“The pickings were poor and not worth the risk.”Pickpocket (Robert Bresson, 1959)
Sep
6
Sun
The newspaper of Sunday, September 6, announcing a derby. DP: Léonce-Henri Burel.
– Michel
“The pickings were poor and not worth the risk.”Pickpocket (Robert Bresson, 1959)
Sep
6
Sun
The newspaper of Sunday, September 6, announcing a derby. DP: Léonce-Henri Burel.
– Michel
E-clip-se (Chris Marker, 1999)
Aug
11
1999
A young woman or child at the Jardin des plantes de Paris wears protective glasses while looking up in amazement during the August 11, 1999 solar eclipse, her baguette a vague memory. DP: Chris Marker.
“Can we not admit that certain skilled men, gifted with intelligence, talent or even genius, and thus indispensable to society, rather than stagnate, should be free to disobey laws in certain cases?”Pickpocket (Robert Bresson, 1959)
Mar
12
Michel (Martin LaSalle) in a busy café, observing. An emptied water glass next to the thief should make him look like a paying guest. DP: Léonce-Henri Burel.
– Michel
“Have you seen Mr Tavernier tonight?”Ascenseur pour l'échafaud [Elevator to the Gallows] (Louis Malle, 1958)
Dec
13
croissants
Mr Tavernier (Maurice Ronet) taking a bite out of a croissant while dialling a number in a lively French café. A blonde behind him shows an interest. DP: Henri Decaë.
“Yes, I'm afraid of death… but for a humble secret agent that's a fact of life, like whisky. And I've drunk that all my life.”Alphaville: Une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965)
Jul
16
petit déjeuner
In one of the very few daytime scenes, Natacha (Anna Karina) and Lemmy Caution (Eddie Constantine) share breakfast at a small table while awkwardly sitting on the armrests of two upholstered chairs. A large television is set up directly behind the table. DP: Raoul Coutard.
– Lemmy Caution
𝛼-60: “Do you know what illuminates the night?” Lemmy Caution: “Poetry.”Alphaville: Une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965)
Jul
16
AI Appreciation Day
Natacha von Braun (Anna Karina) and Lemmy Caution (Eddie Constantine). Lights reflected in the windowpane that shields the two characters suggest “the existence of an obscure reality” (after Baudrillard). DP: Raoul Coutard..
Science fiction, of course, doesn't have to be driven by grandes effects, by superstar names and monumental backdrops. It can be cool, dry, colourless even. The hero, in trenchcoat and fedora, traverses a lightless city. There are few others at this time of night. The familiar landmarks of the City of Light become the voice of 𝛼-60, an artificial intelligence that presides over Alphaville.
– 𝛼-60 playing the imitation game with Lemmy Caution
Based on a poem by Paul Éluard, #Godard's Alphaville bears similarities with Jean #Cocteau's Orphée (1950), transported to a mirror world of sorts. It also foreshadows not only our time, but also M. Hulot's, whose #Tativille could be the simulacra of 𝛼-60's simulated, dehumanised world.
“Convert all Parisian universities into reception centres for the revolutionary youth of the whole world.”Grands soirs & petits matins [May Days] (William Klein, 1978)
Jun
6
National Higher Education Day
Students discussing at the Sorbonne. DPs: William Klein & Bernard Lutic.
A ripple went through France in the early months of 1968. It started when the Communist and socialist party joined forces in an attempt to remove President De Gaulle from office. A month later, students at Nanterre (a Parisian university) teamed up with poets, musicians and small leftist groups to discuss class discrimination and political bureaucracy on campus. The meeting was peacefully disassembled but tensions remained. In May, Sorbonne students stood up for Nanterre, by then shut down. Then, police invaded the university and 20 000 stood up against the police.
– student proposal
Somewhere in that crowd were those whose interest went beyond the main spectacle: the toppling of the new ancien regime. A #JeanRouchian anthropologist of sorts, artist, photographer and filmmaker William Klein pushes the eye through the masses. But it's also his eye; each frame is a Klein. However, we see not a documentary. Sound is asynchronous. Suddenly, it's night and flames lick the black sky. When bricks fly, frames follow. And then… the end.
”'Playtime' is a peculiar, mysterious, magical film. Perhaps you should see it as a preparation for seeing it; the first time won't quite work.”Playtime (Jacques Tati, 1967)
Mar
31
Eiffel Tower Day
A woman in a long grey overcoat holds a glass door of one of the many impersonal, grey modernist buildings. For a brief moment the Eiffel Tower can be seen reflected in the glass, providing a much needed flash of colour. DPs: Jean Badal & Andréas Winding.
Never was or will I be a fan of Jacques #Tati, the loveable Luddite who wouldn't be as big as he became if it wasn't for the technological wonders of the 20th century. Having said that, his Playtime (1967) holds a special place in my heart.
Tati's alter ego Monsieur #Hulot roams a hyper-modern #Paris, actually an enormous soundstage dubbed Tativille. People, buildings and gadgets interact with and against each other, each and everyone as plotless as a prop. In unison, it becomes a perfectly orchestrated symphony of maddening modernism.
But Tati wouldn't be Tati if it wasn't for a glimpse of quiet nostalgia. A woman holding the glass-and-steel entrance door of yet another concrete office building. In the glass, a burst of warm light and colour and movement. And then it's gone, and we remember how that tower once was the thorn in the Luddite's eye, that “baroque and mercantile fancy of a builder of machines”.
I'm going to take Mr Ebert's words to heart for my long overdue revisit to #Tativille:
– Roger Ebert
Paris qui dort [Paris Asleep / The Invisible Ray / At 3:25] (René Clair, 1925)
Mar
30
freebie: Eiffel Tower Day
Two bright young things in their fashionable suits cease their scuffle mid fight, high up on the Eiffel Tower. DPs: Maurice Desfassiaux & Alfred Guichard.
Science fiction may be one of those genres that's forever linked to the future and, depending on which side of 2000 you are at, either in a dystopian of utopian fashion.
An #Eiffel Tower watchman wakes up to find the world around him asleep. The few ones still awake – the bright, pretty, carefree things – explore, live and loot.
“I have finally discovered my ancestors' traditional dance.”Sur un air de Charleston [Charleston Parade] (Jean Renoir, 1927)
Feb
14
Extraterrestrial Culture Day
Parisian savage Catherine Hessling and African explorer Johnny Hudgins exploring each other's alien ways. DP: Jean Bachelet.
Legendary African-American #vaudeville performer Johnny Hudgins – in historically correct Blackface – plays an African explorer who descends onto 2028 Paris to learn about the primitive ways of the white natives. Soon, he discovers the Charleston.
– Johnny Hudgins
A fantastic Afrofuturist short, made a decade before Sun Ra's trip to Saturn.