Les Sixties
From September 5 thorough October 2, the Gene Siskel Film Center presents Les Sixties, an eight-film celebration of the most exciting period in French film history--the era of the New Wave. Featured are once divisive, now canonical, but still challenging masterpieces by Godard, Melville, Resnais, Truffaut, and Varda. All films are being presented in recently struck 35mm prints. A special highlight of the series is a brand-new print of the superb anthology film SIX IN PARIS, which has long been out of circulation in the United States.
Special thanks to Eric Di Bernardo of Rialto Pictures, Jonathan Howell of New Yorker Films, and Sarah Finklea of Janus Films.
-- Martin Rubin
Saturday double-bill discount!
Buy a ticket for the 3:00 Les Sixties film on any Saturday in September, and get a ticket for the second Les Sixties film that day at this discount rate (tickets must be purchased at the same time): General Admission $7; Students $5; Members $4.
CONTEMPT
(LE MÉPRIS)
1963, Jean-Luc Godard, France, 103 min.
With Brigitte Bardot, Michel Piccoli
Widely panned on its first release, CONTEMPT has steadily gained stature to the point where many now consider it Godard’s best film; Colin McCabe in Sight & Sound went a few steps further by calling it “the greatest work of art produced in postwar Europe.” The marriage of a self-conscious French screenwriter (Piccoli) and his spontaneous wife (Bardot) deteriorates during the shooting of a film version of Homer’s Odyssey, directed by Fritz Lang (playing himself) and produced by a crass movie mogul (Jack Palance). In French, English, German, and Italian with English subtitles. 35mm widescreen. (MR)
Friday, September 5, 6:00 pm
Saturday, September 6, 3:00 pm
TWO OR THREE THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER
(2 OU 3 CHOSES QUE JE SAIS D’ELLE)
1966, Jean-Luc Godard, France, 85 min.
With Marina Vlady, Anny Duperey
More ‘Scope, more color, more Godard. The “her” of the title refers to both Paris and the heroine, a young mother living in a suburban high-rise who turns part-time prostitute to make ends meet: Belle de Jour in Alphaville. Mixing concrete social comment with dazzling phenomenological set pieces--a coffee cup becomes a universe, a cigarette tip glows like a planet--Godard fashions a caustic vision of consumerist society as a vast brothel. In French with English Subtitles. 35mm widescreen. (MR)
Saturday, September 6, 5:00 pm
Tuesday, September 9, 6:00 pm
New print!
SIX IN PARIS
(PARIS VU PAR...)
1965, Claude Chabrol, Jean Douchet, Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Daniel Pollet, Eric Rohmer, and Jean Rouch, France, 95 min.
Chicago Reader critics Dave Kehr and Jonathan Rosenbaum concur that this is the best of the sketch/anthology films (LOVE AT TWENTY, RoGoPaG, etc.) that flourished in the early 1960s. Each segment is set in a different Paris neighborhood; highlights include Godard’s expansion of the mixed-up-letters anecdote related in A WOMAN IS A WOMAN, Chabrol’s blackly humorous portrait of a fed-up boy and his noisy parents, Rohmer’s Hitchcockian tale of guilt amid the 12 intersecting avenues of the Place de l’Etoile, and Rouch’s stunning long-take depiction of an escalating marital breakup. Long out of theatrical circulation and unavailable on DVD, SIX IN PARIS is being presented in a brand-new 35mm print. In French with English subtitles. (MR)
Saturday, September 13, 3:00 pm
Tuesday, September 16, 6:00 pm
LE DOULOS
1962, Jean-Pierre Melville, France, 108 min.
With Jean-Paul Belmondo, Serge Reggiani
The title of this recently restored classic from French noir king Melville (BOB LE FLAMBEUR, LE SAMOURAI) refers both to a style of hat and to an underworld slang term for “informer.” The complex storyline centers on the relationship between a beleaguered ex-con (Reggiani) and his cocky pal (Belmondo) who might be a stool pigeon. LE DOULOS is shot in gloriously bleak black-and-white and enveloped in a voluptuously hardboiled milieu of trench coats, smoky bars, vibraphone jazz, pushed-around dames, and ironic plot twists. In French with English subtitles. 35mm. (MR)
Saturday, September 13, 5:00 pm
Monday, September 15, 6:00 pm
LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD
(L’ANNÉE DERNIÈRE À MARIENBAD)
1961, Alain Resnais, France, 1961, 94 min.
With Delphine Seyrig, Giorgio Albertazzi
Both a cause célèbre and a bête noire of art-house cinema, MARIENBAD has survived parody, controversy, and endless interpretation to stand as one of the great tours de force of film history. Amid the mirrored corridors and manicured gardens of a European chateau, a nameless man (Albertazzi) encounters a woman (the stunning Seyrig) who denies his claim that they had an affair the previous year. Around this question mark, Resnais and screenwriter Alain Robbe-Grillet construct a dazzling maze of permutations, prestidigitations, and possibilities. In French with English subtitles. 35mm widescreen. (MR)
Saturday, September 20, 3:00 pm
Tuesday, September 23, 6:00 pm
CLEO FROM 5 TO 7
(CLÉO DE 5 À 7)
1962, Agnès Varda, France, 1962, 90 min.
With Corinne Marchand, Antoine Bourseiller
Agnès Varda was the most important woman filmmaker of the French New Wave. Like Godard’s TWO OR THREE THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER (playing Sept. 6 and 9), CLEO FROM 5 TO 7 is a portrait of both Paris and a woman. The woman in question is a self-centered pop singer who wanders through the city as she awaits the results of a crucial medical test. Set in real time (the story covers exactly 90 minutes) and shot largely with a handheld camera, the film captures Paris with an extraordinary lyrical immediacy. In French with English subtitles. 35mm. (MR)
Saturday, September 20, 5:00 pm
Monday, September 22, 6:00 pm
JULES AND JIM
(JULES ET JIM)
1961, François Truffaut, France, 104 min.
With Jeanne Moreau, Oskar Werner
The most popular classic of the French New Wave, Truffaut’s adaptation of Henri-Pierre Roché’s autobiographical novel remains remarkable for its bold mixture of tones and its lyrically inventive use of film technique. Beginning in Paris just before World War I, the story captures the ferment of a new century and integrates it with the three-sided love affair among a trio of Bohemians: an outgoing Frenchman (Henri Serre), a reserved Austrian (Werner), and a mercurial woman (Moreau). In French with English subtitles. 35mm widescreen. (MR)
Saturday, September 27, 3:00 pm
Thursday, October 2, 8:15 pm
THE 400 BLOWS
(LES QUATRE CENTS COUPS)
1959, François Truffaut, France, 99 min.
With Jean-Pierre Léaud
After winning the Best Director prize at Cannes, Truffaut’s first feature did more than any other film to launch the French New Wave into worldwide celebrity. Highly autobiographical, this episodic portrait of a maladjusted 12-year-old boy takes the viewer on an emotional roller coaster through highs (the Punch and Judy show, the combustible shrine to Balzac) and lows (the journey in the police wagon) before coming to a sharp stop in one of the most famous and haunting final shots in film history. In French with English subtitles. 35mm widescreen. (MR)