You're a smart man, and you know the ins and outs of politics the same way I do. You know that at the end of the day we're just pawns in the game of history. Aren't we? Me, I'm a soldier. I don't have a home, not even a tent. My only mission is to lead my men to victory. Today, I have 40 commando groups around the world, ready to act as soon as I give the order. They are men with determination, and they're ready to sacrifice themselves for the cause and for the final victory. That's who I am.
"As for you, you are a strategist. And the chessboard you played on is as big as the planet. And I totally respect that, because actually you and I have found ourselves many times on the same side. The side of the anti-imperialist struggle and the Palestinian cause. But unfortunately, today, we are not on that same side, because by lifting the oil embargo you betrayed our cause. You sided with Washington.
"There always comes a time for a man to take responsibility for his acts. And that time, Sheikh Yamani, has come for you today. You are going to have to pay for Saudi Arabia's political decisions. And you know what's the treatment reserved for traitors--death. Now you pray. You know what? I'm going to be straight to you, because you and I are men of the same caliber. You and I know that if the Austrian Government doesn't respect our ultimatum, I will have no choice. And with no hesitation, I will execute you personally and throw your body out the window.
"But I also know that a man of your intelligence won't hold that against me, because you know, after all, our struggle very well. You are aware of its greatness and nobility."
"Relax. Only Amouzegar for Iran and Yamani for Saudi Arabia will have to pay. The others will be spared."
"It is now clear for everyone that the crucial Arab cause concerning he Palestinian question and subjected to its consequences is the object of a major plot aiming to legitimize Zionist existence on our land and to consolidate division, weakness, and dissension in the Arab world, and particularly in the region neighboring the occupied Palestinian territory in order to allow the aggressive Zionist state to execute its expansionist projects. In addition to these maneuvers aimed at forcing Arab and Palestinian recognition regarding its legality, the Zionist state . . . "
The doctor who examined your colleague said he cannot be moved. . . . He will die during the journey.
Dead or alive, I don't care.
"Don't you think what the revolution needs is money and not corpses? . . . Your hostages are more valuable alive than dead."
"I am very well paid. I have nothing to gain by sparing these dogs."
Saturday, February 9, 2019
599 - Carlos, Part 1, France, 2010. Dir. Olivier Assayas.
Saturday, February 9, 2019
599 - Carlos, Part 1, France, 2010. Dir. Olivier Assayas.
Mohammed Boudia awakens with his girlfriend and gets dressed for the day.
His car explodes.
Mohammed Boudia worked for the PFLP. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
He was targeted by MOSSAD. The Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations. A counter-terrorist unit from Israel.
Which was itself responding in part to the Black September bombings at the 1972 Olympics in Munich.
If you have seen Steven Spielberg's movie Munich (2005), then you have witnessed a telling of that story. This story overlaps with that story just a little bit here in the beginning, and follows the action forward and from the point of view of the other side.
Time to replace Boudia.
The leader, Waddi Haddad, brings the new man from Jordan to London to see if he is ready.
Ilich Ramirez Sanchez is the man for the job.
Sanchez hails from Venezuela. He was born in 1949. In 1951 his brother Lenin was born. In 1958 his brother Vladimir was born. His father apparently had a thing for Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Sanchez received Communist training first in Cuba and then in Moscow.
He gets his assignment. He goes to London. He informs people that his name is now Carlos.
Carlos is a strong leader. He consolidates power. His early missions fail but he makes adjustments. He goes to France.
The head of Carlos' unit, Michel Moukharbal--Andre--betrays Carlos by fingering him to the police. Carlos gets away by shooting himself out of an apartment.
He retreats to Yemen where at first he lets himself go. But then Haddad makes him go back into training for a new mission he has for him. In Austria.
Carlos now leads a team in Vienna, where they take hostages during the OPEC meeting.
This film is a grand project for Olivier Assayas. It runs 5 hours, 39 minutes, and its characters speak in 8 different languages English, Arabic, German, Spanish, French, Hungarian, and Japanese.
* * * *
This film is the result of historical and journalistic research.
Because of controversial gray areas in Carlos' life, the film must be viewed as fiction, tracing two decades in the life of a notorious terrorist.
His relations with other characters have been fictionalized as well.
The three murder on Rue Toulier are the only events depicted in this film for which Ilich Ramirez Sanchez was tried and sentenced.
The Drugstore Publicis bombing is still under investigation.
Paris, June 28, 1973
599 - Carlos, Part 1, France, 2010. Dir. Olivier Assayas.
Mohammed Boudia awakens with his girlfriend and gets dressed for the day.
His car explodes.
Mohammed Boudia worked for the PFLP. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
He was targeted by MOSSAD. The Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations. A counter-terrorist unit from Israel.
Which was itself responding in part to the Black September bombings at the 1972 Olympics in Munich.
If you have seen Steven Spielberg's movie Munich (2005), then you have witnessed a telling of that story. This story overlaps with that story just a little bit here in the beginning, and follows the action forward and from the point of view of the other side.
Time to replace Boudia.
The leader, Waddi Haddad, brings the new man from Jordan to London to see if he is ready.
Ilich Ramirez Sanchez is the man for the job.
Sanchez hails from Venezuela. He was born in 1949. In 1951 his brother Lenin was born. In 1958 his brother Vladimir was born. His father apparently had a thing for Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Sanchez received Communist training first in Cuba and then in Moscow.
He gets his assignment. He goes to London. He informs people that his name is now Carlos.
Carlos is a strong leader. He consolidates power. His early missions fail but he makes adjustments. He goes to France.
The head of Carlos' unit, Michel Moukharbal--Andre--betrays Carlos by fingering him to the police. Carlos gets away by shooting himself out of an apartment.
He retreats to Yemen where at first he lets himself go. But then Haddad makes him go back into training for a new mission he has for him. In Austria.
Carlos now leads a team in Vienna, where they take hostages during the OPEC meeting.
This film is a grand project for Olivier Assayas. It runs 5 hours, 39 minutes, and its characters speak in 8 different languages English, Arabic, German, Spanish, French, Hungarian, and Japanese.
* * * *
This film is the result of historical and journalistic research.
Because of controversial gray areas in Carlos' life, the film must be viewed as fiction, tracing two decades in the life of a notorious terrorist.
His relations with other characters have been fictionalized as well.
The three murder on Rue Toulier are the only events depicted in this film for which Ilich Ramirez Sanchez was tried and sentenced.
The Drugstore Publicis bombing is still under investigation.
Paris, June 28, 1973
Friday, February 8, 2019
598 - Summer Hours, France, 2008. Dir. Olivier Assayas.
Friday, February 8, 2019
598 - Summer Hours, France, 2008. Dir. Olivier Assayas.
What about the grandchildren?
Sylvie is the tall, curly-headed one. She stands out at the beginning of the film. Because she is older and taller than the others. She is starting to grow. She helps one of the little ones when he stumbles.
The kids are walking through the woods. Down the hill. Through the meadow. To the stream. On the beautiful estate owned by their grandmother. Helene Marly.
Helene loves art. And she collects it. Paintings. Drawings. Sculptures. Porcelains. Crystal. Silver. Glass. Vases. Panels. Furniture. Specifically two paintings by Camille Corot. Panels by Odilon Redon. A Louis Majorelle Art Moderne desk and chair. A Felix Bracquemond vase. An Atelier d'Auteuil vase. A Josef Hoffmann armoire. The pieces of a Degas sculpture, kept in a plastic grocery bag, that her sons broke when they were little.
And the work of her uncle. Paul Berthier. His sketchbook. His drawing of the view out the patio door. A couple of his paintings.
Helen is turning 75. And she has her grown children over to the villa for her birthday. Adrienne comes from New York. Jeremie, from China. Frederic, from Paris, ten miles to the South. The men bring their wives and children. Adrienne talks about her boyfriend. And reveals that he is now her fiance.
The family is loving. Warm and generous. Intelligent and worldly. Hard-working and dedicated. They enjoy one another's company. It is good to be together again. To be home.
They have their disagreements. Jeremie works for a sneaker company. Adrienne as a non-corporate does not fully approve of his profession. Frederic has become an economist at the behest of his father. He does not really love it, so he fashions himself an ironic economist and behaves iconoclastically.
Helene radiates with joy as she speaks with her children. She shares her memories and her art with them. She speaks lovingly of her uncle Paul. Perhaps she loved him more than just as an uncle. She speaks to each of her children individually and shows them the pieces she wants them to have when she dies.
But she does not know how to take care of her affairs legally, so after she dies the estate tax will be assessed at the highest possible bracket.
Helene does die. And the children have to decide what to do with her affairs. Her estate. Her effects.
The attorneys get involved. The curators. The auctioneers.
The siblings have to vote. Frederic loves the family home. He wants to keep it in the family. And much of the art. Especially the Corots. To pass it down for generations to come. But Jeremie's job will keep him in China solidly for the next five years. So the house will be of no use to him. He has three children to take care of. He needs the money. Adrienne is about to be married in New York. She sides with Jeremie. Frederic must concede.
The acting and writing are nuanced in their mature restraint. The siblings behave as one believes real people really would do. Not in superficial and petty cliches. But as people who love each other and want the best, but who must acquiesce to the practicalities of life. With compromise. And loss.
Assayas' deftly handles the objects--both as art and as heirlooms. The same pieces function as artifacts in the museum that function as daily gadgets in the home. The housekeeper keeps cut flowers in the vases. Helene writes on the desk, sits in the chair, stuffs the armoire with household clutter. Including the plastic grocery bag with the broken Degas pieces. Which have sat hidden in that drawer for at least 25 years.
