Two by Two: Rohmer & Truffaut
Thanks to the efforts of two distributors – The Film Desk and Janus Films – the Cinematheque is pleased to present four newly struck prints of features by French Nouvelle Vague contemporaries Eric Rohmer and François Truffaut, both of whom helped to change the face of cinema when they moved from writing film criticism to directing films in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The two Rohmer selections on offer – Summer and Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle – come from the director’s mid-career period of the 1980s and variously display his steady, unaffected style, as well as an interest in experimentation. Truffaut is represented by two thrillers from the 1960s: The Soft Skin and The Bride Wore Black. Both films – each, in their own way, studies of bourgeois marriages - take partial inspiration from Truffaut’s mentor Alfred Hitchcock, but they ultimately emerge as personal filmmaking of the highest order.
- Fri., Feb. 3 | 7:00 PMCinematheque
A recently jilted young Parisian woman (Rohmer’s co-writer Rivière) takes a solo vacation but is frustrated in every attempt at human connection. The fifth of Rohmer’s “Comedies and Proverbs” cycle is a brilliant and witty character study of an independent but insecure heroine. “The best film of the year [1986]. A singularly ennobling episode in the history of cinema."
(Andrew Sarris, Village Voice)
- Fri., Feb. 10 | 7:00 PMCinematheque
In four episodes, Rohmer tells of a young woman from the country, who befriends a city girl and moves in with her in Paris. Eschewing plot and allowing his talented and charming cast to improvise, Rohmer nonetheless makes a strong impression with his attention to detail and characters. Four Adventures was made "while waiting to finish his masterpiece Le Rayon Vert. And guess what – it's just as great." (Time Out New York)
- Sat., Mar. 31 | 7:00 PMCinematheque
What starts as an intense one night stand turns into a passionate and tragic love affair between middle-aged publisher Pierre (a fascinating Desailly) and Stewardess Nicole (Catherine Deneuve’s real-life sister Dorléac). Truffaut’s smooth direction turns the basic plot into a moving, brilliantly acted adultery drama with Hitchcockian suspense. Poorly received when it premiered at Cannes in 1964 (it was deemed Truffaut’s bid for commercial success), it is time for this unjustly neglected, lesser-known New Wave work to finally get the praise it deserves. “One of his best.” (J.Hoberman, The Village Voice). (KK)
- Sat., Apr. 14 | 7:00 PMCinematheque
Moreau tracks down and kills the quintet of men who accidently killed her husband on their wedding day. This thriller with comic elements has been described by Truffaut himself as his homage to Hitchcock - it even has a great Bernard Hermann score. But as Renata Adler from the New York Times puts it “Truffaut is such a poetic filmmaker that the film turns around and becomes, not at all Hitchcockian, but a gentle comedy and one of the few plausible and strange love stories in a long time.” (KK)