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Une femme douce [A Gentle Woman / A Gentle Creature] (Robert Bresson, 1969)

Mar

14

National Write Your Story Day

Une femme douce (1969)

Dominique Sanda as “elle” – “she” – a nameless woman. She peers out of a window, her face partially obscured by the muntin. DP: Ghislain Cloquet.

A young woman jumps out of a window, leaving behind her husband, an #antiques dealer. Sitting in their bedroom with the body lying in state, the widower remembers her. In his memory, she is nameless, abstract, a state not a life..

 

Robert #Bresson's Une femme douce is closely adapted from Fyodor #Dostoyevsky Кроткая [Krotkaya / A Gentle Creature] (1876).

Le fantôme de la liberté [The Phantom of Liberty] (Luis Buñuel, 1974)

Mar

9

World Kidney Day

Le fantôme de la liberté (1974)

Five adults and a child at a large table. They're all seated on toilets. One of the men is defecating. DP: Edmond Richard.

Eating is taboo, and relieving oneself is performed on a toilet at a communal table in Luis Buñuel's Le fantôme de la liberté. The farce strings together events from #Buñuel's life (who was 74 by the time he made this film), with dreams remembered by both Buñuel and co-writer Jean-Claude Carrière.

“Madrid was filled with the stench of – pardon my language – food. It was indecent.”

– le professeur des gendarmes

The title references the opening sentence from Marx and Engels' Communist Manifesto (1848): “A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of communism.”. What follows is a wonderful, free-flowing pastiche performed by a sublime cast.

Les sorcières de Salem [The Witches of Salem / The Crucible] (Raymond Rouleau, 1957)

Mar

7

National Town Meeting Day

Les sorcières de Salem (1957)

The townspeople meet in the barn to judge the accused. DP: Claude Renoir.

Raymond Rouleau's Les sorcières de Salem – with a screenplay by Marxist philosopher Jean-Paul #Sartre – is a very early film adaptation of Arthur Miller's 1953 #TheatrePlay The Crucible. An allegory of #McCarthyism, the play is a (partially dramatised) retelling of the #SalemWitchTrials, a dramatic episode in early US-American history. During several court and town meetings, 200 people were falsely accused of meddling with the Devil; 19 of them were eventually executed.

“If she is innocent! Why do you never wonder if Parris be innocent, or Abigail? Is the accuser always holy now? Were they born this morning as clean as God's fingers? I'll tell you what's walking Salem — vengeance is walking Salem. We are what we always were in Salem, but now the little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law!”

– Arthur Miller, The Crucible (1953)

Miller himself was accused of un-American activities in 1956 and convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to identify others present at meetings he had attended. Which doesn't mean that #WitchTrials are a thing of the past. As easily one can transplant Puritan religious mass hysteria to 1950s McCarthy anti-socialism, as easy is it applicable to the state of the world today.

Transition de phase dans les cristaux liquides [Liquid Crystals] (Jean Painlevé, 1978)

Feb

28

National Science Day – India

Transition de phase dans les cristaux liquides (1978)

A scene that foreshadows computer-generated imagery. DP: Jean Painlevé.

Filmmaker, photographer and honorary surrealist Jean Painlevé made science films that verge on experimental art cinema. With custom-built camera setups, he explored the world above and below the water surface, and with that exposed human traits.

 

It's almost impossible to select one film from a filmography as vast as #Painlevé's. In honour of C.V. #Raman, lets go with his Transition de phase dans les cristaux liquides.

 

It's on Ubu, in case you wonder.

Le voleur de crimes [Crime Thief] (Nadine Trintignant, 1969)

Feb

20

National Handcuff Day

Le voleur de crimes (1969)

Jean Girod (Jean-Louis Trintignant) handcuffed in the back of a cell van. DP: Pierre Willemin.

Le genou de Claire [Six Contes Moraux V: Le genou de Claire / Claire's Knee] (Éric Rohmer, 1970)

Feb

17

National Tennis Pro Day

Le genou de Claire (1970)

Touching Claire's knee. DP: Néstor Almendros.

“Every woman has her most vulnerable point. For some, it's the nape of the neck, the waist, the hands. For Claire, in that position, in that light, it was her knee.”

– Jerome

Sur un air de Charleston [Charleston Parade] (Jean Renoir, 1927)

Feb

14

Extraterrestrial Culture Day

Sur un air de Charleston (1927)

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.

“I have finally discovered my ancestors' traditional dance.”

– Johnny Hudgins

A fantastic Afrofuturist short, made a decade before Sun Ra's trip to Saturn.

Vivre sa vie: Film en douze tableaux (Jean-Luc Godard, 1962)

Feb

11

Global Movie Day

Vivre sa vie: Film en douze tableaux (1962)

Nana (Anna Karina) crying in a dark movie theatre while watching Carl Theodor Dreyer's La passion de Jeanne d'Arc (1928). DP: Raoul Coutard.

A fascinating overlap with The Savage Eye (1959), a film #Godard must have been familiar with in 1962.

“Maybe I'll get into the movies.”

– Nana

Germania anno zero [Germany Year Zero] (Roberto Rossellini, 1948)

Feb

6

National Sickie Day

Germania anno zero (1948)

Edmund (Edmund Köhler) walking through rubble in a post-apocalyptic Berlin. DP: Robert Juillard.

Twelve-year-old Edmund – the oldest kid to survive – works to support his whole family including his sick bedridden father while the remains of what was a thousand-year empire lies in rubbles around them.

– I don't go to school anymore.

– Why not? You don't like the new teachers?

– I have to work now.

Following Roma città aperta (1945) and Paisà (1946) of #Rossellini's unofficial war trilogy.

Un chant d'amour [A Song of Love] (Jean Genet, 1950)

Jan

30

National Escape Day

Un chant d'amour (1950)

From one prison window to another, a bunch of flowers swings towards a grasping hand. DP: Jacques Natteau.

An escape of sorts, in love and lust.

“He puts his cheek to the wall. With a kiss he licks the vertical surface and the greedy plaster sucks in his saliva. Then a shower of kisses.”

– Jean Genet, Notre-Dame des Fleurs (1942/43)