trans - europ - express ( film )
trans - europ - express (1966) dir. alain robbe - grillet | film | pinterest | maze and films
with the headline: screen: a twist on the gangster genre; trans - europ - express' by robbe - grillet .
( a) i had my young mind blown by robbe - grillet’s trans - europ express. it’s very dodgy, though ;
a film director, jean, his producer, marc, and his assistant, lucette, board the trans - europ - express in paris bound for antwerp. once in their compartment it occurs to them that the drama... see full summary »
a film director, jean, his producer, marc, and his assistant, lucette, board the trans - europ - express in paris bound for antwerp. once in their compartment it occurs to them that the drama of... see more »
film culture film culture # 44 new york, ny: film culture, 1967 $ 65. 00
a film director, jean, his producer, marc, and his assistant, lucette, board the trans - europ - express in paris bound for antwerp. once in their compartment it occurs to them that the drama of life aboard the train presents possibilities for a film, and they begin to write a script about dope smuggling .
alpha, trans, chung: a photographic model: semiotics, film and interpretation peter d' agostino books $ 75. 00
a film director, jean, his producer, marc, and his assistant, lucette, board the trans - europ - express in paris bound for antwerp. once in their compartment it occurs to them that the drama of life aboard the train presents possibilities for a film, and they begin to write a script about dope smuggling. written by anonymous
underground film bulletin underground film bulletin periodicals / out of print periodicals $ 1. 00
the stories are enacted on screen in the minds of marty, billy and hans, recalling such films of the 1960s as alain robbe - grillet' s trans - europ - express and agnès varda' s les créatures, where what we see are the books the central characters are writing, rewriting and tinkering with .
this book presents three photographic projects of peter d' agostino and accompanying critical texts. in alpha, d' agostino condensed godard’s alphaville into 36 frames in a roll of photographic film, then selected eight images to talk about the self - reflexive nature of film and photography – light and time – and linguistic concerns that parallel the film’s narrative. trans takes alain robbe - grillet’s film trans - europ - express as its starting point for meta - structural analysis and chung: “still” another meaning uses the chinese government’s reaction to antonioni’s depiction of china in his chung kuo to investigate the issue of film’s depiction of “reality. ” texts follow from rae blakeney, alain robbe - grillet, william luhr and the book concludes with commentary from andria chiodo, kristine stiles, and hal fischer .
trans - europ - express ,
which opened yesterday at the plaza theater, is the second movie to be directed by alain robbe - grillet, who wrote
last year at marienbad .
it is about three characters on a train from paris to antwerp making a gangster movie about the drug traffic on trains from paris to antwerp or from antwerp to paris. view full article in timesmachine »
in a way that robbe - grillet could perhaps never have anticipated, trans - europ express is as challenging and influential again today as it was in the 1960s – a key text of the postwar european avant - garde. but it is, above all, as an enjoyable and witty movie that this film has remained a classic and emblematic work. its influence is also evidence, if anyone still needed it, of the great difference between high solemnity and simple and yet entertaining seriousness (1) .
peter d' agostino alpha, trans, chung: a photographic model: semiotics, film and interpretation dayton, oh: university art galleries inc. and wright state university, 1978 size unknown $ 75. 00
a film director, jean, his producer, marc, and his assistant, lucette, board the trans - europ - express in paris bound for antwerp. once in their compartment it occurs to them that the drama of life aboard the train presents possibilities for a film, and they begin to write a script about dope smuggling. subsequently, they see actor jean - louis trintignant walking through the station. as seen through the eyes of jean, marc, and lucette, trintignant becomes elias, the chief character in the script. elias is going to antwerp to pick up a suitcase of cocaine for delivery to an international organization based in paris .
trans - europ - express is a self - referential, neo - noir thriller, with heavy doses of sado - masochism, from the mind of alain robbe - grillet. on the train from paris to antwerp, a director and his production team hash - out the plot of a crime movie. their story is enacted by jean louis - trintignant, who plays elias, a cocaine smuggler seduced by eva (who may be working for a rival gang). but as the director keeps changing the story, elias becomes lost in a labyrinth of false leads and shifting allegiances .
truffaut stated that the theme of the film is
love and the relations between men and women
and later claimed that
the idea behind le pianiste was to make a film without a subject, to express all i wanted to say about glory, success, downfall, failure, women and love by means of a detective story. it' s a grab bag .
1) impossible to pick a single most erotic film: too self - revealing. but
founded in 1999, senses of cinema is one of the first online film journals of its kind and has set the standard for professional, high quality film - related content on the internet .
fascinating film: a jigsaw puzzle that never comes together, and is extremely entertaining doing so .
