CINEMA REBORN - CLASSIC FRENCH CINEMA - PORT OF SHADOWS (1938), THE WATCHMAKER OF SAINT PAUL (1974), 36 FILLETTE (1988)

The 2026 program includes three remarkable films from three classic periods of French Cinema.

PORT OF SHADOWS (Marcel Carné, 1938) is an early film from the master film-maker best known for the wartime masterpiece Les Enfants du Paradis (1945). In his notes for the film published on the Cinema Reborn website critic Charles Carrall writes: “In his third feature-length film Port of Shadows (Le quai des brumes, 1938), an early masterpiece for Carné, the port city of Le Havre is shrouded in a serious fog. …As one of seven works in his celebrated partnership with screenwriter Jacques Prévert, Carné’s Port of Shadows, based on a Pierre Mac Orlan novel, stands out for its remarkable atmosphere of doom and gloom.

‘A remarkably beautiful motion picture.’ – Frank S. Nugent, The New York Times

The link to Charles’ notes takes you through to bookings and session times in Sydney and Melbourne. Screens twice in each city.

Introduced by Bruce Beresford at Ritz Cinemas and Dr. Felicity Chaplin at Lido Cinemas.

THE WATCHMAKER OF SAINT PAUL (Bertrand Tavernier, 1974)

‘An extraordinary film – the more so because it attempts to show us the very complicated workings of the human personality, and to do it with grace, some humour and a great deal of style.’ – Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

In Bertrand Tavernier’s feature directorial debut, adapted from a Georges Simenon novel, the quiet, orderly life of a widowed watchmaker (Philippe Noiret) is blown apart by the revelation that his teenage son has gone on the run after killing a man. Forming a relationship with a sympathetic police inspector (Jean Rochefort), the watchmaker searches for answers and grapples with the realisation that he knows far less about his son than he believed.

Introduced by Barrie Pattison at Ritz Cinemas and Dr. Andrew McGregor at Lido Cinemas

Read Ben McCann’s program notes and find links to session times and bookings. Screens twice in each city.

36 FILLETTE (Catherine Breillat, 1988)

‘Impressive, painfully candid … Lili is played with devastating realism by Delphine Zentout.’ – David Stratton, The Movie Show

Featuring a key supporting role by French New Wave legend Jean-Pierre Léaud, Catherine Breillat’s international breakthrough film – based on a novel she wrote about her own teenage experiences – was controversial in its day, and time has if anything only increased its transgressive charge. It remains a frank, unsentimental and singularly pungent depiction of feminine coming-of-age, anchored by Zentout’s fearless performance.

Introduced by Beaudicea Smith-Davies at Ritz Cinemas and Philippa Hawker at Lido Cinemas.

Read Jane Mills program notes and find links to session times and bookings. Screens once only in each city.

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Since our inception supporters have continued to ensure that the annual season is able to present the very latest and very best international and Australian film restorations.

Tax deductible charitable donations have enabled us to keep our admission charges to regular Ritz and Lido prices (with the lowest student concessions of any similar film-related event). We have once again set up a page via the Australian Cultural Fund to receive donations of any size, large or small. You can find it IF YOU CLICK ON THIS LINK

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On Blu-ray - David Hare survives a tornado to extol the pleasures of QUAI DES BRÛMES (Dir: Marcel Carné, Sc: Jacques Prévert, France, 1938)

We had been without power for nearly 48 hours since 130k plus winds tore through Wellington and the Wairarapa all through yesterday and last night. The first thing I experienced after so much natural chaos was a new 4K restoration of the 1938 classic Quai des Brûmes and it was suitably magnificent. 

Top screen is Canal’s lovely 2012 Blu-ray edition of the film , the third great collaboration of Carné and the grandaddy of Réalisme Poëtique, Jacques Prévert.

This was one of dozens of masterpieces released back then in the Canal Classiques range, all opening with a fabulous one minute montage of the greatest shots from French cinema, played to the irresistible zither theme from The Third Man, all in hi-def for the first time, and delivered in these superbly crafted cardboard containers which contained the disc, artwork and a booklet. Incredibly, they were all released commercially in Australia as well as the three major Canal markets, France, Germany and the UK.

Above new packaging of new 4K release

Now 23 years later StudioCanal has published a further cleanup to the original elements, prime and dupe. This is not actually my outright fave of the Prévert screenplays or indeed Carné. I am not always comfortable with the way the movie rides between its Gabin-on-the-lam trope, alternating with several other sub narratives and the safe haven of the bar where the denizens of “inquiétudes” take shelter, some of which becomes unnecessarily static. Meanwhile the deadly pretty boy poet, played by deadly real-life fascist Robert Le Vigan, spins his bottle of poisonous Céline-esque nihilism to rub salt into the rest of the cast’s wounds. Vigan in real life consorted with the Vichy filth and decamped to Argentina after the war.

