Some of these choices puzzle me in being selected as French. Man Bites Dog is Belgian isn't it, Trois Coleurs, well, how about European? Red is arguably Swiss, Haneke je ne crois pas. But these can be difficult to call. Polanski's Tess? TS Eliot?? French language then?
Personal factors make L'Appartement irresitible to me and I can watch it over and over and over again. One of my all time favourites from anywhere anytime. (I can't believe how beautiful Monica is with her earlier hairstyle and can't understand why she doesn't go back to it. And why do they do such terrible things to their women? Bohringer looking dowdy, like Carax made Binoche look drab in Les Amants, and as for Irreversible... which I would probably say is the
best French film but not my
favourite by a long way)
But instead of films, how about bits of films? Mauvais Sang does not do a great deal for me but Denis Lavant's run/dance from the film most certainly does, and it keeps the film on my shelf.
MichaelB wrote:I'm tempted to opt for something really left-field like Walerian Borowczyk's Docteur Jekyll et les femmes (1981), but that's only because Blanche is (fractionally) too old to qualify. Incidentally, why are two of Borowczyk's best films completely unavailable on legit DVD anywhere in the world?
But I cannot tell a lie: it's L'Argent all the way.
I can't think of a single other French film (and not too many from anywhere else) that's had the same impact on me. I first saw it when it came out - it was my first Bresson, and I remember being highly disconcerted by it at first because he seemed to be wilfully disregarding the rules of basic film grammar (bear in mind I was still in my teens and had a far narrower idea of the medium's possibilities). But about five or ten minutes in I realised what he was doing (or, in his case, wasn't doing, and why) and from then on the film became painfully riveting. And even a dozen viewings on, it still grips like a molewrench: the last ten minutes in particular are almost unbearable to watch.
Agree about Blanche, never seen the other. Blanche was a BFI was it not? Perhaps there is hope and perhaps with his higher profile we will see these two appear.
I am going to throw my credibility to the winds now but I am not too bothered because like Sculder, I want to believe...
Can someone post something or direct me to something which will let me "get" Bresson, as Rosenbuam puts it, because I most certainly do not "get" him right now, and I know I should, even if I still did not much like him. (I used to feel the same about Ozu until I saw Robert McKee's intro to An Autumn Afternoon and short though it was and no doubt fairly basic, it was enough and he opened the door for me and I have never looked back). Nobody ever seems to do anything other than speak very elliptically about his work (can't complain, I am the same with Kieslowski) and that opens no doors for me.
I watched about 6/7 of his films last year, all in a "season", and was looking through the essays in the Prager Film Library book at the same time but it did not help.
I quite enjoyed the earlier ones, Les Anges Du Peche, though more for the look of it, and Joan of Arc was, eh, not bad. But the further it went on, the less I connected and I found the likes of Balthasar, Mouchette and L'Argent almost unintentionally funny in their doom and gloom. (Sorry sorry sorry.) They reminded me of an EastEnders Xmas special...
So
is it a case of you either get him or you don't, or can someone help me out here? (He is not the only director I don't get of course, but he is the only one I am really bothered about not getting.)
I agree with the second part and I stand corrected on the first. Also should have said je ne sais pas for Haneke, not je ne crois pas.