The experts debate just as much as the siblings do. What to do with each item? Christie's in New York will tear out the pages of the sketchbook to maximize profit, which is not only gauche but also a loss for the nation. The sketchbook should stay in France. The Art Moderne pieces, as valuable as they are, would only sit in a warehouse and collect mold.
This film is beyond you can't take it with you. Everyone treats that as a given. It is about the memories that the objects carry, their meaning for different family members, their meaning for the public. The two that vote to sell get to take an item or two each with them, items that mean something to them, which their mother promised them. But Frederic, the one who wants to keep everything, cannot keep the one thing he wants most after the home and gardens--the Corots--because there are two of them; they cannot be divided into three; and he cannot afford to buy out the other two.
But in the end it is the grandchildren who are overlooked. As the three children make their decisions and the experts, strangers to the home, come through the house and make their decisions, monetizing things that have no emotional value for them, nobody thinks to ask the generation that would desire it the most.
The siblings have had their time on the estate. They have their memories. They are ready to move on.
But their children have only started their lives. And have had no say in the loss of their childhood.
They have a party. They might as well. The house will be gone within a few weeks. This is their last chance to take advantage of it. Their friends arrive. They play music. They dance. They light up. They drink. They swim.
And just as the viewer buys into the idea that they only want it for their immediate gratification, Sylvie informs us otherwise.
She finds her boyfriend and leads him into the woods. When the others try to follow them, she leads him more deeply. She does not want them to find them. She wants to be alone.
Sylvie looks back at the house and weeps. Her grandmother once showed her the villa and grounds and said this would all be hers one day. Sylvie believed her. She relied on it. It was her life and future. It is all she has ever known.
But now it is gone. Taken from her. Without consultation.
Nobody asked the grandchildren. The ones for whom the future of this property most matters.
Life is fleeting and full of loss. And no one can stop the vicissitudes of time. Even in families.
Especially with families.
598 - Summer Hours, France, 2008. Dir. Olivier Assayas.
What about the grandchildren?
Sylvie is the tall, curly-headed one. She stands out at the beginning of the film. Because she is older and taller than the others. She is starting to grow. She helps one of the little ones when he stumbles.
The kids are walking through the woods. Down the hill. Through the meadow. To the stream. On the beautiful estate owned by their grandmother. Helene Marly.
Helene loves art. And she collects it. Paintings. Drawings. Sculptures. Porcelains. Crystal. Silver. Glass. Vases. Panels. Furniture. Specifically two paintings by Camille Corot. Panels by Odilon Redon. A Louis Majorelle Art Moderne desk and chair. A Felix Bracquemond vase. An Atelier d'Auteuil vase. A Josef Hoffmann armoire. The pieces of a Degas sculpture, kept in a plastic grocery bag, that her sons broke when they were little.
And the work of her uncle. Paul Berthier. His sketchbook. His drawing of the view out the patio door. A couple of his paintings.
Helen is turning 75. And she has her grown children over to the villa for her birthday. Adrienne comes from New York. Jeremie, from China. Frederic, from Paris, ten miles to the South. The men bring their wives and children. Adrienne talks about her boyfriend. And reveals that he is now her fiance.
The family is loving. Warm and generous. Intelligent and worldly. Hard-working and dedicated. They enjoy one another's company. It is good to be together again. To be home.
They have their disagreements. Jeremie works for a sneaker company. Adrienne as a non-corporate does not fully approve of his profession. Frederic has become an economist at the behest of his father. He does not really love it, so he fashions himself an ironic economist and behaves iconoclastically.
Helene radiates with joy as she speaks with her children. She shares her memories and her art with them. She speaks lovingly of her uncle Paul. Perhaps she loved him more than just as an uncle. She speaks to each of her children individually and shows them the pieces she wants them to have when she dies.
But she does not know how to take care of her affairs legally, so after she dies the estate tax will be assessed at the highest possible bracket.
Helene does die. And the children have to decide what to do with her affairs. Her estate. Her effects.
The attorneys get involved. The curators. The auctioneers.
The siblings have to vote. Frederic loves the family home. He wants to keep it in the family. And much of the art. Especially the Corots. To pass it down for generations to come. But Jeremie's job will keep him in China solidly for the next five years. So the house will be of no use to him. He has three children to take care of. He needs the money. Adrienne is about to be married in New York. She sides with Jeremie. Frederic must concede.
The acting and writing are nuanced in their mature restraint. The siblings behave as one believes real people really would do. Not in superficial and petty cliches. But as people who love each other and want the best, but who must acquiesce to the practicalities of life. With compromise. And loss.
Assayas' deftly handles the objects--both as art and as heirlooms. The same pieces function as artifacts in the museum that function as daily gadgets in the home. The housekeeper keeps cut flowers in the vases. Helene writes on the desk, sits in the chair, stuffs the armoire with household clutter. Including the plastic grocery bag with the broken Degas pieces. Which have sat hidden in that drawer for at least 25 years.
The experts debate just as much as the siblings do. What to do with each item? Christie's in New York will tear out the pages of the sketchbook to maximize profit, which is not only gauche but also a loss for the nation. The sketchbook should stay in France. The Art Moderne pieces, as valuable as they are, would only sit in a warehouse and collect mold.
This film is beyond you can't take it with you. Everyone treats that as a given. It is about the memories that the objects carry, their meaning for different family members, their meaning for the public. The two that vote to sell get to take an item or two each with them, items that mean something to them, which their mother promised them. But Frederic, the one who wants to keep everything, cannot keep the one thing he wants most after the home and gardens--the Corots--because there are two of them; they cannot be divided into three; and he cannot afford to buy out the other two.
But in the end it is the grandchildren who are overlooked. As the three children make their decisions and the experts, strangers to the home, come through the house and make their decisions, monetizing things that have no emotional value for them, nobody thinks to ask the generation that would desire it the most.
The siblings have had their time on the estate. They have their memories. They are ready to move on.
But their children have only started their lives. And have had no say in the loss of their childhood.
They have a party. They might as well. The house will be gone within a few weeks. This is their last chance to take advantage of it. Their friends arrive. They play music. They dance. They light up. They drink. They swim.
And just as the viewer buys into the idea that they only want it for their immediate gratification, Sylvie informs us otherwise.
She finds her boyfriend and leads him into the woods. When the others try to follow them, she leads him more deeply. She does not want them to find them. She wants to be alone.
Sylvie looks back at the house and weeps. Her grandmother once showed her the villa and grounds and said this would all be hers one day. Sylvie believed her. She relied on it. It was her life and future. It is all she has ever known.
But now it is gone. Taken from her. Without consultation.
Nobody asked the grandchildren. The ones for whom the future of this property most matters.
Life is fleeting and full of loss. And no one can stop the vicissitudes of time. Even in families.
Especially with families.
Thursday, February 7, 2019
597 - Cold Water, France, 1994. Dir. Olivier Assayas.
Thursday, February 6, 2019
597 - Cold Water, France, 1994. Dir. Olivier Assayas.
The music of the Fall of 1972.
Roxy Music, "Virginia Plain"; Leonard Cohen, "Avalanche"; Janis Joplin, "Me & Bobby McGee"; Creedence Clearwater Revival, "Up Around the Bend"; Nico, "Janitor of Lunacy"; Bob Dylan, "Knockin' On Heaven's Door"; Alice Cooper, "School's Out"; Uriah Heap, "Easy Livin'"; Donovan, "Cosmic Wheels."
These are the songs of Gilles' and Christine's youth. That mark their memory in time.
On this night they stand in a mutual embrace. Christine stares into Gilles' eyes as they slow dance by the bonfire, and all their cares melt, thaw, and resolve themselves into a dew. They stand together, and the dark holds no terrors against them. And in this moment they know they will love each other forever.
Their love might not last till morning, but that knowledge is too perfect for them. A thought they could never conceive. What they have now is this moment, and for them this moment is everything.
Gilles and Christine are dating.
Gilles Guersaint comes from an upper-middle class home. His father is successful and wealthy and gone a lot. He loves art and wants to share it with his son. He shows him a Caravaggio. The Death of the Virgin. He had shown it to him at the Louvre. Classical painting is the one way, possibly the only way, Gilles and his father can connect.
While his father is always gone working, his mother is always gone having life experiences. So the 16-year-old Gilles is left to raise himself. He has a nanny who tells him heartbreaking stories of her life under German occupation, but he cannot connect to her.
Christine Huart comes from a different situation. She says her father abuses her. She refuses to stay with him. But he has won custody and will not let her stay with her mother. Her mother is a Scientologist, which in this world is code for hippie. Her mother complains that Christine judges her, but Gilles knows that Christine is really trying to get through to her mother.
Both of them want parents who will spend time with them. Show them some attention. Be a part of their lives. But since their parents are not a part of their lives, by choice, Christine and Gilles must warily make their precipitous way together.
Gilles and Christine talk at the supermarket. He looks through record albums. He hides them in his knapsack. He steals them.
The guard stops Christine, but Gilles gets away. She goes to the police station. He goes to school. For him it is about the same thing.
The Professeur dronely reads excerpts from Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions (1782), page 121, a passage that might be deemed too shocking for today's classrooms--with references to Madame Francoise-Louise de Warens' sending of Rousseau to Turin written on the chalkboard. Assayas recreates Francois Truffaut's scene from The 400 Blows as Gilles passes his record collection person-to-person across the classroom. Where Antoine Doinel was there the innocent and unfortunate recipient of the pin-up in the all-boy classroom, here Gilles is the instigator in this coed classroom. The teacher responds aggressively and even violently by physically throwing Gilles out of the class while hurling verbal assaults at him.
