DEUX OU TROIS CHOSES QUE JE SAIS D’'ELLE (Two or Three Things I Know About Her, Jean-Luc Godard, F 1967, 8.1., Introduction: Volker Pantenburg & 14.1.) This film illustrates Godard's belief that "in order to live in Parisian society today, at whatever level or on whatever plane, one is forced to prostitute oneself in one way or another, or else to live according to conditions resembling those of prostitution." The ELLE (French for pronoun she/her) of the title refers less to the protagonist Juliette (Marina Vlady) and her daily life as a wife, mother and casual prostitute than to the Paris region, the "cruelty of neo-capitalism", the "circulation of ideas", the high-rises of the banlieue, prostitution and half a dozen other themes that Godard lists in his trailer. While Juliette speaks to the camera about her situation, her entanglement in the capitalist system, the director provides a whispered voiceover.
LES PARAPLUIES DE CHERBOURG (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Jacques Demy, F/FRG 1964, 10. & 23.1.) It took Mag Bodard a year and a half to raise enough money for this project that no other producer wanted to fund: "The first popular opera written for the screen" (Jacques Demy) whose sung dialogues are easy to understand. Cherbourg, November 1957: Catherine Deneuve plays the 18-year-old Geneviève, who works in an umbrella shop and is in love with car mechanic Guy. Their first night of love together is at the same time a farewell: Guy has been called up for military service in Algeria. She falls pregnant and is forced by her mother to by her mother to marry an affluent jeweler. Jacques Demy's sophisticated color scheme turned Cherbourg into a place of fairy tales. The film won the Golden Palm at Cannes and brought fame for Mag Bodard, Jacques Demy and Catherine Deneuve who was 19 at the time. We are showing the restored version.
AU HASARD BALTHAZAR (Robert Bresson, F/Sweden 1966, 9. & 26.1.) Jacques Demy, Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut joined forces to convince Mag Bodard to fund Robert Bresson's unusual project of making a donkey, Balthazar, the protagonist of a film. Bresson depicts the cycle of life through the donkey's fate and that of its owners. When Balthazar is small, he is surrounded by affection and children play with him and give him a name; later he is subjected to hard labor and whipping on a farm; he is trained to become a circus performer; then he transports relics during a religious procession; and finally he dies as a smuggler's pack animal, hit by a bullet while on a mountain amid a herd of sheep. Bresson's richest film in terms of subject matter is also the one that is most open to interpretation. "Everyone who sees this film will be absolutely astonished […] because the film is really the world in an hour and a half." (Jean-Luc Godard)
UNE FEMME DOUCE (A Gentle Woman, Robert Bresson, F 1969, 13. & 15.1.) Mag Bodard can be credited for the most productive creative phase of Robert Bresson's career. He made a total of 13 films over a 40-year period, but three were made in the space of four years: AU HASARD BALTHAZAR, MOUCHETTE and UNE FEMME DOUCE. In the latter, Bresoon's first color film, which is loosely based on Dostoevsky's short story "A Gentle Creature," he reconstructs the relationship between a nameless woman from a poor background and a pawnbroker and transposes it to 1960s Paris. The film opens with the suicide of the young woman, whose scarf floats from the balcony from which she has just jumped - one of Bresson's most striking scenes. Next to her laid out body, her husband recapitulates their common past - how they met each other in the pawnshop, their wedding, their everday rituals, her resistance to his efforts to mould her: "I want something more" - "I want a more secure, more stable happiness." Nascent jealousy, alienation, illness, attempts to get closer and then an unexpected jump, a scarf in the wind.
