sun 14 mar

2.00pm

The Swimming Pool

France | 1968 | col | 120 mins | dir. Jacques Deray, with Alain Delon, Romy Schneider, Maurice Ronet, Jane Birkin | cert. 15

While on holiday near St Tropez the couple Marianne and Jean-Paul enjoy lazing and making love around the pool. Things take a chillier turn when Marianne’s former lover appears with his teenage daughter. Delon suggested Schneider for the part of Marianne. The onscreen reunion of the former dream couple stirred many rumours and adds to the tension of this taught psychological drama, which also stars Delon’s Plein Soleil partner Maurice Ronet and a very young Jane Birkin. Lavishly photographed and here shown from a new print, it is pure indulgence.

sun 21 mar

2.00pm

Carnival in Flanders

France/Germany | 1935 | b&w | 110 mins | dir. Jacques Feyder, with Françoise Rosay, Jean Murat, André Alerme | cert. 12A

An award-winning and controversial film at it's time of release, La Kermesse héroïque is an early feminist farce. In a Flemish town in the 1660s, the local men fearfully await an invasion from the Spanish army. A solitary woman takes the helm and with the help of the other women in the town they succeed in stopping a likely furore.

sun 4 apr

2.00pm

Liberty for Us

France | 1931 | b&w | 97 mins | dir. René Clair, with Henri Marchand, Raymond Cordy, Rolla France | cert. U

 

Directed by René Clair, À nous la liberté, is a satirical comedy about two ex-convicts; Émilie, who escapes jail and works his way up from salesman to factory owner, and Louis who unwittingly becomes employed in his friend's factory. Afraid of being exposed over his past, at first by his friend and later by another crook, the owner chooses to hand the factory over to the workers. His future, as does his friend's, appears to lie on the open road.

sun 11 apr

2.00pm
France | 1934 | b&w | 89 mins | dir. Jean Vigo, with Michel Simon, Jean Dasté, Dita Parlo | cert. PG

 

This sensuous hymn to liberation follows the ups and downs of a young married couple, a young barge captain (Jean Dasté) and a country girl (Dita Parlo). When their domestic quarters prove too confining, it takes first mate 'Père Jules' (the wonderful Michel Simon) to bring them back together. Suffused with fevered, dream-like eroticism, L'Atalante was a major inspiration to Nouvelle Vague directors, and is among the ten greatest films ever made.

'When Jean Vigo shot L'Atalante…he achieved perfection, he made a masterpiece.' (François Truffaut)

sun 18 apr

2.00pm
France | 1934 | b&w | 90 mins | dir. Jean Renoir, with Charles Bavette, Célia Montalvan, Jenny Hélia | cert. PG

For his first film set among the working classes, Renoir shot exclusively outdoors and in real interiors and exteriors in the countryside around Marseilles, using actors from the region. It tells of an Italian quarry worker, arrested for a murder he did not commit. This tale of jealousy, passion and murder could have been melodramatic, but it derives from the details of the immigrant worker's everyday life, which Renoir presents without romanticism.