Alain Resnais

[Aunt Peg]

I saw Smoking/No Smoking on different days but personally have considered them as one film. I don't recall an specific order they were meant to be watched in. Gosh, its over a quarter of century since I've seen them and I would dearly love an English friendly Blu Ray release.

[Stefan Andersson]

Alan Ayckbourn´s tribute to Resnais, in English, originally in Positif magazine:
http://intimateexchanges.alanayckbourn. ... styled-12/

Among other things, we learn that Resnais, before he passed away, was working on an adaptation of Ayckbourn´s play Arrivals & Departures (2013).

[colinr0380]

When the BBC screened them back in the late 90s they showed Smoking on one weekend and No Smoking the next. I think there is a bit of a re-cap at the beginning of No Smoking, and of course in both films a lot of the action is covered three times over in condensed form in order to reach the branching points for certain alternate endings.

[Stefan Andersson]

DoP Ricardo Aronovich on Providence, discovering (when restoring the film) that part of the OCN (part of the birthday ending sequence) had been replaced by internegative; offering his opinion that the film is very like a novel by Bioy Casares, "Diary of the War of the Pig", and more:

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/cul ... -1.5338793

https://www.afcinema.com/Where-Ricardo- ... ml?lang=fr

[Stefan Andersson]

Jonathan Rosenbaum on a French-language edition of the screenplay for the Harry Dickson film:
https://jonathanrosenbaum.net/2021/06/a ... y-dickson/

[Stefan Andersson]

According to Jonathan Rosenbaum, Axel Reval, co-writer on two late Resnais titles, is a pseudonym for Resnais himself:
https://jonathanrosenbaum.net/2021/07/resnais-secrets/

[GoodOldNeon]

La guerre est finie and L'An 01 are being released on Blu-ray next month.

[FrauBlucher]

I received Wild Grass from Netflix and Life of Riley is next up in my queue. What do folks think of Resnais' late period? I did see Private Fears in Public Places which I very much liked

[Ribs]

Icarus will be releasing a Blu-ray of five Resnais short films.

[swo17]

Cool, now I can unload my Mystery of Picasso DVD with the Guernica short

[Blutarsky]

I am currently on a Resnais binge and I have not seen Stavisky and Providence in a long time. Does anyone know where I can get an English friendly release of either film anywhere? I know the former got a blu ray release in France about 3 years ago but I don’t know if it is English friendly.

[domino harvey]

Providence is English language, so any copy will be English-friendly

[spectre]

I am currently on a Resnais binge and I have not seen Stavisky and Providence in a long time. Does anyone know where I can get an English friendly release of either film anywhere? I know the former got a blu ray release in France about 3 years ago but I don’t know if it is English friendly.

As far as I'm aware, you can still buy the DVD of Providence directly from Jupiter Films (it's a French label but, as Domino says above, the film itself is in English): https://www.jupiter-films.com/film-providence-8.php

The R4 StudioCanal DVD release of Stavisky has English subtitles but is OOP I believe. I had a quick look just now and found a number of listings for pre-owned copies on eBay. I don't believe the French Blu-ray has English subs.

[Blutarsky]

Providence is English language, so any copy will be English-friendly

For some reason I remember there being a decent amount of French dialogue. However, the last time I viewed it was on a questionable DVD copy that my friend had lent me that looked cropped. Oh how I don’t miss those times!

[tolbs1010]

I watched both of these films in the past two weeks, as I have also been on a bit of Resnais binge lately.

Kanopy has Stavisky in a nice-looking presentation. If you're in the United States and your local library system is hooked up with Kanopy, you can stream it commercial-free. Kanopy has several other Resnais' films as well, though Providence isn't one of them. Melo is next on my list.

Providence was available on YT in a less-than-optimal but watchable presentation as of a couple weeks ago. This was going to be one of my guesses for the Criterion monthly guessing thread this month. Long overdue.

[knives]

This question comes from the end credits of Providence, but was there a French version shot at the same time with the actors mentioned there?

[otis]

Can anyone comment on the subtitles on the Icarus Alain Resnais: Five Short Films collection? Are they burned in, as on some Icarus discs? Are they yellow (and illegible), as on the clip from Toute la mémoire du monde here?

[domino harvey]

Alain Resnais in Positif in 2006:

”I'm a great fan of Wong Kar-wai, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Arnaud Desplechin, and David Lynch, but I would especially hope to have been influenced by Kim Manners. He made about fifty episodes of the X Files, and the virtuosity of his editing technique and of his mise en scène, as well as the way he directs his actors, made a huge impression on me. He's the ace of aces.

"I'm not an expert on TV series, but in Millennium, The Shield, The Sopranos, 24, and some others, I find the cinematic syntax much richer and more inventive than in the lion's share of the films I've seen. The funny thing is that the full-length feature film of the X Files is just like a normal film, with a very ordinary story, and standard shots and photographic choices. With my actors, Gautier, and other members of our team, we talked a lot about certain American series."

[knives]

Thats such a lovingly weird expression I had to double check we weren’t in the Rivette thread instead.

[Stefan]

Now this is weird. Only yesterday evening I read, of all things, the quotation above in this lovely interview-compilation book: https://www.upress.state.ms.us/Books/A/Alain-Resnais and thought the same as @knives.
Hasard objectif! We seem to be definitely in Rivette/Resnais/Lynch county here. André Breton might smile at us from way beyond.

[kuzine]

Apropos of this, a week or two ago I was watching the Dans les oreilles d'Alain Resnais doc included on the Radiance Je t'aime, je t'aime which had the recently departed Mark Snow interviewed as the only composer that worked with Resnais on more than one film, and one of the interviewees (don't remember who know) included the tidbit that Resnais was president of the French X-Files fan club.