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notebook is a daily, international film publication. our mission is to guide film lovers searching, lost or adrift in an overwhelming sea of content. we offer text, images, sounds and video as critical maps, passways and illuminations to the worlds of contemporary and classic film. notebook is a mubi publication .
contemporary theatre, film, and television, volume 34, gale (detroit, mi), 2001 .
“dialogues” - a film by owen land philippe pirotte and julia strebelow and eds. books $ 25. 00
this film is a beautifully done story within a story - - - film within a film. the author and friends take a train ride and begin to work out a film; its plot, its characters and their actions. as the story evolves the characters take on their own existence, reality becomes inverted; they weave their own story as author becomes audience. it is a taste of the 1960' s thinking of the michael caine foreign intrigue films, the orient express not to mention the manchurian candidate. in a way it thumbs its nose at the genre. i saw it when it ran almost forty years ago and enjoyed it immensely. if you can find it - - - check it out .
reynaldo v. rodríguez film stills vol. 02 caracas, venezuela: las injurias, 2016 30 $ 10. 00
film stills vol. 01: meshes of the afternoon, 1943 reynaldo v. rodríguez books / zines $ 8. 00
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this film was banned by the british censor because of its depiction of sexual bondage (which is now regarded as very tame) .
on the occasion of the printed matter exhibition wallpaper & beyond from underground filmmaker and publisher wallpaper / mr. 8mm, this table brings together a selection of book works which engage film and the cinematic. looking to experimental and avant garde cinema, these projects explore the artistic possibilities of putting the moving image into printed form, using film - stills and text, as well as interviews and film - based writings .
the result is both a pure example of narrative deconstruction – with some genuinely absurd moments – and a pretty weird experience for the viewer; and at times for trintignant who is playing both himself and his screen persona of elias, the drug runner. the film’s title is itself full of typical gallic literary allusions, with transes being the name of a detective story included in the film; europe, an adult magazine that we see a character buy; and l’express a popular french magazine. as roland barthes might have put it (indeed, did) this is a text that is both playful, knowing and full of pleasure (plaisir du texte) for the viewer / reader as well as, presumably, for the film workers who made it .
this film was banned by the british censor because of its depiction of sexual bondage (which is now regarded as very tame). see more »
wasn' t as well received by its critics and public. a film journalist asked truffaut if the film was more comic than tragic and truffaut replied ,
it' s both. with piano player, i wanted to make women cry and men laugh .
the one thing that is quite obvious about the film is truffaut' s love for american cinema and literature, and he wanted to make his very own homage to that genre. the themes in
excerpts from an english translation (unknown author) of jacques rivette' s 1976 film, duelle (une quarantaine), screenplay by eduardo de ...
ciment and several people mention brief encounter as a film about love without sex appeal. one critic hasn’t even seen it, and says it’s a good thing too .
philippe pirotte and julia strebelow and eds. “dialogues” - a film by owen land paris, france: kunsthalle bern & paraguay press, 2011 unknown $ 25. 00
finally, the french new wave, as the european modern cinema, is focused on the technique as style itself. a french new wave film - maker is first of all an author who shows in its film his own eye on the world. on the other hand the film as the object of knowledge challenges the usual transitivity on which all the other cinema was based ,
undoing its cornerstones: space and time continuity, narrative and grammatical logics, the self - evidence of the represented worlds .
in this way the film - maker passes
the essay attitude, thinking – in a novelist way – on his own way to do essays .
the auteurs of this era owe their popularity to the support they received with their youthful audience. most of these directors were born in the 1930s and grew up in paris, relating to how their viewers might be experiencing life. they were considered the first film generation to have a
film education
, knowledge of and references to film history. with high concentration in fashion, urban professional life, and all - night parties, the life of france' s youth was being exquisitely captured .
using light - weight portable equipment, hand - held cameras and requiring little or no set up time, the new wave way of film - making presented a documentary style. the films exhibited direct sounds on film stock that required less light. filming techniques included fragmented, freeze - frames, discontinuous editing, and long takes. the combination of objective realism, subjective realism, and authorial commentary created a narrative ambiguity in the sense that questions that arise in a film are not answered in the end .
the last scene of the film shows edouard being back at the dive, continuing to work there under the false name of charlie, as he continues to play piano for the townspeople .
michel ciment champions queen kelly (a popular choice), sternberg and bunuel. the ideal erotic film, he says, would stand at an equal distance between stroheim, sternberg and bunuel .
he later told a reporter that he wanted to shock the audience that had loved the 400 blows by making a film that would
please the real film nuts and them alone .
