François Truffaut goes deep and morbid adapting a Henry James story about a man who chooses to ‘devote himself to his beloved dead.’ He builds an altar-shrine to a departed bride and comrades that didn’t survive the Great War. A sympathetic woman considers aiding him, but his obsession keeps choosing life-negating directions. It’s a weird, morbid but highly understandable tale from the edge of the fantastic. The cinematographer is Néstor Almendros; the film is part of a 4-title François Truffaut Collection.
The Green Room
Blu-ray
Kl Studio Classics
Part of Kino’s François Truffaut Collection, with The Wild Child, Small Change and The Man Who Loved Women
1978 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 94 min. / Street Date February 14, 2023 / La chanbre verte, The Vanishing Fiancée / available through Kino Lorber / 59.95
Starring: François Truffaut, Nathalie Baye, Jean Dast´, Patrick Maléon, Jeanne Lobre, Antoine Vitez, Jean-Pierre Moulin, Serge Rousseau, Annie Miller, Nathan Miller, Marcel Berbert.
Cinematography:...
The Green Room
Blu-ray
Kl Studio Classics
Part of Kino’s François Truffaut Collection, with The Wild Child, Small Change and The Man Who Loved Women
1978 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 94 min. / Street Date February 14, 2023 / La chanbre verte, The Vanishing Fiancée / available through Kino Lorber / 59.95
Starring: François Truffaut, Nathalie Baye, Jean Dast´, Patrick Maléon, Jeanne Lobre, Antoine Vitez, Jean-Pierre Moulin, Serge Rousseau, Annie Miller, Nathan Miller, Marcel Berbert.
Cinematography:...
- 2/25/2023
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
It’s a given that their Main Slate — the fresh, the recently buzzed-about, the mysterious, the anticipated — will be the New York Film Festival’s primary point of attraction for both media coverage and ticket sales. But while a rather fine lineup is, to these eyes, deserving of such treatment, the festival’s latest Revivals section — i.e. “important works from renowned filmmakers that have been digitally remastered, restored, and preserved with the assistance of generous partners,” per their press release — is in a whole other class, one titanic name after another granted a representation that these particular works have so long lacked.
The list speaks for itself, even (or especially) if you’re more likely to recognize a director than title. Included therein are films by Andrei Tarkovsky (The Sacrifice), Hou Hsiao-hsien (Daughter of the Nile, a personal favorite), Pedro Costa (Casa de Lava; trailer here), Jean-Luc Godard (the rarely seen,...
The list speaks for itself, even (or especially) if you’re more likely to recognize a director than title. Included therein are films by Andrei Tarkovsky (The Sacrifice), Hou Hsiao-hsien (Daughter of the Nile, a personal favorite), Pedro Costa (Casa de Lava; trailer here), Jean-Luc Godard (the rarely seen,...
- 8/21/2017
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
Philippe Garrel. Photo by Darren Hughes.There’s no exact equivalent in film history for Philippe Garrel’s “family cinema,” as he calls it here. To immerse oneself in his work is to watch Garrel and those he loves (parents, partners, children) be transformed by age and experience, while their passions and preoccupations—that particular Garrelian amour fou—persist.After several decades during which Garrel’s films saw limited distribution and exhibition in North America, he's now experiencing something of a revival. Over the span of three days at the Toronto International Film Festival I enjoyed an impromptu Garrel family retrospective. In the Cinematheque program, Tiff debuted its recently-commissioned 35mm print of Jacques Rozier’s first film, Adieu Philippine (1962), which features a middle-aged Maurice Garrel in a supporting role. Actua 1 (1968), Philippe Garrel’s long-lost short documentary of the May ’68 protests, screened in the Wavelengths section, also in a new print.
- 1/13/2016
- by Darren Hughes
- MUBI
Cohen Media Group presents a double feature of two mid-period films from French auteur Alain Resnais, both significant titles overlooked on a resume of important and notable works. The first is 1983’s Love is a Bed of Roses, featuring revolving cast members who would frequent other titles from the director throughout the remainder of that decade, and also represents his first collaboration with actress/wife Sabine Azema, who would appear in nearly every one of his remaining film productions. The second is the superb 1984 film Love Unto Death, an existential portrait of love and death as fluid states of mind.
The playful Life is a Bed of Roses premiered at the Venice Film Festival and nabbed Cesar nominations for Azema as Best Supporting Actress and for production designer Jacques Saulnier. Penned by Jean Gruault (who wrote Resnais’ previous feature, 1980’s superior Mon Oncle D’Amerique), it’s a non-linear film divided into three distinct parts,...
