In 1953, Alain Resnais, Chris Marker, and Ghislain Cloquet produced Statues Also Die, one of the fiercest and most lucid indictments of white imperialism ever captured on film. Commissioned by the magazine Présence Africaine, it sought to dissect Western attitudes toward African art. The 30-minute short did not begin as an anti-colonial project but became one along the way, informed by the belittling treatment that antiquities from the continent had received across French cultural institutions since their plundering under colonial rule. Why, for a start, was African art routinely confined at the Musée de l’Homme in Paris––an ethnographic museum––while Greek or Assyrian pieces found their place at the Louvre? An arresting montage of statues and their visitors swelled into a much larger critique of the systematic oppression of Black culture and Black bodies, with a third act considering the exploitation of Black athletes and musicians in the States.
- 2/26/2024
- by Leonardo Goi
- The Film Stage
When Europe’s great powers raced to colonize a continent in the so-called “Scramble for Africa” just before the First World War, the tiny coastal Kingdom of Dahomey in the south of modern-day Benin, west Africa, was high on France’s shopping list. Only 85 French soldiers were killed when it was taken in 1894, while as many as 4,000 Dahomeans lost their lives. Nearly three hundred years of culture and history were extinguished, and thousands of the nation’s most valuable treasures shipped to Paris.
Mati Diop’s 67-minute documentary isn’t about the theft but rather the return in late 2021 of 26 Dahomean treasures to Benin from the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris. We’re told before the movie starts that their “captivity” in France is finally coming to an end. That feels a little dramatic, but Diop means what she says. The most famous of the items, including a defiant...
Mati Diop’s 67-minute documentary isn’t about the theft but rather the return in late 2021 of 26 Dahomean treasures to Benin from the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris. We’re told before the movie starts that their “captivity” in France is finally coming to an end. That feels a little dramatic, but Diop means what she says. The most famous of the items, including a defiant...
- 2/18/2024
- by Adam Solomons
- Indiewire
France’s Robert Bresson’s theory about a ‘pure’ cinema defies basic rules of the movie mainstream — like, ‘no acting allowed.’ But his movies remained faithful to his creed, even as they became increasingly pessimistic. This story of an unloved and abused young girl is considered one of Bresson’s masterpieces. The theme is human suffering in the void left by the absence of faith, and the tone is unrelentingly pitiless.
Mouchette
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 363
1967 / B&w / 1:66 widescreen / 81 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date December 8, 2020 / 39.95
Starring: Nadine Nortier, Jean-Claude Guilbert, Maria Cardinal, Paul Hebert, Jean Vimenet, Marie Susini, Suzanne Huguenin, Marine Trichet, Raymonde Chabrun.
Cinematography: Ghislain Cloquet
Film Editor: Raymond Lamy
Original Music: Jean Wiener
Written by Robert Bresson from the book Nouvelle histoire de Mouchette by Georges Bernanos
Produced by Anatole Dauman
Directed by Robert Bresson
The first time one sees Robert Bresson speak, we...
Mouchette
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 363
1967 / B&w / 1:66 widescreen / 81 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date December 8, 2020 / 39.95
Starring: Nadine Nortier, Jean-Claude Guilbert, Maria Cardinal, Paul Hebert, Jean Vimenet, Marie Susini, Suzanne Huguenin, Marine Trichet, Raymonde Chabrun.
Cinematography: Ghislain Cloquet
Film Editor: Raymond Lamy
Original Music: Jean Wiener
Written by Robert Bresson from the book Nouvelle histoire de Mouchette by Georges Bernanos
Produced by Anatole Dauman
Directed by Robert Bresson
The first time one sees Robert Bresson speak, we...
- 1/26/2021
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Au Hasard Balthazar
Blu ray
Criterion
1966 / 1:66 / Street Date May 29, 2018
Starring Anne Wiazemsky, François Lafarge
Cinematography by Ghislain Cloquet
Directed by Robert Bresson
At moments in his career Robert Bresson, the filmmaker behind The Trial of Joan of Arc and The Diary of a Country Priest, seemed to be directing from the pulpit. Likewise, Au Hasard Balthazar, his 1966 film about a messianic donkey, just begs to be canonized – unlike most grabs for cinematic sanctitude, Balthazar deserves its pedestal.