he previously had several ideas for films about children, but was afraid of repeating himself in his second film. he told a reporter ,
i refused to be a prisoner of my own first success. i discarded temptation to renew that success by choosing a great subject. i turned my back on what everyone waited for and i took my pleasure as my only rule of conduct .
in addition to hosting the american premiere of what may be the best new film of 2018 from anywhere, this year’s open roads at the film society of lincoln center pays tribute to four key figures of the past. roberto de paolis’s film pure hearts (about which, more below) is, at the very least, a sign of hope that the italian cinema that gave rise to the beloved the taviani brothers (paolo and the recently deceased vittorio), maverick director marco ferreri, and the elegant but largely underappreciated actress valentina cortese—not to mention the formidable masters who preceded them—still lives .
the film' s script changed constantly during shooting. truffaut said that
in shoot the piano player i wanted to break with the linear narrative and make a film where all the scenes would please me. i shot without any criteria .
truffaut' s stylized and self - reflexive melodrama employs the hallmarks of french new wave cinema: extended voice - overs, out - of - sequence shots, and sudden jump cuts. the film' s cinematography by raoul coutard was often grainy and kinetic, reflecting the emotional state of the characters, such as the scene in which charlie hesitates before ringing a doorbell .
if you have been following the twists and turns of the film’s rapid mood swings up to this point, you’ll have no trouble following things straight through to the film’s extraordinary finale—a shootout at a mountain cabin right out of high sierra. but that humphrey bogart classic did not feature gunmen who behaved like the keystone kops. and it did not sport a visual delicacy suggestive of the finest work of d. w. griffith .
this is my number one film for the june by ingmar bergman. the film’s theme mainly revolves around characters’ common reaction against “god’s silence”. it contemplates of the existence of god, and a priest’s lack of faith in god, and his inner conflicts about it. the movie is based on really strong dialogues and it is mainly criticized for its lack of action. however i do believe that this movie is a must see .
this movie is about a twisted relationship of a couple that involve in bdsm. most people are very cruel towards this movie. comments i read online consisted of the film’s weakness to propose a proper theme, and dialogues. i do not agree with comments because the beauty of this movie was its pure imagery by telling its message with minimal dialogues. by seemingly reversing the master and slave relationship the film perfectly explores the human relationships. although the main concern of the film is the unwilling approach of one of the couples towards bdsm, it can be applied to every kind of relationship. love is being willingly abused and to abuse each other .
truffaut had wanted to make it as a big budget studio film, but was unable to get sufficient funds and the film was made on the streets instead. truffaut filled the film with homages to such american b movie directors like nicholas ray and sam fuller. (both of the directors have always been a personal favorite of his and jean - luc godard) during the shooting truffaut realized that he didn' t like gangsters and tried to make their character more and more comical. pierre braunberger initially didn' t like boby lapointe' s songs and said that he couldn' t understand what lapointe was saying which than inspired truffaut to add subtitles with a bouncing ball .
jonathan dawson recently retired as associate professor in film, media and cultural studies at griffith university (queensland) and is now honorary research associate at the university of tasmania. he has written and directed scores of films, television series and documentaries. he is also a major contributor to ian aitken’s the encyclopaedia of documentary film, including the essay on australian documentary cinema. sadly, in the intervening years since writing this piece, the author has passed away .
and finally the 400 blows which not only is one of the greatest films in the world but the one that revolutionized the french new wave. truffaut was always known as a very compassionate man, who had such a passion and love for films that while even directing found time to write about other films and directors, which his personal favorite was alfred hitchcock, where he wrote a classic book - length, film - by - film interview with the man and the two actually became very good friends. starting out as a critic truffaut decided to want to make films of his own after seeing orson welles noir classic touch of evil at the expo 58 which then inspired him to make his feature film début in 1959 with the 400 blows .
some of the most prominent pioneers among the group, including françois truffaut, jean - luc godard, éric rohmer, claude chabrol, and jacques rivette, began as critics for the famous film magazine cahiers du cinéma. cahiers co - founder and theorist andré bazin was a prominent source of influence for the movement. by means of criticism and editorialization, they laid the groundwork for a set of concepts, revolutionary at the time, which the american film critic andrew sarris called the' auteur theory.'
filming took place from november 30, 1959 until january 22, 1960 with some re - shoots for two weeks in march. locations included a café called a la bonne franquette on the rue mussard in levallois, le sappey - en - chartreuse, around grenoble and throughout paris. the film' budget was 890, 062. 95 francs, whereas the 400 blows had been a tense shoot for truffaut, his second film was a happy experience for the cast and crew after truffaut' s first success .