His father is exasperated, but tries to be practical. He wants to look through art books together. He advises his son to live like an adult.
Meanwhile, Christine sits at the police station waiting to talk to the chief. When he enters she relates a story regarding the way the interrogator treated her. The Inspecteur is stuck. She has leveled a serious accusation, and he must pursue it. However, she laughs, suggesting she might be toying with them as her one means of power. He informs her that he has no choice but to release her to her father, who has arrived to collect her, and he seems sympathetic to her plight.
Her father sends her once again to the institution. Beausoleil. Beautiful Sun.
When Gilles gets into trouble, his father's response is to tell him not to get caught next time.
When Christine gets into trouble, her father's response is to lock her up.
Chistine escapes and goes to the local rave, where, in the midst of others' drugtaking, she grabs a pair of scissors and cuts her hair. When a couple of girls try to stop her, she stabs one of them in the shoulder and creates a commotion.
But Gilles arrives on bicycle and finds her. He goes to her. She looks at him with hopeful eyes, needing love. His presence is a comforting emollient.
Some kids do drugs.
They pour gas on the grass. They start the bonfire.
As the music plays and the kids dance; as some of them light up and others start the bonfire by dousing the grass with gasoline; as they break windows and drag furniture out of the house to fuel the fire; Gilles and Christine enter their own world. And for a time they are safe, and happy, and in love.
Gilles and Christine kiss
Leonard Cohen sings "Avalanche."
In this moment, as they stand together, holding each other, moving towards the bonfire, as they kiss, one feels for them. It is a moment of fragile happiness, of delicate peace, of transitory hope.
Growing up is painful. Sometimes people find each other, and they comfort each other by sharing the pain and feeling as if they are not alone. Gilles and Christine have no way of knowing that their love is incomplete, youthful, temporary. They are in this moment. In this place. Together. Feeling whole.
She tells him of a place about which her friend has written her. The girl who stopped coming to school. A commune. The girl's father is a painter and has gone there. And taken the family. The girl loves it. And has sparked the desire within Christine. Christine longs to go. And take Gilles with her.
She gives him her ultimatum. Come with me now. Forsake your family. And your money. And your friends. Leave all to be with me. Together. Forever.
He hesitates. She leaves. He calls her back. She comes. He says Yes. They go. They walk for miles. In the cold. Their breaths waft from their mouths like flue fog.
They arrive at the water. The cold water. Where they will consummate their amorous elopement.
Until tomorrow.
When life begins again with a clean slate. A blank note.
And an uncertain future.
Beside the deep, lonely, cold water.
* * * *
--Olivier Assayas--
I needed Caravaggio in the film because classic paintings was something that was important both for me and my father. That's how we somehow connected. I functioned as a painter or a poet. I just put raw emotions on the screen. So I had a sense of reliving my youth. It gave me a sense that cinema had the capacity of making you reexperience moments, emotion, in your life, and now when I'm looking back on it I have this strange feeling like this movie belongs to the 70s. It's like a screen between my actual [experience] of being a teenager and my memories of it. When I think of my teenage years, Cold Water imposes itself on it.
We shot the party scene in five days.
There were no boarders between filmmaking and reality. Those kids were dressed like we were dressed in the 70s, but it didn't feel like a period piece. . . . To me it was still the present.
The shoot is like an art piece, an experience.
They experienced something that's possibly stronger than whatever actually ends up on screen. and ever since I've had this sense that the shoot of a film should not be work. Cold Water helped me realize it.
I wrote those songs into the film. The songs became the narrative. I knew I wanted the dawn with this sense of absolute loss that "The Janitor of Lunacy" conveys. I knew I wanted this peak of energy that the CCR song conveys.
I designed the scene always knowing who was where at what time, and left myself a lot of space to be carried by the music.
The established logic is that you do things faster and faster but here I was constantly slowing things down. A lot of scenes were just very long tracking shots. And I knew I wanted to give myself space to improvise. I spent a lot of time choosing the extras.
I didn't want any actors.
The message is that there is no message. They're rushing to a dead end, really, because we know that the place they are going doesn't exist, which is a little bit what youth is about. And in that sense that's ultimately what the blank note says. He will stay with the question mark. There's no closure there. There is no moral to the story. There is no meaning. The meaning is something he will have to figure out in the future. She leaves on a blank note that will echo through his whole life.
To me, what this film is about is teenage love.
A relationship at that age is something so essential, so important, that all of a sudden it is what makes you an individual. You have to make the decisions that will define your identity, because before that you are just part of the group. You are just one more teenager. But if all of a sudden you become a couple, you have to question yourself, and that's how you grow.
16mm, handheld, non-actors, 4 weeks, no pressure.
Cold Water is a punk rock version of the 1970s.
I grew up in that environment; I had those kinds of conversations with my father.
* * * *
Road to Budapest
Then we heard that the Russians were coming.
The Russian army was full of youngsters from the Caucasus and Mongolia. They were savages. Real savages. I don't know how to explain it.
Very well. Since you cannot read for us, you can tell us what you remember. If you had read it, you would remember.
What is this ridiculous object? It should interest you.
I might have been able to help but it's too late now.
Your father's here for you.
That took an hour of my life.
You don't have to take them, but I'll have to tell Dr. Varennes.
Mr. Guersaint, continue reading.
Remember , which I showed you at the Louvre?
Caravaggio
Mess around but don't get caught.
live like an adult
I can see she's unhappy but I don't know how to help her.
She's only 16! I can't let her go running off!
She wants to be alone.
Maybe it's her way of telling you something. Like pay more attention to her.
She judges me. Well, I'm not giving up my life for her. Just like with her father. Has to be the center of attraction.
I'll live the way I want.
Sorry I got all worked up. She means a lot to me. I don't want to lose her.
Chloe
She didn't vanish. Her dad's a painter. They moved to l an old farm in the Lozere region. The farm's full of artists. They redid the place. It's great.
I want you to come.
I don't have a thing on me.
Neither do I.
We will be all alone, you know. No family. No money. No home. You will have me and I will have you.
I know.
There is no phone or water or electricity.
We will be there by dark.
It doesn't look that far on the map.
It's a winding road, at least 12 miles.
There are no cars on the road, and it will be dark soon.
597 - Cold Water, France, 1994. Dir. Olivier Assayas.
The music of the Fall of 1972.
Roxy Music, "Virginia Plain"; Leonard Cohen, "Avalanche"; Janis Joplin, "Me & Bobby McGee"; Creedence Clearwater Revival, "Up Around the Bend"; Nico, "Janitor of Lunacy"; Bob Dylan, "Knockin' On Heaven's Door"; Alice Cooper, "School's Out"; Uriah Heap, "Easy Livin'"; Donovan, "Cosmic Wheels."
These are the songs of Gilles' and Christine's youth. That mark their memory in time.
On this night they stand in a mutual embrace. Christine stares into Gilles' eyes as they slow dance by the bonfire, and all their cares melt, thaw, and resolve themselves into a dew. They stand together, and the dark holds no terrors against them. And in this moment they know they will love each other forever.
Their love might not last till morning, but that knowledge is too perfect for them. A thought they could never conceive. What they have now is this moment, and for them this moment is everything.
Gilles and Christine are dating.
Gilles Guersaint comes from an upper-middle class home. His father is successful and wealthy and gone a lot. He loves art and wants to share it with his son. He shows him a Caravaggio. The Death of the Virgin. He had shown it to him at the Louvre. Classical painting is the one way, possibly the only way, Gilles and his father can connect.
While his father is always gone working, his mother is always gone having life experiences. So the 16-year-old Gilles is left to raise himself. He has a nanny who tells him heartbreaking stories of her life under German occupation, but he cannot connect to her.
Both of them want parents who will spend time with them. Show them some attention. Be a part of their lives. But since their parents are not a part of their lives, by choice, Christine and Gilles must warily make their precipitous way together.
Gilles and Christine talk at the supermarket. He looks through record albums. He hides them in his knapsack. He steals them.
The guard stops Christine, but Gilles gets away. She goes to the police station. He goes to school. For him it is about the same thing.
The Professeur dronely reads excerpts from Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions (1782), page 121, a passage that might be deemed too shocking for today's classrooms--with references to Madame Francoise-Louise de Warens' sending of Rousseau to Turin written on the chalkboard. Assayas recreates Francois Truffaut's scene from The 400 Blows as Gilles passes his record collection person-to-person across the classroom. Where Antoine Doinel was there the innocent and unfortunate recipient of the pin-up in the all-boy classroom, here Gilles is the instigator in this coed classroom. The teacher responds aggressively and even violently by physically throwing Gilles out of the class while hurling verbal assaults at him.
His father is exasperated, but tries to be practical. He wants to look through art books together. He advises his son to live like an adult.
Meanwhile, Christine sits at the police station waiting to talk to the chief. When he enters she relates a story regarding the way the interrogator treated her. The Inspecteur is stuck. She has leveled a serious accusation, and he must pursue it. However, she laughs, suggesting she might be toying with them as her one means of power. He informs her that he has no choice but to release her to her father, who has arrived to collect her, and he seems sympathetic to her plight.
Her father sends her once again to the institution. Beausoleil. Beautiful Sun.