The playful Life is a Bed of Roses premiered at the Venice Film Festival and nabbed Cesar nominations for Azema as Best Supporting Actress and for production designer Jacques Saulnier. Penned by Jean Gruault (who wrote Resnais’ previous feature, 1980’s superior Mon Oncle D’Amerique), it’s a non-linear film divided into three distinct parts,...
- 8/4/2015
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
10. Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948)
Directed by: Max Ophuls
To be honest, the relationship at the center of “Letter from an Unknown Woman” barely even exists. It’s more of a longing from one side than the other. But the ways Ophuls structures the film qualifies it for this list. For the run of the story, we hear a voiceover, explaining the moments in these two characters’ lives. Lisa (Joan Fontaine) is a teenager who becomes obsessed with a pianist who lives in her building named Stefan (Louis Jordan). She only meets him once, but maintains her love for him. After her mother announces they will be moving, Lisa runs away, but sees Stefan with another woman. Lisa becomes a respectable woman and is proposed to by a young, family-focused military officer, whom she turns down, still in love with Stefan, a man she has barely met. Years later, she...
Directed by: Max Ophuls
To be honest, the relationship at the center of “Letter from an Unknown Woman” barely even exists. It’s more of a longing from one side than the other. But the ways Ophuls structures the film qualifies it for this list. For the run of the story, we hear a voiceover, explaining the moments in these two characters’ lives. Lisa (Joan Fontaine) is a teenager who becomes obsessed with a pianist who lives in her building named Stefan (Louis Jordan). She only meets him once, but maintains her love for him. After her mother announces they will be moving, Lisa runs away, but sees Stefan with another woman. Lisa becomes a respectable woman and is proposed to by a young, family-focused military officer, whom she turns down, still in love with Stefan, a man she has barely met. Years later, she...
- 12/2/2014
- by Joshua Gaul
- SoundOnSight
Elitist and pretentious, or an endangered species? Whatever your feelings, there's no doubt that arthouse movies are among the finest ever made. Here the Guardian and Observer critics pick the 10 best
• Top 10 romantic movies
• Top 10 action movies
• Top 10 comedy movies
• Top 10 horror movies
• Top 10 sci-fi movies
• Top 10 crime movies
Peter Bradshaw on art movies
This is a red rag to a number of different bulls. Lovers of what are called arthouse movies resent the label for being derisive and philistine. And those who detest it bristle at the implication that there is no artistry or intelligence in mainstream entertainment.
For many, the stereotypical arthouse film is Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal. Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin was a classic art film from the 1920s and Luis Buñuel investigated cinema's potential for surreality like no one before or since. The Italian neorealists applied the severity of art to a representation...
• Top 10 romantic movies
• Top 10 action movies
• Top 10 comedy movies
• Top 10 horror movies
• Top 10 sci-fi movies
• Top 10 crime movies
Peter Bradshaw on art movies
This is a red rag to a number of different bulls. Lovers of what are called arthouse movies resent the label for being derisive and philistine. And those who detest it bristle at the implication that there is no artistry or intelligence in mainstream entertainment.
For many, the stereotypical arthouse film is Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal. Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin was a classic art film from the 1920s and Luis Buñuel investigated cinema's potential for surreality like no one before or since. The Italian neorealists applied the severity of art to a representation...
- 10/21/2013
- The Guardian - Film News
Jean Vigo's sole feature-length film is a masterpiece of sophistication, technique and human feeling
Jean Vigo achieved a mature masterpiece with this movie, his only full-length feature film, made in 1934 just before his death at the age of 29, now in a restored version. Combining simplicity and delicacy with enormous sophistication and technique, it is an urban pastoral that to an extraordinary degree inspires love – both love for the film and love generally. Dita Parlo is Juliette, who marries Jean (Jean Dasté), a barge captain. For their honeymoon, they will go on a journey on his craft, L'Atalante. The boat is somehow both cramped and yet as unexpectedly capacious as a haunted house. They are joined by the eccentric seadog Père Jules (Michel Simon). Juliette and Jean's relationship almost founders entirely, and yet this expedition cannot quite be reduced to a metaphor for love's pilgrimage. It is too playful, anarchic,...
