A “fun fact” I’ve just read in Wikipedia: at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival this film “was excluded from the official selection because of its sensitive subject matter of nuclear bombs and to avoid upsetting the U.S. government”.
Hiroshima, mon amour was screened as part of the cycle Tiempo de memoria, memoria en el tiempo.
L’amour en fuite, released 20 years after Les quatre cents coups, brings the adventures of Antoine Doinel to an almost happy end. And, as it happens, it brings to the end the Antoine Doinel cycle by Filmoteca Canaria. I guess I would have enjoyed this comedy more if I didn’t see the other parts of the saga. The flashbacks, taken from the previous films, were not exactly necessary and some of them way too long. The torn-up photo story, however, is utterly brilliant.
Is Antoine really a “troubled youth”, “unhappy child” or “outcast”? I didn’t have such an impression. True, the teacher picks on Antoine, but he doesn’t spare other kids either. Here’s one of the IMDb trivia:
All the young actors who unsuccessfully auditioned for the role of Antoine were used in the classroom scenes.
That’s it: all schoolchildren are like Antoine. And, kids being kids, they enjoy themselves even in the most boring and oppressive environments — or find ways out. A gym class scene is simply perfect.
My father and Jean-Pierre both knew this was a very important scene and they had a long time to prepare for it. My father just gave him the questions he was to be asked but then told him to come up more or less with his own answers. That worked beautifully.
Truffaut’s first film in colour, Fahrenheit 451, based on Ray Bradbury’s dystopic novel of the same name, was not exactly appreciated by critics. I wonder why. Didn’t they like the futuristic (by now, retrofuturistic) fire engine which could only work because it’s red? So cool.
This is the second movie I’ve seen in Filmoteca de Cantabria. Starring Oskar Werner as Guy Montag, Julie Christie in the dual roles of Linda Montag and Clarisse, and Cyril Cusack as Captain Beatty.
Another discovery thanks to Cines Babel. I had no slightest clue who Agnès Varda was and what she’s done for la Nouvelle Vague and cinema in general.
If the mission of this documentary was to make me wish to watch all her films, then it was accomplished. Of course, I need to see Cléo de 5 à 7 and Sans toit ni loi, but especially Les cent et une nuits de Simon Cinéma, her box office flop featuring Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jane Birkin, Sandrine Bonnaire, Alain Delon, Catherine Deneuve, Gérard Depardieu, Robert De Niro, Clint Eastwood, Gina Lollobrigida and Marcello Mastroianni among others — did anyone ever made a film with all these guys?!
After a year and a half living here, we just started to discover various free events and activities in Las Palmas. On Friday, we went for a free bus excursion organised by the Cabildo de Gran Canaria to watch a (not quite yet) winter solstice sunrise and visit a cave village called Acusa Seca. And on Saturday, there was a free open-air movie night. Godard’s Alphaville was closing Futuro, a cycle of sci-fi films screened at Palacete Rodríguez Quegles.
Now I can think of a few pastimes more satisfying than watching a 50-year-old black and white French film noir. In French. With Spanish subtitles. Outdoors. None of them would be as cool though. (In fact, it was positively chilly last night. Next time we have to bring a blanket.) I mean, Lemmy Caution, aka secret agent 003, aka Ivan Johnson, a journalist for Figaro-Pravda — can it get Frenchier than that? Not exactly a comedy but full of deadpan humour (the car chase scene is priceless). Of course, Lemmy, played by Eddie Constantine, is nobody else than an early cinematic incarnation of Lazlo Woodbine, so expect a lot of gratuitous sex and violence, now and then unashamedly accompanied by “dun dun dun”. A great cast featuring Anna Karina and Akim Tamiroff; names like Leonard Nosferatu, Prof. Heckell and Prof. Jeckell; and fireworks into the bargain — well that was not a part of the original movie but that’s what you can get when watching in the open air. Marvellous.
With all due respect to Jean-Luc Godard, I think that Two or Three Things I Know About Her is not his best movie, and certainly not “one of the ten greatest films ever made”. Saying that, it is well worth watching. I liked acting there, especially when Juliette (Marina Vlady) and other women characters talk straight to the camera giving us various bits of unsolicited information. One of the best scenes is the one where Christophe reads aloud his essay on Friendship.
In my new school, the boys and girls are all together. That makes it co-ed. Is friendship between boys and girls possible? Yes and no. Yes, because some girls are very nice. Maryse, Martine, Ghislaine, Roseline. With these girls we can talk. ‘Hello, kid’, I say. ‘Hello’, they reply. Then we talk until we disagree.
‘You’re impossible’, she says, I kick her, she throws an ink-ball at me, teacher comes in. In this case friendship is not desirable or possible. I’d rather be electrocuted with my feet in water. Both nice and nasty girls are quite clean... and most are nice, so I feel better about it.