PAUL (Diourka Medveczky, F 1969, 9. & 15.1.) In this film saturated with the spirit of 1968, Diourka Medveczky, a sculptor and the husband of Bernadette Lafont, uses still imagery and very little dialogue to tell the story of some young people's attempts to withdraw from consumer society . Paul (Jean-Pierre Léaud) escapes Paris and his bourgeois parents to join a vegetarian community in the Cevennes, whose leader is the "pilgrim" Yvan (Jean-Pierre Kalfon). There is no haste here, people wear uniform dark garments, long hair and the men have beards. However, it turns out that not everyone is satisfied with gathering mushrooms and stealing eggs as a community. Yvan uses the proceeds from the sale of a stolen goat to stuff himself with a huge steak alone in a restaurant. He and his companion Marianne (Bernadette Lafont) decide to leave the community. They think they are far from civilization on a lonely Breton island but it does not bode well when a group of business people turns up. Medveczky's first feature film was also his last. Despite being invited to festivals and winning awards and positive acclaim, the film did not find a distributor and never opened in the cinemas.
LE BONHEUR (Agnès Varda, F 1965, 17. & 28.1., Introduction: Stefanie Schlüter) The "bonheur" ("happiness") of the title is introduced by bright colors, sunflowers and music by Mozart. The young couple François and Thérèse are spending a Sunday in the country with their children. Their interaction is marked by respect, attention and affection for each other. However, one day, François falls in love with Emilie, a switchboard operator, and the two become lovers. He does not want to keep the fact that his "happiness has become greater" a secret from Thérèse and offers her the option of ending their relationship if she is suffering. She refuses: "You should be completely happy" she says. Varda does not pass judgment, psychologize or moralize.
L'ENFANCE NUE (Naked Childhood, Maurice Pialat, F 1968, 14. & 29.1.) Mag Bodard helped the 42-year-old Maurice Pialat make his feature film debut, the cornerstone of one of the most impressive oeuvres of French film history. Working with amateur actors in their mining town, Pialat depicts the life of a boy who grows up without a family using a style that is almost documentary-like. When he fails to live up to expectations, the 10-year-old François is kicked out by two foster families and ends up in a home. Pialat strings episodes together abruptly and does not provide a context that would supply some sense. The boy's behavior, which fluctuates between malice and tenderness, is not explained from a psychological or sociological point of view. Pialat's gaze does not pass judgement and is without prejudice.
UN SOIR UN TRAIN (One Night... A Train, André Delvaux, F/B 1968, 21. & 29.1., Introduction: Christoph Terhechte) "In the midst of heated unrest between the Flemish and Walloon communities, the linguistics professor Mathias (Yves Montand) takes the train from one part of Belgium to the other. Unexpectedly, his companion Anne (Anouk Aimée) decides to accompany him. André Delvaux’s emblematic film may begin naturalistically, with a visit to an old people's home, a lecture at the university where Flemish students are on strike, a theater rehearsal, a heated debate between lovers, but it becomes a nightmare: Suddenly the train stops and Mathias and his two travel companions find themselves stranded between two stations. They make their way through an inhospitable, bleak wintry landscape and end up in a spookily morbid village where nobody seems to understand them and different rules seem to be in place. One can try to interpret the manifold symbols of the film and construe the events as Mathias' dream after falling asleep in the train, but such a reading would overlook the fact that the film's fantastical aspects hovers on the surface from the very beginning. The subliminally menacing reality is nightmarish enough." (Christoph Terhechte)
PEAU D'ANE (Donkey Skin, Jacques Demy, F 1970, 23. & 31.1.) The ruler of the blue kingdom (Jean Marais) promises his dying queen to only remarry a woman as beautiful as she. He decides to marry his daughter (Catherine Deneuve) because she resembles her mother so much. So as not to have to grant him his wish, she demands a series of seemingly unattainable nuptial gifts on the advice of her godmother, the Lilac Fairy (Delphine Seyrig): dresses the color of the sun, the moon and time, as well as of the skin of the king's golden donkey. When he manages to fulfill even this last desire, she escapes, clad in the donkey's skin, to the neighboring red kingdom. Jacques Demy's idiosyncratic interpretation of Charles Perrault's fairy tale from 1715 is Mag Bodard's favorite - a timeless film for children and adults that thanks to an elaborate color reconstruction again shines in the breathtaking colors of the psychedelic era. (hjf)