the' auteur theory' holds that the director is the
author
of his movies, with a personal signature visible from film to film. they praised movies by jean renoir and jean vigo, and made then - radical cases for the artistic distinction and greatness of hollywood studio directors such as orson welles, john ford, howard hawks, alfred hitchcock and nicholas ray. the beginning of the new wave was to some extent an exercise by the cahiers writers in applying this philosophy to the world by directing movies themselves .
it started off as a funny, very meta parody of thrillers. i liked it. but as it went along, the film - within - a - film stuff sort of disappeared, and just became a thriller. that would have been fine, except that it wasn' t a particularly good thriller. everything was over - complex and contrived, and the protagonist wasn' t worth rooting for - - all of which was fine when it was being played for laughs. but it felt pointless when it became serious .
taking us to the heart of existential anguish, shoot the piano player is never grim. it may show us the dark underside of city life, but it is somehow quite unsordid. daring to make us laugh at people in decidedly unfunny circumstances, the film manages to catch that laughter in mid - air and overlay it with a sense of sadness—without killing the joke. the story may be simple, then characters easy to comprehend, but an atmosphere of mystery—about people, their lives, their sense of self—remains, making shoot the piano player a film of enduring fascination .
albert remy had appeared in the 400 blows and truffaut wanted to show the actor' s comedic side after his uncomic performance in the previous film. truffaut also cast actor and novelist daniel boulanger and theatrical actor claude mansard as the two gangsters in the film. serge davri was a music hall performer who had for years recited poems while breaking dishes over his head. truffaut considered him crazy, but funny, and cast him as plyne. truffaut rounded out the cast with catherine lutz in the role of mammy and lutz had never acted before and worked at a local movie theater .
of all the pressures weighing on a major film festival, the most urgent—and in some ways the most absurd—is the one to be topical. how does a behemoth like cannes meet the moment, and what would that even mean? as the most powerful film showcase and marketplace in the world, cannes doubles as an annual referendum on the state of the art and the industry, and two framing narratives dominated this year’s pre - festival coverage. the first stemmed from the festival’s ongoing battle with netflix, with cannes positioned as the stubborn old guard defending the sanctity of the cinematic experience against
many of the french new wave films were produced on tight budgets; often shot in a friend' s apartment or yard, using the director' s friends as the cast and crew. directors were also forced to improvise with equipment (for example, using a shopping cart for tracking shots). the cost of film was also a major concern; thus, efforts to save film turned into stylistic innovations. for example, in jean - luc godard' s breathless, after being told the film was too long and he must cut it down to one hour and a half he decided (on the suggestion of jean - pierre melville) to remove several scenes from the feature using jump cuts, as they were filmed in one long take. parts that did not work were simply cut from the middle of the take, a practical decision and also a purposeful stylistic one .
alexandre astruc' s manifesto ,
the birth of a new avant - garde: the camera - stylo
, published in l 'ecran, on 30 march 1948 outlined some of the ideas that were later expanded upon by françois truffaut and the cahiers du cinéma. it argues that
cinema was in the process of becoming a new mean of expression on the same level as painting and the novel: a form in which an artist can express his thoughts, however abstract they may be, or translate his obsessions exactly as he does in the contemporary essay or novel. this is why i would like to call this new age of cinema the age of the' camera - stylo .
the ship of lost men, directed by the great maurice tourneur, is a great film, listed by alfred hitchcock as one of his top ten. dietrich is very effective in it, apart from some unfortunate costume choices. dietrich also acted for henrik galeen, arthur robison and alexander korda .
françois truffaut has made some of the greatest films of all time. he did a film which was a love letter about the inner workings of the movie industry titled, day for night which ironically stars truffaut as a film director. the last metro tells a story about an actress married to a jewish theater owner who she must keep hidden from the nazis while doing both of their jobs. a personal favorite of mine is jules and jim which tells the tragic romance between two best friends who have been in love with the same woman over the years and the effect she has on both their lives .
raymond durgnat is fascinating, as you’d expect. lots of top choices for erotic film, including but not limited to bride of frankenstein, 42nd street, pickpocket, king kong, haxan and artists and models. polymorphous perversity! but i have to admit, shirley maclaine looks cute as bat lady .
at the opening of the startling and funny seven psychopaths the camera pans across the hills above los angeles, taking in the iconic sign that has loomed over the city since 1923, first as hollywoodland and more recently simply hollywood. very soon we realise that this film is not merely set in la, it' s about hollywood as a place, an industry, a creator and shaper of dreams and narratives, a distorter and destroyer of lives. to complete a circle the film ends with a comic variation on the final lines of john ford' s the searchers about returning home after the completion of a journey .