A movie out of time, Balthazar‘s somber black and white landscape rebuffs its own era – a pop art wonderland that produced Blow Up, Modesty Blaise and Our Man Flint. Jean-Luc Godard, rule-breaking bomb-thrower of brightly colored social satires, heaped on the praise – “… this film is really the world in an hour and a half.” On the other hand, Ingmar Bergman, not exactly a popcorn munching thrill-seeker, thought it was a “bore...
Blu ray
Criterion
1966 / 1:66 / Street Date May 29, 2018
Starring Anne Wiazemsky, François Lafarge
Cinematography by Ghislain Cloquet
Directed by Robert Bresson
At moments in his career Robert Bresson, the filmmaker behind The Trial of Joan of Arc and The Diary of a Country Priest, seemed to be directing from the pulpit. Likewise, Au Hasard Balthazar, his 1966 film about a messianic donkey, just begs to be canonized – unlike most grabs for cinematic sanctitude, Balthazar deserves its pedestal.
A movie out of time, Balthazar‘s somber black and white landscape rebuffs its own era – a pop art wonderland that produced Blow Up, Modesty Blaise and Our Man Flint. Jean-Luc Godard, rule-breaking bomb-thrower of brightly colored social satires, heaped on the praise – “… this film is really the world in an hour and a half.” On the other hand, Ingmar Bergman, not exactly a popcorn munching thrill-seeker, thought it was a “bore...
- 6/12/2018
- by Charlie Largent
- Trailers from Hell
Praised for its realism and intensity, Jacques Becker’s 1960 prison break drama “Le Trou” is now bound for a pristine-looking 4K restoration, thanks to Rialto Pictures and Studio Canal. A nerve-wracking drama based on a true story, the film is adapted from the book “The Break” by ex-con José Giovanni and has been hailed as not just one of French cinema’s best films, but perhaps the best. (Lofty, we know.)
Based on a 1947 escape attempt enacted by five prisoners at France’s La Sante Prison, Becker used a slew of non-actors — including Jean Keraudy, who actually participated in the daring events the film portrays — to tell a gripping story that remains one of cinema’s most unnerving depictions of real-life drama.
Read More: ‘Il Boom’ Trailer: Vittorio De Sica’s Underseen Comedy Bound for Restoration and First-Ever U.S. Release — Watch
The film picks up after four prisoners and...
Based on a 1947 escape attempt enacted by five prisoners at France’s La Sante Prison, Becker used a slew of non-actors — including Jean Keraudy, who actually participated in the daring events the film portrays — to tell a gripping story that remains one of cinema’s most unnerving depictions of real-life drama.
Read More: ‘Il Boom’ Trailer: Vittorio De Sica’s Underseen Comedy Bound for Restoration and First-Ever U.S. Release — Watch
The film picks up after four prisoners and...
- 6/20/2017
- by Kate Erbland
- Indiewire
Perhaps motivated by the success of La La Land, Criterion has reissued two impressive Jacques Demy musicals as separate releases. This all-singing, all-dancing homage to candy-colored vintage Hollywood musicals is a captivating Franco-American hybrid that allows free rein to Demy’s marvelously positive romantic philosophy.
The Young Girls of Rochefort
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 717
1967 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 125 min. / Les Demoiselles de Rochefort / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date April 11, 2017 / 39.95
Starring: Catherine Deneuve, Françoise Dorléac, Danielle Darrieux, George Chakiris, Gene Kelly, Michel Piccoli, Jacques Perrin
Cinematography: Ghislain Cloquet
Production Designer: Bernard Evein
Film Editor: Jean Hamon
Original Music: Michel Legrand
Produced by Mag Bodard, Gilbert de Goldschmidt
Written and Directed by Jacques Demy
I was going to squeak by reviewing only Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, but the interest in the new La La Land prompted some emails and messages that tell me a revisit of the charming...
The Young Girls of Rochefort
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 717
1967 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 125 min. / Les Demoiselles de Rochefort / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date April 11, 2017 / 39.95
Starring: Catherine Deneuve, Françoise Dorléac, Danielle Darrieux, George Chakiris, Gene Kelly, Michel Piccoli, Jacques Perrin
Cinematography: Ghislain Cloquet
Production Designer: Bernard Evein
Film Editor: Jean Hamon
Original Music: Michel Legrand
Produced by Mag Bodard, Gilbert de Goldschmidt
Written and Directed by Jacques Demy
I was going to squeak by reviewing only Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, but the interest in the new La La Land prompted some emails and messages that tell me a revisit of the charming...