Robert Le Vigan, Quai des Brûmes

CINEMA REBORN OPENING SCREENING WEDNESDAY 30 APRIL + PROGRAM FOR THURSDAY 1 MAY

 

Quick reminders of our programmes for the first two days.  Tickets for all sessions may be booked online or in person at the Ritz box office. Cinema Reborn charges regular Ritz prices and the lowest student concessions of any venue. Concessions for Ritz Movie Club members apply for all sessions https://www.ritzcinemas.com.au/events/cinemareborn-2025 Some quotes from the extensive programme notes now posted on our website. HOLIDAY (George Cukor, USA, 1938) @ 7.00 pm on Wednesday 30 April and @ 2.30 pm on Thursday 1 May “Despite Cary Grant demonstrating that he could still do the back-flips and somersaults of his vaudeville days, Holiday is less a screwball comedy than a fable, in which, as in My Man Godfrey and Tovarich, a few principled individuals educate the decadent rich. …Whether frenetic with enthusiasm or languishing in despair, (Katharine) Hepburn dominates every scene in which she appears.” John Baxter For information on session times, full program notes and links to bookings https://cinemareborn.com.au/Holiday PÉPÉ LE MOKO (Julien Duvivier, France, 1937) @ 4.45 pm on Thursday 1 May and @ 1.45pm on Tuesday 6 May “Described as ‘one of the most exciting and moving films I can remember seeing’, by the writer Graham Greene at the time, Pépé le Moko (1937) remains Duvivier’s best-known work. It is set in the Casbah district of Algiers, a maze-like quarter where French police struggle to capture the elusive Pépé, a notorious Parisian gangster hiding from the law. Though he is safe in the Casbah, due to its protective community and his ability to avoid capture, Pépé feels trapped, yearning for his former life in Paris. That sense of imprisonment intensifies when he falls in love with Gaby, a glamorous Parisian tourist. Their romance stirs Pépé's longing for freedom but also seals his tragic fate. Duvivier’s film is about impossible desire and the implacable workings of fate, two themes that run deep in his work.” Ben McCann For information on session times, full program notes and links to bookings https://cinemareborn.com.au/Pepe-le-Moko THE SACRIFICE (Andrei Tarkovsky, Sweden/France/UK, 1986) @ 7.00 pm on Thursday 1 May and @ 8.10 pm on Monday 5 May “The Sacrifice (1986), Andrei Tarkovsky's third and final film in exile, stands as a powerful testament to the director's enduring preoccupation with nature, spilt milk, rumbling silence, mute children, levitation, mysticism, spirituality and the long, long shot. This is a film about faith and hope and the (possibly) misguided belief that one person’s sacrifice can have a positive impact on others. It is a film worthy of watching and rewatching, as it is a parable that deserves discussion and reinterpretation, especially now that we are far closer to midnight on the Doomsday Clock than we were in 1986. And yet, the anxiety about an impending nuclear war seemed much higher then than now.” Greg Dolgopolov For information on session times, full program notes and links to bookings https://cinemareborn.com.au/The-Sacrifice

On Blu-ray - David Hare welcomes a new edition of Jean Renoir's LES BAS-FONDS/THE LOWER DEPTHS (France, 1936)

Louis Jouvet (above and bottom), the rich man who has just blown his dough, with Jean Gabin (below) as the thief who has just fallen down on his luck after raiding Jouvet's apartment. From this epiphany over foie gras and Burgundy the two will descend into the literal depths of Gorki's novel to discover the rest of the knockout cast in this wonderful and totally underrated Renoir.

The movie is clearly the Renoir and Charles Spaak adaptation of Gorki's Les Bas Fonds, made in 1936 for that crazy Russian émigré 30s studio outfit that gave French cinema so much quality, Films Albatros. The screens are from a spanking new (2020) restoration from Gaumont with funding from the Centre Nationale Cinematographique. 

This is yet another favorite Renoir for me, one of those miracles of narration which swings from classical form to freefall, in the process liberating the actors from rigid role settings, and the story from the turgid atmosphere of Gorki's own narrow banded underworld view. Like Monsieur Lange, Spaak's screenplay for this opens the characters out, to the point where, once again in 30s Renoir, there's a major killing, but the morality of this is readily glided over, if only for the fervour with which Renoir and Spaak have already depicted the appalling child molesting perpetrator of so much misery and abuse.

As usual with their regular Blu-ray editions Gaumont includes English and French (HoH) subs. The restoration looks wonderful, notwithstanding some small degree of density fluctuation on lap dissolves and a very few optical shots.