When Gilles gets into trouble, his father's response is to tell him not to get caught next time.
When Christine gets into trouble, her father's response is to lock her up.
Chistine escapes and goes to the local rave, where, in the midst of others' drugtaking, she grabs a pair of scissors and cuts her hair. When a couple of girls try to stop her, she stabs one of them in the shoulder and creates a commotion.
But Gilles arrives on bicycle and finds her. He goes to her. She looks at him with hopeful eyes, needing love. His presence is a comforting emollient.
Some kids do drugs.
They pour gas on the grass. They start the bonfire.
As the music plays and the kids dance; as some of them light up and others start the bonfire by dousing the grass with gasoline; as they break windows and drag furniture out of the house to fuel the fire; Gilles and Christine enter their own world. And for a time they are safe, and happy, and in love.
Gilles and Christine kiss
Leonard Cohen sings "Avalanche."
In this moment, as they stand together, holding each other, moving towards the bonfire, as they kiss, one feels for them. It is a moment of fragile happiness, of delicate peace, of transitory hope.
She tells him of a place about which her friend has written her. The girl who stopped coming to school. A commune. The girl's father is a painter and has gone there. And taken the family. The girl loves it. And has sparked the desire within Christine. Christine longs to go. And take Gilles with her.
She gives him her ultimatum. Come with me now. Forsake your family. And your money. And your friends. Leave all to be with me. Together. Forever.
He hesitates. She leaves. He calls her back. She comes. He says Yes. They go. They walk for miles. In the cold. Their breaths waft from their mouths like flue fog.
They arrive at the water. The cold water. Where they will consummate their amorous elopement.
Until tomorrow.
When life begins again with a clean slate. A blank note.
And an uncertain future.
Beside the deep, lonely, cold water.
* * * *
--Olivier Assayas--
I needed Caravaggio in the film because classic paintings was something that was important both for me and my father. That's how we somehow connected. I functioned as a painter or a poet. I just put raw emotions on the screen. So I had a sense of reliving my youth. It gave me a sense that cinema had the capacity of making you reexperience moments, emotion, in your life, and now when I'm looking back on it I have this strange feeling like this movie belongs to the 70s. It's like a screen between my actual [experience] of being a teenager and my memories of it. When I think of my teenage years, Cold Water imposes itself on it.
We shot the party scene in five days.
There were no boarders between filmmaking and reality. Those kids were dressed like we were dressed in the 70s, but it didn't feel like a period piece. . . . To me it was still the present.
The shoot is like an art piece, an experience.
They experienced something that's possibly stronger than whatever actually ends up on screen. and ever since I've had this sense that the shoot of a film should not be work. Cold Water helped me realize it.
I wrote those songs into the film. The songs became the narrative. I knew I wanted the dawn with this sense of absolute loss that "The Janitor of Lunacy" conveys. I knew I wanted this peak of energy that the CCR song conveys.
I designed the scene always knowing who was where at what time, and left myself a lot of space to be carried by the music.
The established logic is that you do things faster and faster but here I was constantly slowing things down. A lot of scenes were just very long tracking shots. And I knew I wanted to give myself space to improvise. I spent a lot of time choosing the extras.
I didn't want any actors.
The message is that there is no message. They're rushing to a dead end, really, because we know that the place they are going doesn't exist, which is a little bit what youth is about. And in that sense that's ultimately what the blank note says. He will stay with the question mark. There's no closure there. There is no moral to the story. There is no meaning. The meaning is something he will have to figure out in the future. She leaves on a blank note that will echo through his whole life.
To me, what this film is about is teenage love.
A relationship at that age is something so essential, so important, that all of a sudden it is what makes you an individual. You have to make the decisions that will define your identity, because before that you are just part of the group. You are just one more teenager. But if all of a sudden you become a couple, you have to question yourself, and that's how you grow.
16mm, handheld, non-actors, 4 weeks, no pressure.
Cold Water is a punk rock version of the 1970s.
I grew up in that environment; I had those kinds of conversations with my father.
* * * *
Road to Budapest
Then we heard that the Russians were coming.
The Russian army was full of youngsters from the Caucasus and Mongolia. They were savages. Real savages. I don't know how to explain it.
Very well. Since you cannot read for us, you can tell us what you remember. If you had read it, you would remember.
What is this ridiculous object? It should interest you.
I might have been able to help but it's too late now.
Your father's here for you.
That took an hour of my life.
You don't have to take them, but I'll have to tell Dr. Varennes.
Mr. Guersaint, continue reading.
Remember , which I showed you at the Louvre?
Caravaggio
Mess around but don't get caught.
live like an adult
I can see she's unhappy but I don't know how to help her.
She's only 16! I can't let her go running off!
She wants to be alone.
Maybe it's her way of telling you something. Like pay more attention to her.
She judges me. Well, I'm not giving up my life for her. Just like with her father. Has to be the center of attraction.
I'll live the way I want.
Sorry I got all worked up. She means a lot to me. I don't want to lose her.
Chloe
She didn't vanish. Her dad's a painter. They moved to l an old farm in the Lozere region. The farm's full of artists. They redid the place. It's great.
I want you to come.
I don't have a thing on me.
Neither do I.
We will be all alone, you know. No family. No money. No home. You will have me and I will have you.
I know.
There is no phone or water or electricity.
We will be there by dark.
It doesn't look that far on the map.
It's a winding road, at least 12 miles.
There are no cars on the road, and it will be dark soon.
Wednesday, February 6, 2019
596 - Jules and Jim, France, 1962. Dir. Francois Trufaut.
Wednesday, January 6, 2019
596 - Jules and Jim, France, 1962. Dir. Francois Trufaut.
Jules and Jim are best friends.
Like David and Jonathan. With no equivalent in love. They enjoy the little things together. They eat at restaurants. They buy cigars.
People call them Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.
They are art students in Paris. Jules is from Austria and Jim, from France. While strangers, Jules asks Jim to help him get into the Art Students' Ball. Jim gets him a ticket and a costume. And girls.
The musician. The sweet thing. The pretty blonde widow. Her quiet friend. The professional. Therese. Gilberte.
"I wasn't in love with her. She was both mother and daughter to me."
Their friendship is born. They teach each other their languages and translate each other's poetry.
Jules is short and blond and thoughtful and studious. He has kind and tender eyes. Jim is tall and brunette and outgoing. He follows his instincts.
Catherine resembles the look of the great statue, the bust, with her similar subtle smile.
And her impetuous ways.
The boys have seem impetuosity before.
After all, Jules' previous girlfriend, Therese--come on, come on--could do the locomotion. Or the locomotive, or steam engine, as it were. She would light a cigarette and insert the lit end into her mouth, glide about the room in a circle, and blow smoke out the unlit end like a steam train.
But they have never seen someone jump into the Seine before. While returning one night from watching August Strindberg's Miss Julie (1888), Jules and Jim witness an unpredictability in Catherine that trumps Anita Ekberg's trek into the Trevi Fountain.
And it seals their fate.
"Jim never forgot that jump. . . . His admiration for Catherine struck him like lightning as he blew her an invisible kiss."
The three of them in their youth pursue a life free of social or moral constraint. And in those heady days, it seems they have discovered Eden. Eve with her two Adams.
She dresses like a boy. They go out in public. Sure enough, a man asks her for a light thinking she is a boy. She challenges them to a race. A race atop a pedestrian bridge. That moment is captured on film in space and time.
Joy.
Freedom.
Friendship.
Until life sets in. Marriage. Responsibility. The Great War.
Jules marries Catherine. And then gets conscripted.
Jules is called to fight for Germany, and Jim, for France. They fear that in their fighting they will face each other. Their situation sobers them.
Afterwards, when Jim returns to visit, he finds them residing in a cottage in the Black Forest, with their daughter Sabine.
Things are not as they were. Jules has settled in, and one might even say that he is the one who has acquiesced to the austere and lonely offices of love.
But Catherine has forged ahead with self-absorbed insistence. And has had affairs. She now returns to Jim, as if to force reignition of their former splendor.
Jules relents. A willing martyr to Catherine's happiness. With the notion that having Jim around will keep her from leaving too. He has his books and his poetry to protect him.
But Jim and Catherine are older now and too much alike.
Catherine decides that she can love Jim if he can give her a child. She waits for a time to ensure she is not carrying a child by Albert. Talk about a patron. And then she tries with Jim.
Meanwhile, Jim has Gilberte to fall back on.
But this relationship is doomed. Driven by self-interest and caprice. Adults going through the motions of their expired Bohemian youth.
By the time Catherine locks Jim in an upstairs room and pulls a gun on him, her unpredictability is no longer charming. Or unpredictable.
He gets the gun. He jumps out the window. He throws away the key and runs away.
We are told that in the real-life story she actually shot him.
So much for unbridled moral freedom without consequences.
The final fallout is even graver.
We may observe that Jules and Jim predates Thelma & Louise by nearly 30 years.
And you may guess how it ends.
Yet Jules for all this is "overcome with relief."
Left alone to live as a grown up.
Did seeing Miss Julie affect Catherine the night she jumped into the river? Miss Julie was taught by her mother to submit to no man. She pursues her own devices. She enters into a relationship with Jean that lies outside the limits of her place and time. He tells her of his efforts of self-slaughter. Their nonconformist stance collapses. She takes his razor and leaves the stage.
Francois Truffaut made the movie from a novel he stumbled upon in the bargain bin--the kind your find in a second-hand store. While he was still a film critic and not yet a director. He read it twice a year for the next five years. And knew it inside and out.