- 5/2/2017
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
This past weekend, the American Society of Cinematographers awarded Greig Fraser for his contribution to Lion as last year’s greatest accomplishment in the field. Of course, his achievement was just a small sampling of the fantastic work from directors of photography, but it did give us a stronger hint at what may be the winner on Oscar night. Ahead of the ceremony, we have a new video compilation that honors all the past winners in the category at the Academy Awards
Created by Burger Fiction, it spans the stunning silent landmark Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans all the way up to the end of Emmanuel Lubezki‘s three-peat win for The Revenant. Aside from the advancements in color and aspect ration, it’s a thrill to see some of cinema’s most iconic shots side-by-side. However, the best way to experience the evolution of the craft is by...
Created by Burger Fiction, it spans the stunning silent landmark Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans all the way up to the end of Emmanuel Lubezki‘s three-peat win for The Revenant. Aside from the advancements in color and aspect ration, it’s a thrill to see some of cinema’s most iconic shots side-by-side. However, the best way to experience the evolution of the craft is by...
- 2/6/2017
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
The first and most powerful Holocaust reassessment extends the horror with the assertion that, in 1955, its reality is already fading from the world memory. Alain Resnais uses the form of the art movie and his own essay-film innovations to communicate the yawning wound in the human consciousness. Night and Fog Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 197 1955 / Color & B&W / 1:33 flat full frame / 32 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date July 19, 2016 / 39.95 Narrator Michel Bouquet Cinematography Ghislain Cloquet, Sacha Vierny Assistant Directors André Heinreich, Jean-Charles Lauthe, Chris Marker Film Editor Alain Resnais Original Music Hanns Eisler Written by Jean Cayrol Produced by Anatole Dauman, Samy Halfon, Philippe Lifchitz Directed by Alain Resnais
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
Although I review more than my share of grim shows about the Holocaust, I don't think I have an unusually morbid curiosity; subjects like the Shoah and The Bomb are important problems difficult to fully understand.
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
Although I review more than my share of grim shows about the Holocaust, I don't think I have an unusually morbid curiosity; subjects like the Shoah and The Bomb are important problems difficult to fully understand.
- 7/17/2016
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
The Young Girls of Rochefort
Written and directed by Jacques Demy
France, 1967
Jacques Demy’s The Young Girls of Rochefort is the Oscar-nominated follow-up to his immensely popular and successful The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), which with all of its dialogue sung was something of a reinvention of the movie musical, an almost experiential musical. Young Girls, on the other hand, is simply a great musical. To be sure, Umbrellas is an excellent film as well (see my take on it here), but while it surely resonates with its tale of love unhappily ever after, and it radiates in attractive Eastmancolor, it’s in some ways hampered by its own novelty. There is of course more to it than merely the fact that everyone sings everything, but to many it’s probably best known as the movie where everyone sings everything. Young Girls is more traditional in that it has dialogue...
Written and directed by Jacques Demy
France, 1967
Jacques Demy’s The Young Girls of Rochefort is the Oscar-nominated follow-up to his immensely popular and successful The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), which with all of its dialogue sung was something of a reinvention of the movie musical, an almost experiential musical. Young Girls, on the other hand, is simply a great musical. To be sure, Umbrellas is an excellent film as well (see my take on it here), but while it surely resonates with its tale of love unhappily ever after, and it radiates in attractive Eastmancolor, it’s in some ways hampered by its own novelty. There is of course more to it than merely the fact that everyone sings everything, but to many it’s probably best known as the movie where everyone sings everything. Young Girls is more traditional in that it has dialogue...
- 7/30/2014
- by Jeremy Carr
- SoundOnSight
(Claude Sautet, 1960; BFI, 12)
Le roman policier and le film policier (now widely known by the reverse slang or verlan term "polar") have been staples of French popular culture for a century. Its soundtrack crackling with underworld argot, its air thick with smoke from Gauloises, its morality pulsating with romantic cynicism, the genre's golden age in the cinema was roughly between 1955 and the mid-70s. That's from the release of Rififi (the 1955 gangster movie directed by blacklisted American exile Jules Dassin, a movie much indebted to John Huston's 1950 The Asphalt Jungle) to the death in 1973 of Jean-Pierre Melville, the Americanophile cineaste and creator of definitive gangster flicks. These two decades encompass the classic polars of Jacques Becker, the best films of Lino Ventura (the French Bogart), the nouvelle vague (informally launched by a Louis Malle policier, Lift to the Scaffold, starring Ventura), and Godard's subversion of the genre in Breathless.