truffaut significantly changes charlie' s personality in the film because originally, goodis' edward webster lynn (who truffaut adapts as charlie) is pictured as a relatively strong, self - confident guy who has chosen his solitude whereas truffaut’s charlie kohler has found his isolation inevitably; he was always shy, withdrawn, reclusive .
truffaut first read david goodis' s novel in the mid - 1950s while shooting les mistons when his wife madeleine morgenstern read it and recommended it to him. he immediately loved the book' s dialogue and poetic tone and showed it to producer pierre braunberger, who bought the rights. truffaut later met goodis in new york city, where the novelist gave truffaut a vintage viewfinder from his brief experience as a 2nd unit director on a u. s. film. truffaut said he made the film in reaction to the success of the 400 blows, which he considered to be very french and he wanted to show his influence from american films .
one thing’s for sure—it seems far less bewildering half a century later, at least to french viewers. “is the film more comic than tragic? ” a journalist asked truffaut, following the film’s disappointing to disastrous reception by the critics and the public (not to mention the censors). “it’s both, ” he answered. “with piano player, i wanted to make women cry and men laugh. ” a flippant answer to a typically single - minded journalist’s question, but the sureness of the response is matched by the sureness of the execution of the film itself. there is nothing tentative or unachieved in what is, after all, the sophomore effort of a young director. “how sure is truffaut’s command of cinematic language! ” joseph mcbride once wrote of fahrenheit 451; and the same could be said of the director’s abilities with actors, narrative, and the balance of endlessly shifting moods—in this case, antic comedy, ruminative reserve, romantic longing, and tenebrous regret .
in which gleeson and colin farrell play irish hitmen waiting for their psychopathic british boss to dictate their next assignment. now mcdonagh has moved to the states, where his hero, colin farrell, is marty, an incipient alcoholic irish playwright working on a hollywood film, and the number of psychopaths involved has exponentially advanced to seven .
cahiers du cinéma writers critiqued the classic
tradition of quality
style of french cinema. bazin and henri langlois, founder and curator of the cinémathèque française, were the dual godfather figures of the movement. these men of cinema valued the expression of the director' s personal vision in both the film' s style and script .
among the films referenced in shoot the piano player are hollywood b movies from the 1940s, the techniques of using an iris from silent films, charlie being named after charlie chaplin and having four brothers (and one named chico) being a reference to the marx brothers, and the film' s structure and flashbacks being similar to the structure of citizen kane .
the french new wave featured unprecedented methods of expression, such as long tracking shots (like the famous traffic jam sequence in godard' s 1967 film week end). also, these movies featured existential themes, such as stressing the individual and the acceptance of the absurdity of human existence. filled with irony and sarcasm, the films also tend to reference other films .
the french new wave was popular roughly between 1958 and 1964, although new wave work existed as late as 1973. the socio - economic forces at play shortly after world war ii strongly influenced the movement. politically and financially drained, france tended to fall back on the old popular pre - war traditions. one such tradition was straight narrative cinema, specifically classical french film .
from now on the two parallel worlds of the film itself, its characters and authors, and a different or parallel narrative space interweave and collide as the filmmakers constantly change their minds, rewrite on the run, and generally put trintignant / elias through a surreal hall of narrative mirrors as the plot is chopped and changed. prostitutes, phony cops, characters and tiny details, all change as the “creative” process runs wild .
the movement has its roots in rebellion against the reliance on past forms (often adapted from traditional novelistic structures), criticizing in particular the way these forms could force the audience to submit to a dictatorial plot - line. they were especially against the french
cinema of quality
, the type of high - minded, literary period films held in esteem at french film festivals, often regarded as' untouchable' by criticism .
shoot the piano player was originally a novel titled down there by david goodis. the film shares the novel' s bleak plot about a man hiding from his shattered life by doing the only thing he knows how to do, while remaining unable to escape the past. however, truffaut' s work resolves itself into both a tribute to the american genre of literary and cinematic noir and a meditation on the relationship between art and commercialism .
the new novel as a form attracted writers from samuel beckett to nathalie sarraute and marguerite duras and some, like duras, also went on to make movies. maybe a sense that the tired classical realist novel needed a shot in the arm is what drove these writers to formal experimentation in the first place, but few failed to recognise that the feature film was an even more ideal medium to play around with – and its audience was larger and more forgiving .
truffaut began writing the script with marcel moussy, who had co - written the 400 blows. moussey said that he didn' t understand the book and attempted to establish clear social roots for the characters. truffaut disagreed, wanting to keep the film loose and abstract; moussey left after a few weeks and truffaut wrote the script himself. one problem truffaut had was that he considered the goodis novel to be too chaste and he decided to make the characters less heroic .
