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Un soir, un train [One Night, a Train] (André Delvaux, 1968)
Mar
20
French Language Day
Mathias (Montand) and Anne (Aimée) walk through a round archway. Both have a different focus and are on opposite sides of the arch as a foreshadowing of their parting. DP: Ghislain Cloquet.
A Walloon language professor and his French set designer fiancée are at an impasse. While his Flemish students vocally protest against more Walloon influence at their uni, the couple – who superficially speak the same #language, #French – struggles to find the right words. They meet, part ways, then find each other again on a train that at morning turns out to be standing still in the middle of nowhere. The man, now without her, disembarks and with two acquaintances who also were on that train tries to find out where he and she are.
André Delvaux's Un soir, un train is a masterpiece about finding the right language in a fractured world.
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Het kwade oog [Le mauvais oeil / The Evil Eye] (Charles Dekeukeleire, 1937)
Feb
4
Farmers Day
A farmer in the bottom of the screen holding a scythe against an imposing Flemish sky. DP: François Rents.
In the small East Flemish villages inhabited by non-actors, where the story takes place, one day, a vagrant shows up. The villagers say he has the evil eye. Mills burned and harvest cursed, they say. The man is cursed, by a deep sense of guilt, over something from the past that slowed down time.
De tweede politieagent: “Jean, hebt ge ze?” [het spel vertraagt]
– Herman Teirlinck, De vertraagde film (1922)
Het kwade oog occupies that small frozen moment between sound and silence. With an acute sense of what's possible in cinema, even more than in literature and theatre, Dekeukeleire applies what he had Eisenstein seen do to with his interpretation of Brecht's episches Theater (“epic theatre”).
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De man die zijn haar kort liet knippen [The Man Who Had His Hair Cut Short] (André Delvaux, 1965)
Jan
12
freebie: Teacher Appreciation Day
Govert Miereveld (Senne Rouffaer) having his hair cut. DPs: Ghislain Cloquet & Roland Delcour.
A teacher, enthralled by one of his students, gets lost after she graduates.
“Fran.”
– Govert Miereveld
Heavy and light, absurd and profane. An absolute recommendation.