Le roman policier and le film policier (now widely known by the reverse slang or verlan term "polar") have been staples of French popular culture for a century. Its soundtrack crackling with underworld argot, its air thick with smoke from Gauloises, its morality pulsating with romantic cynicism, the genre's golden age in the cinema was roughly between 1955 and the mid-70s. That's from the release of Rififi (the 1955 gangster movie directed by blacklisted American exile Jules Dassin, a movie much indebted to John Huston's 1950 The Asphalt Jungle) to the death in 1973 of Jean-Pierre Melville, the Americanophile cineaste and creator of definitive gangster flicks. These two decades encompass the classic polars of Jacques Becker, the best films of Lino Ventura (the French Bogart), the nouvelle vague (informally launched by a Louis Malle policier, Lift to the Scaffold, starring Ventura), and Godard's subversion of the genre in Breathless.
- 3/23/2014
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
Tess
Written by Gérard Brach, Roman Polanski, and John Brownjohn
Directed by Roman Polanski
France/UK, 1979
Roman Polanski revealed an exceptional eye for gripping visual design in his earliest films. In those works, like Knife in the Water, Cul-de-sac, Repulsion, Rosemary’s Baby and, somewhat later, The Tenant, most of this pictorial construction was derivative of themes, and subsequent depictions of, confinement, claustrophobic paranoia, and severely taut antagonism. In terms of visual and narrative scope, Chinatown opened things up somewhat, but it was with Tess, his 1979 adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s “Tess of the d’Urbervilles,” that Polanski significantly broadened his canvas to encompass the sweeping tale of the Victorian era loves and conflicts of this eponymous peasant girl.
Polanski speaks to this distinction during an interview in the newly released Criterion Collection Blu-ray/DVD of Tess. In discussing the film for the French TV program Cine regards, the director...
Written by Gérard Brach, Roman Polanski, and John Brownjohn
Directed by Roman Polanski
France/UK, 1979
Roman Polanski revealed an exceptional eye for gripping visual design in his earliest films. In those works, like Knife in the Water, Cul-de-sac, Repulsion, Rosemary’s Baby and, somewhat later, The Tenant, most of this pictorial construction was derivative of themes, and subsequent depictions of, confinement, claustrophobic paranoia, and severely taut antagonism. In terms of visual and narrative scope, Chinatown opened things up somewhat, but it was with Tess, his 1979 adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s “Tess of the d’Urbervilles,” that Polanski significantly broadened his canvas to encompass the sweeping tale of the Victorian era loves and conflicts of this eponymous peasant girl.
Polanski speaks to this distinction during an interview in the newly released Criterion Collection Blu-ray/DVD of Tess. In discussing the film for the French TV program Cine regards, the director...
- 2/28/2014
- by Jeremy Carr
- SoundOnSight
Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: Feb. 25, 2014
Price: Blu-ray/DVD $39.95
Studio: Criterion
Nastassja Kinski is Tess
This multiple-Oscar-winning 1979 period film drama Tess by the great Roman Polanski (Carnage, The Ghost Writer) is an exquisite, richly layered adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles.
A strong-willed peasant girl (Cat People’s Nastassja Kinski, in a star-making breakthrough performance) is sent by her father to the estate of some local aristocrats to capitalize on a rumor that their families are from the same line. This fateful visit commences an epic narrative of sex, class, betrayal, and revenge, which Polanski unfolds with deliberation and finesse.
With its earthy visual textures, achieved by two world-class cinematographers—Geoffrey Unsworth (Cabaret) and Ghislain Cloquet (Au hasard Balthazar)—Tess is a work of great pastoral beauty and vivid storytelling.
Criterion’s Blu-ray/DVD Combo release of the film includes the following features:
• New 4K digital restoration,...
Price: Blu-ray/DVD $39.95
Studio: Criterion
Nastassja Kinski is Tess
This multiple-Oscar-winning 1979 period film drama Tess by the great Roman Polanski (Carnage, The Ghost Writer) is an exquisite, richly layered adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles.