the transforming power of french artistic thought, which for so long had seemed the cultural centre of the universe and certainly of the avant - garde, meant that both the nouveau roman (new novel) and the nouvelle vague (french new wave film) seemed to arrive within an instant of each other. in fact the nouveau roman first emerged in the 1950s and amongst its key practitioners was a novelist who only later became a screenwriter and director: alain robbe - grillet .
in bernhardt' s film, adapted from a novel by max brod, uno henning, the impossibly handsome and tender leading man of asquith' s a cottage on dartmoor, plays a young man marrying the boss' s daughter. oddly, the movie spends a considerable amount of time and effort to establish the family business and henning' s crusty father - in - law: time spent solely, it seems, to make the prospect of his return to this life seem unappealing .
the book' s main character charlie is also much stronger in the book and truffaut called it a sterling hayden type and truffaut decided to go the opposite direction and make the protagonist weaker and the female characters strong. truffaut was also influenced by french writer jacques audiberti while writing the film, such as in his treatment of the character plyne. truffaut also used some scenes from other goodis novels, such as the early scene where chico bumps into a lamp - post and has a conversation with a stranger .
now the film changes tracks from being a locomotive movie (always an exciting thing) to being a hotel movie (even better !). it' s new year. kortner and dietrich are registered as dr. and mrs. karoff. henning announces himself and starts trying to muscle in on dietrich. he' s in the throes of a grand passion, but doesn' t realise that the story he' s gatecrashed only wants him as a helpless witness to the last act of a tragedy .
i love the “ (or actor) ” and “ (or actress) ” which are positioned with a hilarious assumption that most of the respondents will be straight men. in film criticism, has this ever been true? at any rate, they at least allow for exceptions, but they want to make it very clear, via parenthesis, that they are exceptions. at any rate, the only women quoted are france roche (respected screenwriter, still with us at 91) and critic grace winter .
so why did dietrich trash her earlier work? the history seems to show an actress on the rise, catching plum roles in major films with major directors, with the blue angel as a logical next step in her irresistible rise. portraying that film as a last - moment rescue from oblivion is consistent with dietrich' s odd tendency to ascribe everything good in her work to sternberg, her svengali, a tendency we can plainly see but cannot so easily explain. and maybe that version of events just made a better story .
it is a film directed and written by paul thomas anderson. larry –doc - sportello (joaquin phoenix) who is a private detective explores the disappearance of his girlfriend however shasta fay hepworth (katherine waterston) he finds himself in such a strange environment that is led by drugs and “hippie” lifestyle. it was such a strange movie that i had to rewind it so many times to make sure i am not misunderstanding it. however, my conclusion is that movie’s purpose was to give an uncanny and ambiguous atmosphere to the audience .
i would like to see someone produce a spoiler on this garbage (and, incidentally, probably all that robbe - grillet filmed - i just picked this one as a representative of all). this is bs - artistry pure. unfortunately there is money in art and in film, if you can get away with it. you need some beautiful women to take there cloths off, of course, and a good cinematographer helps a lot as well. the pictures are well lit and what you see of the women isn' t bad - but that' s it. no original thought here, in fact no thought whatsoever. that' s why bs - artists are bs - artists - they basically have nothing to say about anything. there heads are a black hole from which nothing of value can escape. robbe - grillet and others of his ilk give film a bad name. trintignant could be good - he proved that in other films. here, however, he was taken in by a con - man, which is the essence of a bs - artist .
new wave critics and directors studied the work of western classics and applied new avant garde stylistic direction. the low - budget approach helped filmmakers get at the essential art form and find what was, to them, a much more comfortable and contemporary form of production. charlie chaplin, alfred hitchcock, orson welles, howard hawks, john ford, and many other forward - thinking film directors were held up in admiration while standard hollywood films bound by traditional narrative flow were strongly criticized. french new wave were also influenced by italian neorealism and classical hollywood cinema .
truffaut later stated that
in spite of the burlesque idea to certain scenes, it' s never a parody (because i detest parody, except when it begin to rival the beauty of what it is parodying). for me its something very precise that i would call a respectful pastiche of the hollywood b films from which i learned so much .
this was also truffaut' s first film to include a murder, which would often become a plot point in many of his films and was influenced by truffaut' s admiration of director alfred hitchcock .
although never a formally organized movement, the new wave filmmakers were linked by their self - conscious rejection of the literary period pieces being made in france and written by novelists, their spirit of youthful iconoclasm, the desire to shoot more current social issues on location, and their intention of experimenting with the film form .
