The Lower Depths | 7 pm
The Truth | 6:30 pm
Les bas-fonds, Jean Renoir, 1936, France, 90 minutes In the last major Albatros production and one of the key films of the Popular Front, Jean Renoir continues his reinvention of theatrical adaptation, using Maxim Gorky’s classic play and a charismatic performance by Jean Gabin to create “a realistic poem on the loss of human dignity.”
La vérité, Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1960, France/Italy, 130 minutes, and
Sunday, July 21 The Living Image | 2 pm Le vertige, Marcel L’Herbier, 1926, France, 118 minutes Marcel L’Herbier traces the journey of a Russian family from Petrograd to Nice, expressing the emotions of the story through sets and costumes designed in collaboration with Robert Mallet-Stevens and Robert and Sonia Delaunay. The 35mm print was restored by the Archives françaises du film du CNC, Bois d’Arcy.
Altair Lewis Klahr, 1994, USA, 8 minutes, 16mm In The Truth, Henri-Georges Clouzot’s response to the French New Wave, Brigitte Bardot’s relationship with a young composer is linked to Stravinsky’s The Firebird, the same piece used in Lewis Klahr’s experimental short Altair.
Pierrot le fou | 9 pm Jean-Luc Godard, 1965, France/Italy, 110 minutes Jean-Luc Godard’s classic exploration of love on the run— starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina—can be compared, in both its formal ingenuity and emotional range, to Stravinsky’s treatment of mythological themes.
weekend four
The New Gentlemen | 5:30 pm Les nouveaux messieurs, Jacques Feyder, 1929, France, 123 minutes Jacques Feyder’s satirical treatment of Third Republic politics is distinguished for its location footage in Paris as well as its comic verve. This is the North American premiere screening of a new restoration by La Cinémathèque française.
weekend three
The Cinematic Legacy of Stravinsky, Part One Friday, July 26 L’inhumaine | 7 pm Marcel L’Herbier, 1924, France, 132 minutes One of the signature films of the silent era, L’inhumaine restages the riotous premiere of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring and connects Symbolist aestheticism to Art Deco design. The 35mm print was restored by the Archives françaises du film du CNC, Bois d’Arcy. With live piano accompaniment.
Saturday, July 27 Rapt | 2 pm Dimitri Kirsanoff, 1934, France/Switzerland, 86 minutes, and
Autumn Mists Brumes d’automne, Dimitri Kirsanoff, 1928, France, 12 minutes, and
Chanson d’Armor Jean Epstein, 1934, France, 38 minutes The first adaptation of a novel by Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz, who wrote the libretto for Stravinsky’s Histoire du soldat, Rapt features a nuanced performance by Dita Parlo, mountain landscapes, contrapuntal sound, and an original score by Arthur Honegger. The 35mm prints are courtesy La Cinémathèque française and La Cinémathèque suisse, with kind support from the Consulate General of Switzerland in New York. Tickets and latest program updates at fishercenter.bard.edu
The Cinematic Legacy of Stravinsky, Part Two Friday, August 2 Les bonnes femmes | 7 pm Claude Chabrol, 1960, France/Italy, 100 minutes Claude Chabrol’s characteristic mixture of black humor, sophisticated mise-en-scène, and behavioral naturalism is abundantly evident in this nuanced depiction of the lives of four Parisian women (two of them played by New Wave icons Bernadette Lafont and Stéphane Audran).
La cérémonie | 9 pm Claude Chabrol, 1995, France/Germany, 112 minutes Sandrine Bonnaire and Chabrol veteran Isabelle Huppert develop an unusual friendship in this enigmatic and eerily ritualistic critique of complacency and hypocrisy.
Saturday, August 3 Orpheus | 2 pm Orphée, Jean Cocteau, 1950, France, 95 minutes Jean Cocteau, who collaborated with Stravinsky on the opera Oedipus Rex in 1927, made this oneiric film about one of the most important Greek myths two years after Orpheus, the ballet Stravinsky developed with George Balanchine, premiered.
La belle noiseuse | 7 pm Jacques Rivette, 1991, France/Switzerland, 238 minutes, and
Three Homerics Stan Brakhage, 1993, USA, 6 minutes, 16mm Michel Piccoli, Emmanuelle Béart, and Jane Birkin star in Rivette’s masterpiece about the mysteries of art, which makes insightful use of excerpts from two Stravinsky ballets (Petrushka and Agon).
FILM FESTIVAL 21