A strong-willed peasant girl (Cat People’s Nastassja Kinski, in a star-making breakthrough performance) is sent by her father to the estate of some local aristocrats to capitalize on a rumor that their families are from the same line. This fateful visit commences an epic narrative of sex, class, betrayal, and revenge, which Polanski unfolds with deliberation and finesse.
With its earthy visual textures, achieved by two world-class cinematographers—Geoffrey Unsworth (Cabaret) and Ghislain Cloquet (Au hasard Balthazar)—Tess is a work of great pastoral beauty and vivid storytelling.
Criterion’s Blu-ray/DVD Combo release of the film includes the following features:
• New 4K digital restoration,...
- 11/21/2013
- by Laurence
- Disc Dish
(Roman Polanski, 1979, BFI, 12)
This adaptation of Thomas Hardy's tragic novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles, completed in 1891, was Roman Polanski's first movie after jumping bail in the Us in 1978, having pleaded guilty to the statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl. This prevented him ever working in the States or Britain again and may have introduced a note of caution into his handling of a story about an innocent young woman. It certainly made it impossible to shoot the picture in Hardy's Wessex. In the event the film (originally thought of as a vehicle for his late wife, Sharon Tate, to whom it's dedicated) is an outstanding piece of work.
Sensitively staged on well-chosen locations in Normandy and Brittany, it revolves around a deeply moving performance by Polanski's former lover and protege, the German actress Nastassja Kinski, as the country girl Tess. She was the victim, as Hardy saw it,...
This adaptation of Thomas Hardy's tragic novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles, completed in 1891, was Roman Polanski's first movie after jumping bail in the Us in 1978, having pleaded guilty to the statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl. This prevented him ever working in the States or Britain again and may have introduced a note of caution into his handling of a story about an innocent young woman. It certainly made it impossible to shoot the picture in Hardy's Wessex. In the event the film (originally thought of as a vehicle for his late wife, Sharon Tate, to whom it's dedicated) is an outstanding piece of work.
Sensitively staged on well-chosen locations in Normandy and Brittany, it revolves around a deeply moving performance by Polanski's former lover and protege, the German actress Nastassja Kinski, as the country girl Tess. She was the victim, as Hardy saw it,...
- 3/24/2013
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
A band-aid on Anne Wiazemsky's leg in Robert Bresson's Au hasard Balthazar (1966); cinematography by Ghislain Cloquet.
Bresson, whose control of his films' visual field is nearly unparalleled—do we have a detail here lost in the mystery of "intentionality"? Did the young actress merely bandage her leg, a material object from real life transposed to the fiction of cinema? Or is this one of hundreds of unnoticed small decisions Bresson makes to center his images with trembling intensity? (Or is it "transcendental"?)...
Bresson, whose control of his films' visual field is nearly unparalleled—do we have a detail here lost in the mystery of "intentionality"? Did the young actress merely bandage her leg, a material object from real life transposed to the fiction of cinema? Or is this one of hundreds of unnoticed small decisions Bresson makes to center his images with trembling intensity? (Or is it "transcendental"?)...
- 1/13/2012
- MUBI
One of the most versatile actors of his generation and any generation since, to be honest, Jean-Paul Belmondo has entertained for decades and for good reason.
He’s famous in the art house circuit by being one of the main protagonists within the French New Wave movement of the 1960’s but has also done some rather wonderful slapstick comedies as well. Somehow he has done both with such ease, always interweaving between the two and making the most of his on screen time.
A renaissance man of sorts on film, he could be having a normal conversation while battling super-spies with a telephone and doing it with a straight face the whole time, smoking a cigarette and just looking cooler than SteveMcQueen while doing it.
Yes, I just said he was cooler than Steve McQueen.
If you’re asking me who Jean Paul Belmondo is, you might be on the wrong site.
He’s famous in the art house circuit by being one of the main protagonists within the French New Wave movement of the 1960’s but has also done some rather wonderful slapstick comedies as well. Somehow he has done both with such ease, always interweaving between the two and making the most of his on screen time.
A renaissance man of sorts on film, he could be having a normal conversation while battling super-spies with a telephone and doing it with a straight face the whole time, smoking a cigarette and just looking cooler than SteveMcQueen while doing it.
Yes, I just said he was cooler than Steve McQueen.
If you’re asking me who Jean Paul Belmondo is, you might be on the wrong site.
- 4/2/2010
- by James McCormick
- CriterionCast
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