Monday, January 5th, 2009

Must see French cinema coming to the big screen

For those of you who love French cinema, keep reading!  There are 2 limited runs coming soon to the Nuart that you won’t want to miss:





Friday, January 9th -  Thursday, January 15th

THE WILD CHILD directed by Francois Truffaut

The year is 1798, and farmers in the south of France, on the hunt for a predator, instead find a naked young boy, presumably grown up in the wild without human contact. As the latest sensation, he’s paraded before fee-paying gawkers at the institute for the deaf and dumb, while Dr. Itard (played by director Truffaut himself) debates with a colleague: is the boy a purely natural human, a tabula rasa, or simply an idiot? Itard takes the boy into his own home in an attempt to educate and civilize him.

Based on an actual case, and with its voiceover narration (an adaptation of Itard’s two reports into diary form), this is Truffaut’s nearest approach to documentary, with Nestor Almendros’ striking b&w photography evoking the earliest days of the cinema, and a much-imitated all-Vivaldi score. As l’enfant sauvage, Jean-Pierre Cargol, a French Roma boy picked from over 2,500 hopefuls, is alternately ferocious and docile, while as Dr. Itard, Truffaut is superb. (Alfred Hitchcock wrote Truffaut asking for “the autograph of the actor who plays the doctor, he is so wonderful,” while Steven Spielberg was so impressed by the director’s compassionate performance that he cast Truffaut in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.) Cast partly because he realized he’d be directing the boy within the film, Truffaut imposed on himself a “no smiling” rule - he lapses briefly once - to attain a kind of gravity, but then this only reinforces his ruthlessly unsentimental treatment of potentially treacly material, even as the inevitable question (“Was it worth it?”) arises.


“Unlike any other film Truffaut has ever made, yet only Truffaut could have made it. It is a lovely, pure film. A CLASSIC!”
-Vincent Canby, New York Times

“Truffaut’s most thoughtful statement on his favorite subject: The way young people grow up, explore themselves, and attempt to function creatively in the world. Truffaut places his personal touch on every frame of the film. So often movies keep our attention by flashy tricks and cheap melodrama; it is an intellectually cleansing experience to watch this intelligent and hopeful film.”
-Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

Friday, January 16th - Thursday, January 22nd

MADE IN U.S.A.

Writer/director Jean-Luc Godard’s mod film noir from 1966, first intended as a reworking of Raymond Chandler’s classic The Big Sleep, but essentially based on novel The Jugger by Donald Westlake (under his pseudonym “Richard Stark”), is a Pop Art mixture of loving homage to the films of Nicholas Ray and Samuel Fuller and the realism favored by Godard. It is one of the filmmaker’s pivotal features, and the last he made with his wife/star Anna Karina (Alphaville, Band of Outsiders, Pierrot le fou), who plays a young woman caught up in a mysterious, convoluted Cold War conspiracy. Due to legal difficulties, Made in U.S.A. never received an ‘official’ U.S release, but can now be seen in a new 35mm widescreen print (from the original camera negative) with a new translation and new subtitles. Co-starring Jean-Pierre Léaud, László Szabó and Marianne Faithfull as herself, singing “As Tears Go By.” Cinematography by the legendary Raoul Coutard.


“BEAUTIFUL, GOOFY, AND EXPLOSIVE! Anna Karina was never lovelier in dazzling color and scope and Godard’s ultimate statement about his love/hate for the aesthetics/politics of American movies/life is an event to be savored and celebrated…HAS ALL THE ELECTRIC THRILL OF A RAUSCHENBERG PAINTING IN MOTION!”
-Jonathan Rosenbaum

“Godard’s hymn to vulgar modernism.”
-J. Hoberman.

“The many shots of Anna Karina, with their wide variety of mood—each a different pose, angle, expression—serve as a catalogue of remembrances. The close-ups are the most expressive ones in color that Godard has made to date.”
-Richard Brody.

1 Comments:

1. There are some scenes that portray confusion so well but don’t rub our noses in it, like the one where he’s trying his hardest to follow instructions and eat his soup properly, but can’t help himself and sticks his face in the bowl.
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   Posted by Karie (site owner)  on  04/03  at  01:15 AM