Le Mépris (Contempt)
France / Italy | 1963 | col | 103 mins | dir. Jean-Luc Godard, with Brigitte Bardot, Michel Piccoli, Jack Palance, Fritz Lang
Unusually cast and playfully shot, Godard's masterpiece features Michel Piccoli and Brigitte Bardot as a couple whose marriage begins to fall apart while they are both on location on the island of Capri shooting a film directed by Fritz Lang.
| |
Et Dieu créa la femme
[And God Created Woman] France/Italy | 1956 | col | 95 mins | dir. Roger Vadim, with Brigitte Bardot, Curd Jurgens, Jean-Louis Trintignant
An overripe French oprhan (Bardot) moves into a small town and drives the men there wild. A ground-breaking film for its frank exploration of sexual mores.
|
| Thu 18 Sept| 6.45pm | cert. 15 | | 8.45pm | cert. PG
|
Monsieur Klein
France/Italy | 1976 | col | 123 mins | dir. Joseph Losey, with Alain Delon, Jeanne Moreau
A Kafkaesque tale that gave Delon one of his finest roles as Robert Klein, a prosperous art dealer in Occupied Paris who finds himself mysteriously confused with a Jew of the same name.
| |
L'Armée des ombres
[Army in the Shadows] France/Italy | 1969 | col | 145 mins | dir. Jean-Pierre Melville, with Lino Ventura, Paul Meurisse, Jean-Pierre Cassel
Tense, atmospheric, bleak, Melville's film has been praised by veterans as the most authentic film of Resistance. It depicts a 'shadow army' made of courageous men who are willing to sacrifice their lives, and shows the cruel and sometimes inhuman choices they have to make in order to survive.
|
Thu 25 Sept | 6.00pm | cert. 18
| | 8.25pm | cert. 12A
|
L'Appât (The Bait)
France | 1995 | col | 113 mins | dir. Bertrand Tavernier, with Marie Gillain, Olivier Situk, Bruno Putzulu
In most respects, Nathalie is like any other 18-year-old Parisian shopgirl. But her means of making extra cash (chatting up rich businessmen in bars) isn't enough to finance her dream of going to America. So when her boyfriend suggests they carry out a robbery, using Nathalie as 'bait', she reluctantly agrees. Golden Bear, 1995 Berlin Film Festival.
| |
Coup de torchon (Clean Slate)
France | 1981 | col | 128 mins | dir. Bertrand Tavernier, with Philippe Noiret, Séphane Audran, Isabelle Huppert
1938, a small town in Africa. Philippe Noiret plays a passive police officer who lets everyone push him around until he discovers that a few well placed killings can get him what he wants. A brutal and darkly humorous film nor from Jim Thompson's pulp novel Pop. 1280.
|
Thu 2 Oct | 6.30pm | cert. 18
| | 8.40pm | cert. 15
|
A bout de souffle (Breathless)
France | 1959 | b&w | 89 mins | dir. Jean-Luc Godard, with Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seaberg
Godard's debut feature is as fresh today as when it first dazzled audiences with its sly homage to American B-movies.
| |
Pierrot le fou
France/Italy | 1965 | col | 110 mins | dir. Jean-Luc Godard, with Jean-Paul Belmondo, Anna Karina
Tired of his comfortable bourgeois life, Ferdinand leaves his wife and elopes with his former babysitter, Marianna, with whom he had an affair five years ago. When a dead body is found at Marianna's, they head for the South of France to escape being caught up in gangster activities. What follows is a roller coaster ride filled with passion, desperation and regret as the two lovers meet their final finale.
|
Thu 9 Oct | 6.45pm | cert. PG
| | 8.35pm | cert. 15
|
Mouchette
France | 1967 | b&w | 78 mins | dir. Robert Bresson, with Nadine Nortier, Jean-Claude Guilbert
An unfliching study of the downward spiral of a provincial teenager, Mouchette has all the characteristic austerity and rigour associated with Robert Bresson
| |
The Trial of Joan of Arc
[Le Procès de Jeanne d'Arc] France | 1962 | b&w | 65 mins | dir. Robert Bresson, with Florence Carrez | cert. PG
With a script taken from transcripts made at Joan's trial, Bresson's meticulously-crafted film observes the systematic, partly sexual humiliation of the young woman with a documentary-style detachment.
|
Thu 16 Oct | 7.15pm | cert. 15
| | 8.40pm | cert. PG
|
Trans-Europ Express
France | 1966 | b&w | 105 mins | dir. Alain Robbe-Grillet, with Jean-Louis Trintignant, Marie-France Pisier
Banned in England on its initial release in 1967, this film is rarely screened in this country. Jean writes a screenplay for a film while on board the Trans-Europ Express. Trintignant plays the protagonist of the film-within-a-film, a professional drug smuggler with sado-masochistic tendencies who gets involved with double dealing between Paris and Antwerp.
| |
L'homme qui ment
France | 1968 | b&w | 95 mins | dir. Alain Robbe-Grillet, with Jean-Louis Trintignant, Ivan Mistrk | cert. 18
Stranger Boris turns up in a remote Cezch village, claiming to be someone who left many years ago, a friend of a Resistance fighter who was shot in the war. As inconsistencies in his story start to stack up, local residents become suspicious... Winner of the Best Actor (Trintignant) and Best Screenplay awards at the 1968 Berlin Film Festival.
|
Thu 23 Oct | 6.45pm | cert. 18
| | 8.50pm | cert. 18 |
Belle de Jour
France / Italy | 1967 | col | 101 mins | dir. Luis Bunuel, with Catherine Deneuve, Jean Sorel, Michel Piccoli
Deneuve is at her most coldly elegant in Bunuel's dreamlike adaptation of Joseph Kessel's novel. The beautiful Séverine seems so bored with her bourgeois life that she is content to pass her afternoons in a high-class brothel – of is it only her fantasy life?
| |
Cet obscur objet du désir
[That Obscure Object of Desire] France / Spain | 1977 | col | 103 mins | dir. Luis Bunuel, with Fernando Rey, Carole Bouquet
By casting two different actresses to play the single object of Rey's tormented affections, Bunuel is able to explore opposing facets of desire in a tale of sex, violence and frustration.
|
| Thu 30 Oct | 6.45pm | cert. 15 | | 8.40pm | cert. 15 |