He wished films could cover topics like this. A woman who loves two men. Where one man is kind and the other is not. With the idea of being both dramatic and humorous in tone.
The author, Henri-Pierre Roche, lived his life as an art lover. And a patron. He was one of the first people to support Picasso.
After becoming bedridden at age 73, Roche took up writing. He wrote from his memories of the three-way affair he had fifty years before.
"All this must have been painful to live through, but 50 years later it enchants him." - Francois Truffaut.
"It had to be filmed like an old photo album." - Francois Truffaut.
"He divided his life between his love for women and his love for friendship." - Francois Truffaut.
"Their love is a dead end. They can't live together or apart. She takes her life and takes him with her." - Francois Truffaut.
"Truffaut is too intelligent to fall for his characters' malarkey, but he's also too generous to judge them (in other words, he's a major artist). - Chuck Bowen.
* * * *
This film is thoroughly French.
Yet we have seen this subject before.
In an American film in 1933.
Based on a British play from 1932.
Based on a relationship from 1921.
In Ernest Lubitsch's film adaptation of Noel Coward's Design for Living.
Design for Living (1933)
https://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/10/300-design-for-living-united-states.html
* * * *
We have seen Oskar Werner in the following films so far: Max Ophuls' Lola Montes (1955), Martin Ritt's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965), and Francois Truffaut's Fahrenheit 451 (1966).
Lola Montes (1955)
https://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/04/094-lola-montes-1955-france-dir-max.html
The Spy Who Came in from The Cold (1965)
https://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/10/283-spy-that-came-in-from-cold-united.html
Fahrenheit 451 (1966)
https://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2018/02/418-fahrenheit-451-united-kingdom-1966.html
* * * *
I was in love with Napoleon. I dreamt I met him in an elevator. We had a child, and I never saw him again.
I was taught, Our Father who arts in Heaven. I thought it said arts. I imagined my father with an easel painting in Paradise.
She said No, but so gently that I am still hoping.
A sense of relief flooded over him.
* * * *
Franz Hessel (1880-1941) - "Jules"
Henri-Pierre Roche (1879-1959) - "Jim"
Helen Hessel (1886-1982) - "Catherine"
"I think that the erotic was very important to her. It was the center of her life." - Gisele Freund
"She was very chic and elegant and knew exactly what she wanted." - Gisele Freund
"Whatever suited her was important. She didn't care too much whether other people went along. Also, she didn't necessarily treat very fairly the men who were in love with her. One could have held all kinds of things against her, but no one did because she was very charming and very attractive and expressed herself extremely well." - Stephane Hessel, her son
"I think Helen Hessel was very interested in human relationships, and in love in a general sense." - Gisele Freund
"I felt more admiration for my mother and more trust for my father." - Stephane Hessel.
She translated Nabokov's Lolita after she turned 70.
"She was too conservative." - Heinrich Maria Ledig-Rowohle.
596 - Jules and Jim, France, 1962. Dir. Francois Trufaut.
Jules and Jim are best friends.
Like David and Jonathan. With no equivalent in love. They enjoy the little things together. They eat at restaurants. They buy cigars.
People call them Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.
They are art students in Paris. Jules is from Austria and Jim, from France. While strangers, Jules asks Jim to help him get into the Art Students' Ball. Jim gets him a ticket and a costume. And girls.
The musician. The sweet thing. The pretty blonde widow. Her quiet friend. The professional. Therese. Gilberte.
"I wasn't in love with her. She was both mother and daughter to me."
Their friendship is born. They teach each other their languages and translate each other's poetry.
Jules is short and blond and thoughtful and studious. He has kind and tender eyes. Jim is tall and brunette and outgoing. He follows his instincts.
They meet Albert. A patron of the arts. He shows them statues. He shows them slides of statues. One, a bust, stands out to them. Subtly smiles at them. Beckons them. They go to see it. At an outdoor museum on an Adriatic island.
"They stared at the face for an hour. It stunned them into silence. They were speechless. Had they ever met such a smile? No. If they ever met it, they would follow it."
And follow it they do.
Jim's cousin writes. Three girls are coming to Paris. One is German, one is Dutch, and one is French.
Beware the French.
"Catherine, the French girl, was the statue. She had the same smile, nose, mouth, chin, and forehead. As a child, she had been idolized in her hometown during a religious celebration. It started almost like a dream. . . . "
And her impetuous ways.
The boys have seem impetuosity before.
After all, Jules' previous girlfriend, Therese--come on, come on--could do the locomotion. Or the locomotive, or steam engine, as it were. She would light a cigarette and insert the lit end into her mouth, glide about the room in a circle, and blow smoke out the unlit end like a steam train.
But they have never seen someone jump into the Seine before. While returning one night from watching August Strindberg's Miss Julie (1888), Jules and Jim witness an unpredictability in Catherine that trumps Anita Ekberg's trek into the Trevi Fountain.
And it seals their fate.
"Jim never forgot that jump. . . . His admiration for Catherine struck him like lightning as he blew her an invisible kiss."
The three of them in their youth pursue a life free of social or moral constraint. And in those heady days, it seems they have discovered Eden. Eve with her two Adams.
She dresses like a boy. They go out in public. Sure enough, a man asks her for a light thinking she is a boy. She challenges them to a race. A race atop a pedestrian bridge. That moment is captured on film in space and time.
Joy.
Freedom.
Friendship.
Until life sets in. Marriage. Responsibility. The Great War.
Jules marries Catherine. And then gets conscripted.
Jules is called to fight for Germany, and Jim, for France. They fear that in their fighting they will face each other. Their situation sobers them.
Afterwards, when Jim returns to visit, he finds them residing in a cottage in the Black Forest, with their daughter Sabine.
Things are not as they were. Jules has settled in, and one might even say that he is the one who has acquiesced to the austere and lonely offices of love.
But Catherine has forged ahead with self-absorbed insistence. And has had affairs. She now returns to Jim, as if to force reignition of their former splendor.
Jules relents. A willing martyr to Catherine's happiness. With the notion that having Jim around will keep her from leaving too. He has his books and his poetry to protect him.
But Jim and Catherine are older now and too much alike.
Catherine decides that she can love Jim if he can give her a child. She waits for a time to ensure she is not carrying a child by Albert. Talk about a patron. And then she tries with Jim.
Meanwhile, Jim has Gilberte to fall back on.
But this relationship is doomed. Driven by self-interest and caprice. Adults going through the motions of their expired Bohemian youth.
By the time Catherine locks Jim in an upstairs room and pulls a gun on him, her unpredictability is no longer charming. Or unpredictable.
He gets the gun. He jumps out the window. He throws away the key and runs away.
We are told that in the real-life story she actually shot him.
So much for unbridled moral freedom without consequences.
The final fallout is even graver.
We may observe that Jules and Jim predates Thelma & Louise by nearly 30 years.
And you may guess how it ends.
Yet Jules for all this is "overcome with relief."
Left alone to live as a grown up.
Did seeing Miss Julie affect Catherine the night she jumped into the river? Miss Julie was taught by her mother to submit to no man. She pursues her own devices. She enters into a relationship with Jean that lies outside the limits of her place and time. He tells her of his efforts of self-slaughter. Their nonconformist stance collapses. She takes his razor and leaves the stage.
Francois Truffaut made the movie from a novel he stumbled upon in the bargain bin--the kind your find in a second-hand store. While he was still a film critic and not yet a director. He read it twice a year for the next five years. And knew it inside and out.
He wished films could cover topics like this. A woman who loves two men. Where one man is kind and the other is not. With the idea of being both dramatic and humorous in tone.
The author, Henri-Pierre Roche, lived his life as an art lover. And a patron. He was one of the first people to support Picasso.
After becoming bedridden at age 73, Roche took up writing. He wrote from his memories of the three-way affair he had fifty years before.
"All this must have been painful to live through, but 50 years later it enchants him." - Francois Truffaut.
"It had to be filmed like an old photo album." - Francois Truffaut.
"He divided his life between his love for women and his love for friendship." - Francois Truffaut.
"Their love is a dead end. They can't live together or apart. She takes her life and takes him with her." - Francois Truffaut.
"Truffaut is too intelligent to fall for his characters' malarkey, but he's also too generous to judge them (in other words, he's a major artist). - Chuck Bowen.
* * * *
This film is thoroughly French.
Yet we have seen this subject before.
In an American film in 1933.
Based on a British play from 1932.
Based on a relationship from 1921.
In Ernest Lubitsch's film adaptation of Noel Coward's Design for Living.
Design for Living (1933)
https://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/10/300-design-for-living-united-states.html
* * * *
We have seen Oskar Werner in the following films so far: Max Ophuls' Lola Montes (1955), Martin Ritt's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965), and Francois Truffaut's Fahrenheit 451 (1966).
Lola Montes (1955)
https://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/04/094-lola-montes-1955-france-dir-max.html
The Spy Who Came in from The Cold (1965)
https://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/10/283-spy-that-came-in-from-cold-united.html
Fahrenheit 451 (1966)
https://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2018/02/418-fahrenheit-451-united-kingdom-1966.html
* * * *
I was in love with Napoleon. I dreamt I met him in an elevator. We had a child, and I never saw him again.
I was taught, Our Father who arts in Heaven. I thought it said arts. I imagined my father with an easel painting in Paradise.
She said No, but so gently that I am still hoping.
A sense of relief flooded over him.