Jean Vigo achieved a mature masterpiece with this movie, his only full-length feature film, made in 1934 just before his death at the age of 29, now in a restored version. Combining simplicity and delicacy with enormous sophistication and technique, it is an urban pastoral that to an extraordinary degree inspires love – both love for the film and love generally. Dita Parlo is Juliette, who marries Jean (Jean Dasté), a barge captain. For their honeymoon, they will go on a journey on his craft, L'Atalante. The boat is somehow both cramped and yet as unexpectedly capacious as a haunted house. They are joined by the eccentric seadog Père Jules (Michel Simon). Juliette and Jean's relationship almost founders entirely, and yet this expedition cannot quite be reduced to a metaphor for love's pilgrimage. It is too playful, anarchic,...
- 1/20/2012
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Jean Vigo’s first and only feature-length film, L’Atalante can often be found snuggled amongst critics’ best-of-all-time lists. A quiet, subtle, and brilliantly simple story of a loved-up but immature young couple, L’Atalante is a Breton-striped dream-like journey through love and loss on the canals of France.
After a heavy-handed editing process that mutilated the 1934 version, it might have faded into obscurity had it not been picked up, embraced and echoed by the directors of the French New Wave. 2012 sees the release of L’Atalante’s full 89-minute version in selected cinemas across the country.
It’s hard to separate this haunting little film from the tragic story of its director. By the time filming of L’Atalante had begun, Jean Vigo had fallen seriously ill and had to direct much of it from a stretcher. He left for the mountains soon after shooting ended, hoping to regain...
After a heavy-handed editing process that mutilated the 1934 version, it might have faded into obscurity had it not been picked up, embraced and echoed by the directors of the French New Wave. 2012 sees the release of L’Atalante’s full 89-minute version in selected cinemas across the country.
It’s hard to separate this haunting little film from the tragic story of its director. By the time filming of L’Atalante had begun, Jean Vigo had fallen seriously ill and had to direct much of it from a stretcher. He left for the mountains soon after shooting ended, hoping to regain...
- 12/13/2011
- by Guest
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
It’s so strange, writing this so long after the announcement yesterday. In today’s internet world of instant information, and twenty four second news cycles, yesterday’s August 2011 Criterion Collection new releases may as well have happened last week, or last month. I’m sure that the page views for this post will be markedly smaller than the usual, as I have tried consistently to have the new release post up within minutes of the pages going live on Criterion’s website. I know this all sounds like inside baseball stuff, but it’s on my mind, and darn it, this is my website.
I had a whole, several paragraph long, write up of the August titles, but since I’m finding myself writing this at 10pm on Tuesday evening, I think it’s better if I just scrap that whole thing and start over. I was going on...
I had a whole, several paragraph long, write up of the August titles, but since I’m finding myself writing this at 10pm on Tuesday evening, I think it’s better if I just scrap that whole thing and start over. I was going on...
- 5/18/2011
- by Ryan Gallagher
- CriterionCast
Jean Vigo, 1934
At the age of 29, Jean Vigo died from rheumatic septicaemia, just a few days after the opening of his only feature film, L'Atalante. Those bare facts are a landmark not just in French cinema, but in the larger history of artistic film-making, and of the absolute commitment of film-makers. Moreover, the poetic lyricism of L'Atalante, far from dating, has been more appreciated over the years. L'Atalante is 75 years old, yet its beauty and its harshness are still hauntingly alive.
Three men work a barge (it is named L'Atalante) on the waterways of northern France: Jean, the skipper is young and hopeful (Jean Dasté); le père Jules, a tattooed veteran of the world's oceans (Michel Simon) and a cabin boy. They stop at a small town. Jean meets a girl, Juliette (Dita Parlo), and they are married, while hardly knowing each other. So the barge moves on. It is...
At the age of 29, Jean Vigo died from rheumatic septicaemia, just a few days after the opening of his only feature film, L'Atalante. Those bare facts are a landmark not just in French cinema, but in the larger history of artistic film-making, and of the absolute commitment of film-makers. Moreover, the poetic lyricism of L'Atalante, far from dating, has been more appreciated over the years. L'Atalante is 75 years old, yet its beauty and its harshness are still hauntingly alive.
Three men work a barge (it is named L'Atalante) on the waterways of northern France: Jean, the skipper is young and hopeful (Jean Dasté); le père Jules, a tattooed veteran of the world's oceans (Michel Simon) and a cabin boy. They stop at a small town. Jean meets a girl, Juliette (Dita Parlo), and they are married, while hardly knowing each other. So the barge moves on. It is...
- 10/20/2010
- The Guardian - Film News
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