new wave
is an example of european art cinema. many also engaged in their work with the social and political upheavals of the era, making their radical experiments with editing, visual style and narrative part of a general break with the conservative paradigm .
we take it for granted —or should, at least—that access to the motion picture apparatus at the highest levels of authority indicates a certain advantage of birthright. if feature fiction filmmakers’ publicity doesn’t make a point of mentioning that they didn’t grow up more than comfortable, it’s a pretty safe bet that they did. hollywood nepotism and garden - variety privilege march through top - ranked film schools every year, and then there’s the case of count don luchino visconti count di modrone. there aren’t many defectors from the ruling class coming from this high in the ranks; as such, their
while henning and kortner throw themselves about, fizzing with controlled intensity, dietrich hardly ever seems to move at all: she' s just there, while the men orbit around her. henning is a near - forgotten hero of silent film, impossibly beautiful, and possessed of a poetic, tortured essence. kortner seems to have as many different modes as he made movies, bouncing from expressionist contortion to sly drollery, naturalism or pantomime villainy. here he seems quite
real
and modern, despite the suit and the monocle. he' s more weak than menacing, more angst - ridden than evil .
7) at one point, roman polanski wanted to adapt the porno comics of milo manara as an animated feature. this strikes me as the worst combination possible, but manara’s comics might be a suitable source. the lousy jean - louis richard film of click is quite good, even though it’s totally lousy, if you know what i mean. unfortunately, manara is a deeply sexist idiot, and there’s a nastiness to his work i’d prefer to avoid — plus his real talent is his drawing, so why adapt him to another medium? his adaptation of unfilmed fellini scenarios was a better way for him to engage with cinema .
if there is a single, overriding theme in tony zierra’s filmworker (2017), it is that the life of leon vitali, the subject of this documentary, has been more or less divided between the twenty - odd years before he met stanley kubrick and the nearly fifty years since. every talking head in the film, including vitali’s, testifies to this fact, so much so that it makes us question the reality of every aspect of the man’s life that is not related to kubrick. late in the doc, for example, we hear vitali’s children voicing not very happy memories about their father’s psychological (when not physical )
“yes, she poisoned a whole town, but... , ” a friend texts me after watching the recently released netflix documentary series wild wild country (2018), and it is a popular response to ma anand sheela, the true heroine of the show. the six - episode film presents an extraordinary amount of footage from the four years of rajneeshpuram, a sixty - three - thousand - acre ranch in wasco county, oregon, established in 1981. the five thousand people who lived at rajneeshpuram wanted to be with their bhagwan (the hindi word for “god”), rajneesh, who is better known by the name osho. the rajneeshees flipped
classic french cinema adhered to the principles of strong narrative, creating what godard described as an oppressive and deterministic aesthetic of plot. in contrast, new wave filmmakers made no attempts to suspend the viewer' s disbelief; in fact, they took steps to constantly remind the viewer that a film is just a sequence of moving images, no matter how clever the use of light and shadow. the result is a set of oddly disjointed scenes without attempt at unity; or an actor whose character changes from one scene to the next; or sets in which onlookers accidentally make their way onto camera along with extras, who in fact were hired to do just the same .
when francois truffaut’s first feature t he 400 blows made its debut in 1959, critics the world over hailed its low - key semidocumentary style in telling its tale of a troubled, melancholy youth. you can imagine then the confusion these same critics felt the next year when confronted with the french filmmaker’s next work, shoot the piano player. a wild mixture of gangster thriller, slapstick comedy, and bittersweet romance, shoot the piano player was one of the signal works of the french “new wave, ” but it took a while for some critics and audiences to get used to a film that flew in the face of traditional dramatic expectations so broadly and mixed genre elements so freely .
farrell' s marty has a problem. he has a title for a film he must write – seven psychopaths – but no plot to go with it. this is not uncommon in hollywood: rebel without a cause and sex and the single girl were based on books acquired for their catchy titles for which gifted writers (in the case of sex and the single girl joseph heller, author of catch - 22) were engaged to confect screenplays. so he must meet some genuine psychopaths, ie people who behave aggressively and commit violent acts with no sense of guilt or remorse, a description that might fit a large proportion of people in southern california at large and the movie business in particular .
the staff, obliging and suave, loan henning evening dress so he can attend the celebrations. as the countdown to midnight looms, dietrich agrees to run away with him at the party' s height. meanwhile, we learn the secret part of the story, or some of it (we never learn much): karoff has killed dietrich' s real husband, and she' s gone along with him. now she wants to put some distance between herself and the homicide. henning, naive and trusting, seems a better bet than the desperate karoff. despite these revelations, both dietrich and kortner maintain sympathy. both are simply doing what they must. kortner' s karoff is clearly a doomed man, hopelessly obsessed with dietrich, who' s living up to the film' s title .
