“Life has its tricks. Its oddities.”La baie des anges [Bay of Angels] (Jacques Demy, 1963)
Aug
6
mercredi

The bank where Jean Fournier (Claude Mann) works. A wall calendar, slightly tilted, reads Août 6 Mercredi. DP: Jean Rabier.
– Jackie Demaistre
“Life has its tricks. Its oddities.”La baie des anges [Bay of Angels] (Jacques Demy, 1963)
Aug
6
mercredi

The bank where Jean Fournier (Claude Mann) works. A wall calendar, slightly tilted, reads Août 6 Mercredi. DP: Jean Rabier.
– Jackie Demaistre
“I thought you'd be hungry, maybe.” La piscine [The Swimming Pool] (Jacques Deray, 1969)
Jul
20

Marianne (Romy Schneider) and Harry (Maurice Ronet) shopping. Note the plethora of atypical-for-France ingredients, and how the packaging hasn't changed up to today. DP: Jean-Jacques Tarbès.
Shopping for food*
Schneider and Ronet's characters go get their groceries in a tiny, surprisingly well-stocked-with-Asian-food-items French corner shop, ánd manage to find all the ingredients needed. One rookie mistake: Uncle Ben's. Of all the rice in the world…
* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for July is, for unknown reasons, mostly not date-related and follows some sort of vacation narrative.
La dame dans l'auto avec des lunettes et un fusil [The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun] (Anatole Litvak, 1970)
Jul
10
Vendredi

A man with a lot of swagger and rolled up blueprints is about to enter a room with a prominent Coca-Cola machine and a jazzy leather swivel chair on display. An electronic flip clock tells the time and date. It's 17:52. DP: Claude Renoir.
Les demoiselles de Rochefort [The Young Girls of Rochefort] (Jacques Demy, 1967)
APr
10
Siblings Day

Sisters Delphine and Solange Garnier mid-song, played by real-world sisters Catherine Deneuve and Françoise Dorléac. DP: Ghislain Cloquet.
Siblings as main characters for Siblings Day (USA/Canada)
– Delphine & Solange
“One must confront vague ideas with clear images” La Chinoise, ou plutôt à la Chinoise: un film en train de se faire [La chinoise] (Jean-Luc Godard, 1967)
Mar
19
Howard University Protest

Yvonne (Juliet Berto) holed up behind piles of Mao's Little Red Book, wielding a machine gun. DP: Raoul Coutard.
Student activism to commemorate the March 19 1968 Howard University Protest
– slogan on a wall
Five Maoist students theorise, then practice a radical overthrow via terrorism.
Loosely based on Dostoyevsky's Бѣсы [The Possessed] (1871–72).
– How much did you win? – 500,000 in less than an hour. It's immoral, but no more than anything else. No more than poverty or ugliness.La baie des anges [Bay of Angels] (Jacques Demy, 1963)
Jan
9
Wheel of Fortune

Jean (Claude Mann) and Jackie (Jeanne Moreau) at a casino table. The tension is palpable. DP: Jean Rabier.
Good, or bad, fortune on the day Wheel of Fortune premiered in 1975.
– Do you play?
– Try me.The Thomas Crown Affair (Norman Jewison, 1968)
Jan
26
champagne

A production photo showing Thomas Crown (McQueen) and Vicki Anderson (Dunaway) sharing foods and drinks. Them seem enthralled with each other. DP: Haskell Wexler.
“We'll go back to Nice tomorrow. The Bay of Angels brings us luck.”La baie des anges [Bay of Angels] (Jacques Demy, 1963)
Dec
23
pears

A blonde Moreau at a restaurant table with a man seen from the back. There are several semi-empty wine glasses and pears sliced lengthwise on a plate, covered with a napkin. Jeanne's character Jackie Demaistre is holding a small sheet of paper with a schematic drawing of a roulette wheel while throwing the man a sceptical glance. DP: Jean Rabier.
– Jean Fournier
1999 A.D. (Lee Madden, 1967)
Nov
27
Cyber Monday

Mother Karen (Marj Dusay) taking a break from online food planning by shopping for a new wardrobe for everyone but herself. DP: Vilmos Zsigmond.
Shopping online on Cyber Monday
In the soul crushing future of 1999, one heroic nuclear family bravely fulfils their gender-specific duties. While Father Mike works in his computer-aided office, Son Jamie fails at computer homeschool and Mother Karen slavishly shops, cooks, and cleans as if the 70s never happened.
Thankfully, the future turned out to be even bleaker.
“We'll eat Chinese. OK?”La piscine [The Swimming Pool] (Jacques Deray, 1969)
Jul
13
“Chinese food”

The two couples (Delon and Schneider, and Ronet and Birkin) awkwardly share dinner. There's wine in red glasses and the food, plated on rustic French dinnerware, is handled with chopsticks. DP: Jean-Jacques Tarbès.