* * * *
Franz Hessel (1880-1941) - "Jules"
Henri-Pierre Roche (1879-1959) - "Jim"
Helen Hessel (1886-1982) - "Catherine"
"I think that the erotic was very important to her. It was the center of her life." - Gisele Freund
"She was very chic and elegant and knew exactly what she wanted." - Gisele Freund
"Whatever suited her was important. She didn't care too much whether other people went along. Also, she didn't necessarily treat very fairly the men who were in love with her. One could have held all kinds of things against her, but no one did because she was very charming and very attractive and expressed herself extremely well." - Stephane Hessel, her son
"I think Helen Hessel was very interested in human relationships, and in love in a general sense." - Gisele Freund
"I felt more admiration for my mother and more trust for my father." - Stephane Hessel.
She translated Nabokov's Lolita after she turned 70.
"She was too conservative." - Heinrich Maria Ledig-Rowohle.
Tuesday, February 5, 2019
595 - The Young Girls Turn 25, France, 1993. Dir. Agnes Varda.
Tuesday, February 5, 2019
595 - The Young Girls Turn 25, France, 1993. Dir. Agnes Varda.
From bridge to square, all Rochefort remembers the film Jacques Demy shot there in 1966, The Young Girls of Rochefort.
Tourists still ask for Demoiselles Square, and folks often reply by singing the famous song composed by Michel Legrand.
--The Narrator.
I won't let painful emotions overwhelm me--I hope. - Catherine Deneuve.
The pleasure of memory will win out. - Catherine Deneuve.
It was a film about joy. I've come back to find that joy again. - Michel Legrand.
The city had been preparing for weeks. Dance classes. Balloons. The music. The crane. The loudspeakers.
If you're shooting outdoors with music, it turns into a party. - Catherine Deneuve.
[I was] trying to create something new, or at least something personal--but the characters sing and dance like in a Hollywood classic. - Jacques Demy.
He loved Hollywood musicals. They fed his dreams. - Agnes Varda.
But he was after something much more French and classical, and Rochefort was just right for it. - Agnes Varda.
When we saw Colbert Square, we jumped for joy. - Agnes Varda.
I think Demy needed actresses who could play female leads who were both distant and innocent. And Deneuve really conveys those qualities in the film. Demy and Deneuve were like Hitchcock and Grace Kelly. - Bertrand Tavernier.
I think Jacques found something he'd been searching for in Deneuve. An actress with star quality. - Bertrand Tavernier.
He had 1000 shutters repainted.
The sisters had to learn to lip-sync the song.
Francoise had ballet training. Catherine did not. But he wanted Francoise to be the singer and Catherine the dancer. So they learned.
I learned a lot from Gene. It was terrific. I wanted him to choreograph the whole film, but he said No. He'd come to France, but just for three weeks, so as not to be away from his kids. He did his numbers and helped plan the shots. He's a real ace. He knows it all--how the camera relates to the dancers and everything. - Jacques Demy.
Agnes Varda interviews a lot of the locals who are still there, including men who were in the fifth grade at the time and worked as extras in the film.
"Gene Kelly picked us out of the whole fifth grade."
I'd known Danielle for years. Things were so simple and intimate with her. We're very much alike in not dwelling on certain things but taking them lightly, and in physical resemblance that Jacques played on. - Catherine Deneuve.
Then about her sister Francoise Dorleac, who died at the age of 25 in the same year the movie was released:
We arrived on set like two teenagers.
We had lost that sisterly bond, but we renewed that sisterly bond before the film and all through the film. I felt this melancholy when we went home, her to her loves, me to my life. But I'd recovered something I had missed. - Catherine Deneuve.
It's like there's a time lag, these desires that are always out of sync.
A four-month party.
Lots of new costumes.
Agnes Varda observes the history of Begonias in Rochefort.
Jean-Louis Frot, the current mayor, posing beside a pot of begonias, a plant from Martinique, imported by Father Plumier, at the time Begon was intendant to Louis XIV.
The flowers were renamed in honor of Madame Begon. The camera looks at the Rue Begon.
Rochefort is famous for four things:
1) begonias of all varieties
2) writer Pierre Loti and his orientalist fantasies
3) The Young Girls of Rochefort
4) and by extension, twins
A local leader observes, "Though the shipyards are closed, the town can live again."
The arsenal was restored along with the rope factory. It now houses the Oceanic Center, the Bird Preservation League, a library, and a media center.
While the people are there visiting, the town dedicates two locations. An avenue for Jacques Demy. A place for Francoise Dorleac.
Demy's sister Helene christens the Avenue Jacques Demy.
Catherine Deneuve christens the Place Francoise Dorleac.
Jacques Demy was like a brother to me. Long ago I dedicated more than a street to him. It was a main artery, an artery leading from my heart. - Michel Legrand.
He did not seek to impress. He was just him.
It was amazing to see George Chakiris and Gene Kelly here in Colbert Square. - Catherine Deneuve
Jacques' lines were really chiseled to a fraction of an inch. He loved alexandrines. He wanted it to move fast. - Michel Legrand.
And to relive the Summer of 66, all you have to do is film. All you have to do is love. - Agnes Varda.
595 - The Young Girls Turn 25, France, 1993. Dir. Agnes Varda.
From bridge to square, all Rochefort remembers the film Jacques Demy shot there in 1966, The Young Girls of Rochefort.
Tourists still ask for Demoiselles Square, and folks often reply by singing the famous song composed by Michel Legrand.
--The Narrator.
I won't let painful emotions overwhelm me--I hope. - Catherine Deneuve.
The pleasure of memory will win out. - Catherine Deneuve.
It was a film about joy. I've come back to find that joy again. - Michel Legrand.
The city had been preparing for weeks. Dance classes. Balloons. The music. The crane. The loudspeakers.
If you're shooting outdoors with music, it turns into a party. - Catherine Deneuve.
[I was] trying to create something new, or at least something personal--but the characters sing and dance like in a Hollywood classic. - Jacques Demy.
He loved Hollywood musicals. They fed his dreams. - Agnes Varda.
But he was after something much more French and classical, and Rochefort was just right for it. - Agnes Varda.
When we saw Colbert Square, we jumped for joy. - Agnes Varda.
I think Demy needed actresses who could play female leads who were both distant and innocent. And Deneuve really conveys those qualities in the film. Demy and Deneuve were like Hitchcock and Grace Kelly. - Bertrand Tavernier.
I think Jacques found something he'd been searching for in Deneuve. An actress with star quality. - Bertrand Tavernier.
He had 1000 shutters repainted.
The sisters had to learn to lip-sync the song.
Francoise had ballet training. Catherine did not. But he wanted Francoise to be the singer and Catherine the dancer. So they learned.
I learned a lot from Gene. It was terrific. I wanted him to choreograph the whole film, but he said No. He'd come to France, but just for three weeks, so as not to be away from his kids. He did his numbers and helped plan the shots. He's a real ace. He knows it all--how the camera relates to the dancers and everything. - Jacques Demy.
Agnes Varda interviews a lot of the locals who are still there, including men who were in the fifth grade at the time and worked as extras in the film.
"Gene Kelly picked us out of the whole fifth grade."
I'd known Danielle for years. Things were so simple and intimate with her. We're very much alike in not dwelling on certain things but taking them lightly, and in physical resemblance that Jacques played on. - Catherine Deneuve.
Then about her sister Francoise Dorleac, who died at the age of 25 in the same year the movie was released:
We arrived on set like two teenagers.
We had lost that sisterly bond, but we renewed that sisterly bond before the film and all through the film. I felt this melancholy when we went home, her to her loves, me to my life. But I'd recovered something I had missed. - Catherine Deneuve.
It's like there's a time lag, these desires that are always out of sync.
A four-month party.
Lots of new costumes.
Agnes Varda observes the history of Begonias in Rochefort.
Jean-Louis Frot, the current mayor, posing beside a pot of begonias, a plant from Martinique, imported by Father Plumier, at the time Begon was intendant to Louis XIV.
The flowers were renamed in honor of Madame Begon. The camera looks at the Rue Begon.
Rochefort is famous for four things:
1) begonias of all varieties
2) writer Pierre Loti and his orientalist fantasies
3) The Young Girls of Rochefort
4) and by extension, twins
A local leader observes, "Though the shipyards are closed, the town can live again."
The arsenal was restored along with the rope factory. It now houses the Oceanic Center, the Bird Preservation League, a library, and a media center.
While the people are there visiting, the town dedicates two locations. An avenue for Jacques Demy. A place for Francoise Dorleac.
Demy's sister Helene christens the Avenue Jacques Demy.
Catherine Deneuve christens the Place Francoise Dorleac.
Jacques Demy was like a brother to me. Long ago I dedicated more than a street to him. It was a main artery, an artery leading from my heart. - Michel Legrand.
He did not seek to impress. He was just him.
It was amazing to see George Chakiris and Gene Kelly here in Colbert Square. - Catherine Deneuve
Jacques' lines were really chiseled to a fraction of an inch. He loved alexandrines. He wanted it to move fast. - Michel Legrand.
And to relive the Summer of 66, all you have to do is film. All you have to do is love. - Agnes Varda.
594 - The World of Jacques Demy, France, 1995. Dir. Agnes Varda.
Monday, February 2, 2019
594 - The World of Jacques Demy, France, 1995. Dir. Agnes Varda.
Cinema is an act of great patience. - Jacques Demy.
Meeting Jacques so young was a formative event for me. He was the first real filmmaker I met. - Catherine Deneuve.