this sense of action seen from a slightly off - kilter angle continues in the next scene as we learn of the identity of the running figure—he’s the brother to the film’s hero charlie kohler (charles aznavour). now we’re in the bar where this small, timid man plies his trade—a rowdy place filled with characters out of a mack sennett slapstick two - reeler (chapters 2 and 3). the mood changes again to romance when charlie discovers lena (marie dubois), the brassy barmaid who loved him from afar (chapter 4). it goes back again to comedy when the gunmen pursuing charlie’s brother put the squeeze on charlie and lena (chapter 6). then the mystery melodrama takes over (chapters 7 and 8) when a flashback reveals the truth about charlie and the circumstances that brought him to his withdrawn state .
truffaut said that it was a single image from goodis’s novel—the car silently approaching the house in the snow, where saroyan’s crazy brothers are holed up—that sparked him to make the film, and truffaut and cinematographer raoul coutard do indeed give the image a very special kind of quaintly miniaturized beauty. but i have a feeling that it was the image of aznavour himself in the lead, complemented by the heartbreakingly beautiful claudine huzé (truffaut gave her the stage name marie dubois) as the devoted and doomed léna, that turned all the lights green for him. in aznavour, he saw a countenance that recalled saint francis. but it’s a sure bet that he also saw what his friends recognized right away—a face and a charmingly reserved manner that recalled his own. somehow, the mixture of shyness and confidence in the figure of the forlorn piano player provides us with a perfect mirror for truffaut himself, whose films are so rich, vibrant, and eminently enjoyable that one is continually caught off guard by the realization of their complexity, their bravery, and their emotional depths .
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( 1974), starring anicée alvina, olga georges - picot, michael lonsdale, jean - louis trintignant, and michael lonsdale. the two releases will be available for purchase on february 11th .
, which will consist of individual releases of films directed by the acclaimed french writer, essayist, and filmmaker. kino lorber and redemption plan to release additional robbe - grillet films, including
the films are mastered in hd from original 35mm elements and include interviews with robbe - grillet .
decades ahead of his time, alain robbe - grillet (1922 - 2008) remains one of the most important figures in modern literature, and is best known for his innovative work in the nouveau roman style with novels such as le voyeur and la jalousie. his screenplay for alain resnais'
( 1962) earned him an academy award nomination for best writing (original screenplay) .
perhaps no other filmmaker has used the medium as an expression and exploration of his dark sexual desires, evidenced by erotic and sometimes disturbing motifs that recur with regularity throughout his body of work: blindfolds, bondage, strangulation, stabbing. through his highly stylized and confident direction, robbe - grillet elevates these tableaux to a level of high art, yet never denying their place in the realm of 1960s exploitation cinema .
for years, robbe grillet' s films have been unavailable in the united states in any form. it is with great pride that kino lorber and redemption films bring these films to american viewers, in exquisite hd editions, aiding in the rediscovery of one of european cinema' s most eclectic and highly original filmmakers .
a young woman is questioned by the police and the judges, suspected of being a modern witch. the girl who shared her apartment has been found dead, and a pair of scissors impaled through her heart, as she lay attached to the bedposts. apparently, the girl does have powers, to make all people around her fall prey to her spell, glissing progressively into desire, lust, and the unknown.
trans-europ-express is a 1966 film written and directed by alain robbe-grillet and starring jean-louis trintignant and marie-france pisier . the title refers to the trans europ express , a former international rail network in europe . also in the cast were nadine verdier , christian barbier , charles millot , catherine robbe-grillet , and the director . the film has been variously described as an erotic thriller , a mystery , and a film-within-a-film . 
trans-europ-express is a 1966 film written and directed by alain robbe-grillet and starring jean-louis trintignant and marie-france pisier. the title refers to the trans europ express, a former international rail network in europe. also in the cast were nadine verdier, christian barbier, charles millot, catherine robbe-grillet, and the director. the film has been variously described as an erotic thriller, a mystery, and a film-within-a-film.
trans-europ-express is a 1966 film written and directed by alain robbe-grillet and starring jean-louis trintignant and marie-france pisier. the title refers to the trans europ express, a former international rail network in europe. also in the cast were nadine verdier, christian barbier, charles millot, catherine robbe-grillet, and the director. the film has been variously described as an erotic thriller, a mystery, and a film-within-a-film.