With his films we reclaim our childhood. - Caroline Bongrand.
I get high on your films. Excuse my tipsiness. - Camille Taboulay.
Jacques Demy died on October 27, 1990, at the age of 59. From 1993 to 1995 his wife filmed, interviewed people, and edited footage together to make a 90 minute documentary in his honor.
His wife just happened to be herself a film director of renown. Agnes Varda.
Agnes Varda is alive today, and at age 90 she is still working. Which means Clint Eastwood at 88 has a couple years to go still. And counting.
Ms. Varda wrote and directed her first film, La Pointe Courte, in 1955. Seven years later she wrote and directed her famous film Cleo from 5 to 9 (1962). She wrote the theme song to Demy's Lola (1961). She appeared in a cameo as a nun in The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967). She wrote the French dialogue for Bernardo Bertolucci's film Last Tango in Paris (1972). She played a role in the 2002 Jonathan Demme movie The Truth About Charlie, starring Mark Wahlberg, Thandie Newton, Tim Robbins, Stephen Dillane, and LisaGay Hamilton. And to date, she has made 13 feature films, nearly 30 short films, and 10 feature-length documentaries. Including this one.
In watching it, one senses the love that Jacques Demy and Agnes Varda had for each other. And the love that she has for him still.
Ms. Varda interviews people who worked with Jacques Demy over the years.
Including actors Anouk Aimee, Richard Berry, Nino Castelnuovo, Danielle Darrieux, Catherine Deneuve, Annie Duperoux, Francoise Fabian, Claude Mann, Marc Michel, Jeanne Moreau, Jacques Perrin, Michel Piccoli, Dominique Sanda, and Anne Vernon.
And collaborators Michel Legrand, Michel Columbier, filmmaker Claude Berri, Anne-Marie Cotret, Bernard Evein, Emmanuel Machuel, Annie Maurel, Bernard Toublanc-Michel, son Mathieu Demy, and daughter Rosalie Varda.
And his sister, Helene Demy,
And the great French film director Bertrand Tavernier.
We saw Tavernier's 1981 film Coup de Torchon.
Coup de Torchon
https://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/05/137-coup-de-torchon-1981-france-dir.html
In 2016 Bertrand Tavernier himself released a documentary feature called My Journey Through French Cinema (2016).
We have also seen two of Claude Berri's movies:
Jean de Florette (1986)
https://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2018/03/434-jean-de-florette-france-1986-dir.html
Manon of the Spring (1986)
https://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2018/03/435-manon-of-spring-france-1986-dir.html
Among other things, we learn:
It took them twenty years to make their first musical.
Jacques Demy grew up loving cinema. As a boy, he took film stock and hand painted each frame.
He filmed his own short films upstairs above a small barn.
He wanted his first film to be a full-color musical with singing and dancing. But his producer said he did not have enough money, so he encouraged him to make a black-and-white film first. He made Lola and began to make money.
Actors describe him as kind but firm. He was precise in his choices and expected adherence to them. But he was good with people and doted on his actors.
He says his deepest influence was Bresson. We have seen six Robert Bresson films.
After the war Demy saw my first Americn musicals. And he wanted to make one. He wanted an opera. He wanted it to be clear and simle, a kind of song throughout the film.
With The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, he wanted people to cry. He and composer Michel Legrand planned the places in the film when people would cry.
First hanky, page 38.
"We had a score full of hanky markings."
He said The Umbrellas of Cherbourg opened up doors all over the world.
He was excited about going to Hollywood. But he acted cool about it.
"I wanted to live in the U.S. Everything excited me."
He rented a white convertible.
"It's like a dream."
"I was really happy for two years."
Jacques Demy believed in the dream of discovering an unknown actor and making him a star.
He met an unknown actor named Harrison Ford.
In 1969. Four years before American Graffiti (1973). Eight years before Star Wars (1977).
He made screen tests of him. Agnas Varda shows us the screen tests. Including footage of Ford's holding the clapper and slating himself. Harrison Ford looks so young. He stares ahead calmly. Then he slowly breaks into that now-iconic half-smile.
Varda revisits Harrison Ford in Wyoming in 1995, and Harrison tells us the story.
The film was called Model Shop.
Because I was supposed to be in the film, Jacques and I went to visit the model shop on Santa Monica Blvd. Painted with Da-Glo paint.
We had to rent one of these little cameras and buy 12 exposures of of film for $35.
We chose the bedroom set. It's just like it was in the movie there. Long corridor. Painted black. Both of us very shy. Neither of us knew what to do, so the girl said I'll pose like this, and I'll pose like this.
The bed or the armchair? It doesn't matter.
Demy and Ford learn from the girl what to do. Demy likes Ford. He decides to cast him in the movie.
To which you ask, Wait a second: if Harrison Ford made a movie with Jacques Demy, how have I never heard of it?
Jacques Demy did make the movie Model Shop in 1969. Starring Gary Lockwood.
Who?
You know, the man who played himself last year in a movie called Unbelievable!!!!!. With five exclamation points. So that you will know how unbelievable it is.
You have not heard of it? It starred Snoop Dogg.
OK. How about Gary Lockwood, the man who appeared in a 2004 short film called Missing Sock.
Don't know that one? His daughter Samantha was in it. She has done some things.
All right. How about the 1990 film Terror in Paradise.
Well, at least he is still working. And he may very well be a great actor. We cannot all control what offers we get. Or what the directors do with them.
So why did Jacques Demy want Harrison Ford but go with Gary Lockwood?
We are told that Gary Lockwood just came off 2001: A Space Odyssey, where he played Dr. Frank Poole, and he was hot.
And then Harrison Ford looks directly at us in the camera and says,
"I'm told that the head of the studio said to forget me, that I had no future in this business."
After which he makes a classic Harrison Ford face. Which is worth the entire documentary.
By 1995 when this documentary came out, Harrison Ford had been in American Graffiti , The Conversation, and Apocalypse Now. He had been Han Solo and Indiana Jones and Rick Deckard and Jack Ryan and Richard Kimble. And he had just played Linus Larrabee in the remake of Sabrina. How many men do you know who can redo a Humphrey Bogart character?
One imagines Agnas Varda smiling with delight as she was editing this section.
Model Shop was to have been the Lola sequel, with Lola in Los Angeles, California, instead of Nantes, France. Anouk Aimee came back to reprise her role. But this time the war was Vietnam. It was unpopular. The movie did not work.
Jacques Demy calls Model Shop a Model Flop.
Agnas Varda wonders what having Harrison Ford in it would have done for the movie.
Helene, Jacques' younger sister talks about how he kept learning and growing throughout his life. He learned English. He studied color processing. He took still photographs and blew up pictures using a new process. He did tests.
Varda shows his still photography, and it is incredible. It shows the touch of a professional eye. After the landscapes we see "the many faces" of his son Mathieu. And Mathieu has many.
At 50 he took up painting. He learned to fly. He went back to math.
Then they continue with the movies.
There is an informative section on The Pied Piper (1972).
It was a fairy tale Demy loved.
They hired hundreds trained rats. They were trained in England and shipped to Germany. And had to arrive 40 days early to spend 40 days in quarantene.
His biographer discusses how the film is gloomy and harsh yet "passing through all that was a magical grace."
Bertrand Tavernier says the shots are lyrical and that the camera movements are meshed with the sets and costumes. He feels Demy achieved his goals with that movie.
Then Demy is compared to the Pied Piper himself.
"He can lead anyone out of the city, whether it's into their dreams or away from their troubles."
"If I were a child, I'd want Jacques Demy as my father."
One artist made a replica of Jacques Demy out of flowers. A school is named for him. A street is named for him. RUE Jacques Remy.
It takes long time to become young. - Picasso
"Jacques is a child who grew up without forgetting his childhood."
There are several more great sections covering several more movies, with delicious insights from people who were either there or who appreciate the films.
Then we go to three girls on a bench. Including the middle one who opened our film with her letter. They were two young to have known him.
One imagines them singing an Elton John variant, "Goodbye Jacques Demy":
"And I would have liked to have known you
But I was just a kid."
They speak of his movies in the way that they have touched their hearts. They are not critics. They are fans. They are people for whom filmmakers make films. They do not speak objectively but subjectively. About how his films have touched their lives. They appreciate what he has accomplished. They appreciate him.
We pull back and pan over and see that they are sitting next to his grave, his wife returning to where she laid him to rest, sharing a moment with three people whom she would otherwise have never known. But for his bringing them together with his art. From his heart. To theirs.
* * * *
Sir, I've put off writing this letter for years. I wanted to grow up first so it wouldn't seem too childish. Yet writing now, I know it will still come out that way. Renoir wrote that the public is grateful to a director who shows how our front doorstep can lead to Sleeping Beauty's castle. Your films taught me so much that I write this to show my gratitude. They taught me to look at life by placing a magic screen over the bitter lucidity. They exhort us to run out to repaint the street with our gaze. Your films taught me to love life. In them it is both exalted and laid bare, both cruel and alluring. They give us a taste for joy and the strength to wait, while being heedful of everything. 'The thrill is in the anticipation,' could be the epigraph to Lola.
You are a truly original filmmaker. Only you can mix harmonious cocktail of varying predilections for painting, music, poetry, cafe philosophy, fairy tales, social critique, opera, American musicals, exotic and spiritual travels. ou give expression to a world both true and reinvented. I get high on your films. Excuse my tipsiness. I just wanted ot say thank you.
594 - The World of Jacques Demy, France, 1995. Dir. Agnes Varda.
Cinema is an act of great patience. - Jacques Demy.
Meeting Jacques so young was a formative event for me. He was the first real filmmaker I met. - Catherine Deneuve.
With his films we reclaim our childhood. - Caroline Bongrand.
Jacques Demy died on October 27, 1990, at the age of 59. From 1993 to 1995 his wife filmed, interviewed people, and edited footage together to make a 90 minute documentary in his honor.
His wife just happened to be herself a film director of renown. Agnes Varda.
Agnes Varda is alive today, and at age 90 she is still working. Which means Clint Eastwood at 88 has a couple years to go still. And counting.
Ms. Varda wrote and directed her first film, La Pointe Courte, in 1955. Seven years later she wrote and directed her famous film Cleo from 5 to 9 (1962). She wrote the theme song to Demy's Lola (1961). She appeared in a cameo as a nun in The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967). She wrote the French dialogue for Bernardo Bertolucci's film Last Tango in Paris (1972). She played a role in the 2002 Jonathan Demme movie The Truth About Charlie, starring Mark Wahlberg, Thandie Newton, Tim Robbins, Stephen Dillane, and LisaGay Hamilton. And to date, she has made 13 feature films, nearly 30 short films, and 10 feature-length documentaries. Including this one.
In watching it, one senses the love that Jacques Demy and Agnes Varda had for each other. And the love that she has for him still.
Ms. Varda interviews people who worked with Jacques Demy over the years.
Including actors Anouk Aimee, Richard Berry, Nino Castelnuovo, Danielle Darrieux, Catherine Deneuve, Annie Duperoux, Francoise Fabian, Claude Mann, Marc Michel, Jeanne Moreau, Jacques Perrin, Michel Piccoli, Dominique Sanda, and Anne Vernon.
And collaborators Michel Legrand, Michel Columbier, filmmaker Claude Berri, Anne-Marie Cotret, Bernard Evein, Emmanuel Machuel, Annie Maurel, Bernard Toublanc-Michel, son Mathieu Demy, and daughter Rosalie Varda.
And his sister, Helene Demy,
And the great French film director Bertrand Tavernier.
We saw Tavernier's 1981 film Coup de Torchon.
Coup de Torchon
https://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/05/137-coup-de-torchon-1981-france-dir.html
In 2016 Bertrand Tavernier himself released a documentary feature called My Journey Through French Cinema (2016).
We have also seen two of Claude Berri's movies:
Jean de Florette (1986)
https://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2018/03/434-jean-de-florette-france-1986-dir.html
Manon of the Spring (1986)
https://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2018/03/435-manon-of-spring-france-1986-dir.html
Among other things, we learn:
It took them twenty years to make their first musical.
Jacques Demy grew up loving cinema. As a boy, he took film stock and hand painted each frame.
He filmed his own short films upstairs above a small barn.
He wanted his first film to be a full-color musical with singing and dancing. But his producer said he did not have enough money, so he encouraged him to make a black-and-white film first. He made Lola and began to make money.
Actors describe him as kind but firm. He was precise in his choices and expected adherence to them. But he was good with people and doted on his actors.
He says his deepest influence was Bresson. We have seen six Robert Bresson films.
After the war Demy saw my first Americn musicals. And he wanted to make one. He wanted an opera. He wanted it to be clear and simle, a kind of song throughout the film.
First hanky, page 38.
"We had a score full of hanky markings."
He said The Umbrellas of Cherbourg opened up doors all over the world.
He was excited about going to Hollywood. But he acted cool about it.
"I wanted to live in the U.S. Everything excited me."
He rented a white convertible.
"It's like a dream."
"I was really happy for two years."
Jacques Demy believed in the dream of discovering an unknown actor and making him a star.
He met an unknown actor named Harrison Ford.
In 1969. Four years before American Graffiti (1973). Eight years before Star Wars (1977).
He made screen tests of him. Agnas Varda shows us the screen tests. Including footage of Ford's holding the clapper and slating himself. Harrison Ford looks so young. He stares ahead calmly. Then he slowly breaks into that now-iconic half-smile.
Varda revisits Harrison Ford in Wyoming in 1995, and Harrison tells us the story.
The film was called Model Shop.
Because I was supposed to be in the film, Jacques and I went to visit the model shop on Santa Monica Blvd. Painted with Da-Glo paint.
We had to rent one of these little cameras and buy 12 exposures of of film for $35.
We chose the bedroom set. It's just like it was in the movie there. Long corridor. Painted black. Both of us very shy. Neither of us knew what to do, so the girl said I'll pose like this, and I'll pose like this.
The bed or the armchair? It doesn't matter.
Demy and Ford learn from the girl what to do. Demy likes Ford. He decides to cast him in the movie.
To which you ask, Wait a second: if Harrison Ford made a movie with Jacques Demy, how have I never heard of it?
Jacques Demy did make the movie Model Shop in 1969. Starring Gary Lockwood.
Who?
You know, the man who played himself last year in a movie called Unbelievable!!!!!. With five exclamation points. So that you will know how unbelievable it is.
You have not heard of it? It starred Snoop Dogg.
OK. How about Gary Lockwood, the man who appeared in a 2004 short film called Missing Sock.
Don't know that one? His daughter Samantha was in it. She has done some things.
All right. How about the 1990 film Terror in Paradise.
Well, at least he is still working. And he may very well be a great actor. We cannot all control what offers we get. Or what the directors do with them.
So why did Jacques Demy want Harrison Ford but go with Gary Lockwood?
We are told that Gary Lockwood just came off 2001: A Space Odyssey, where he played Dr. Frank Poole, and he was hot.
And then Harrison Ford looks directly at us in the camera and says,
"I'm told that the head of the studio said to forget me, that I had no future in this business."
After which he makes a classic Harrison Ford face. Which is worth the entire documentary.
By 1995 when this documentary came out, Harrison Ford had been in American Graffiti , The Conversation, and Apocalypse Now. He had been Han Solo and Indiana Jones and Rick Deckard and Jack Ryan and Richard Kimble. And he had just played Linus Larrabee in the remake of Sabrina. How many men do you know who can redo a Humphrey Bogart character?
One imagines Agnas Varda smiling with delight as she was editing this section.
Model Shop was to have been the Lola sequel, with Lola in Los Angeles, California, instead of Nantes, France. Anouk Aimee came back to reprise her role. But this time the war was Vietnam. It was unpopular. The movie did not work.
Jacques Demy calls Model Shop a Model Flop.
Agnas Varda wonders what having Harrison Ford in it would have done for the movie.
Helene, Jacques' younger sister talks about how he kept learning and growing throughout his life. He learned English. He studied color processing. He took still photographs and blew up pictures using a new process. He did tests.
Varda shows his still photography, and it is incredible. It shows the touch of a professional eye. After the landscapes we see "the many faces" of his son Mathieu. And Mathieu has many.
At 50 he took up painting. He learned to fly. He went back to math.
Then they continue with the movies.
There is an informative section on The Pied Piper (1972).
It was a fairy tale Demy loved.
They hired hundreds trained rats. They were trained in England and shipped to Germany. And had to arrive 40 days early to spend 40 days in quarantene.
His biographer discusses how the film is gloomy and harsh yet "passing through all that was a magical grace."
Bertrand Tavernier says the shots are lyrical and that the camera movements are meshed with the sets and costumes. He feels Demy achieved his goals with that movie.
Then Demy is compared to the Pied Piper himself.
"He can lead anyone out of the city, whether it's into their dreams or away from their troubles."
"If I were a child, I'd want Jacques Demy as my father."
One artist made a replica of Jacques Demy out of flowers. A school is named for him. A street is named for him. RUE Jacques Remy.
It takes long time to become young. - Picasso
"Jacques is a child who grew up without forgetting his childhood."
There are several more great sections covering several more movies, with delicious insights from people who were either there or who appreciate the films.
Then we go to three girls on a bench. Including the middle one who opened our film with her letter. They were two young to have known him.
One imagines them singing an Elton John variant, "Goodbye Jacques Demy":
"And I would have liked to have known you
But I was just a kid."
They speak of his movies in the way that they have touched their hearts. They are not critics. They are fans. They are people for whom filmmakers make films. They do not speak objectively but subjectively. About how his films have touched their lives. They appreciate what he has accomplished. They appreciate him.
We pull back and pan over and see that they are sitting next to his grave, his wife returning to where she laid him to rest, sharing a moment with three people whom she would otherwise have never known. But for his bringing them together with his art. From his heart. To theirs.
* * * *
Sir, I've put off writing this letter for years. I wanted to grow up first so it wouldn't seem too childish. Yet writing now, I know it will still come out that way. Renoir wrote that the public is grateful to a director who shows how our front doorstep can lead to Sleeping Beauty's castle. Your films taught me so much that I write this to show my gratitude. They taught me to look at life by placing a magic screen over the bitter lucidity. They exhort us to run out to repaint the street with our gaze. Your films taught me to love life. In them it is both exalted and laid bare, both cruel and alluring. They give us a taste for joy and the strength to wait, while being heedful of everything. 'The thrill is in the anticipation,' could be the epigraph to Lola.
You are a truly original filmmaker. Only you can mix harmonious cocktail of varying predilections for painting, music, poetry, cafe philosophy, fairy tales, social critique, opera, American musicals, exotic and spiritual travels. ou give expression to a world both true and reinvented. I get high on your films. Excuse my tipsiness. I just wanted ot say thank you.
--Camille Taboulay.
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