IN PARIS - At the Champo on rue des Ecoles - Ghost stories - Random Restorations of films by Dino Risi and Fritz Lang

Romy Schneider, Marcello Mastroianni, Fantasma d'Amore

A selection of films featuring Marcello Mastroianni screening at Le Champo in rue des Ecoles revealed a host of titles seen plus one totally unknown, Fantasma d'Amore (Ghost of Love) made in 1981 by Dino Risi, somewhat out of character for a director whose forte is comedy and speedy narratives. Mastroianni plays an academic of some kind whose orderly life is interrupted by a woman (Romy Schneider) who races after a bus he usually doesn't take and then keeps turning up in his life. She's a former lover and he slowly becomes entranced with her all over again. Except she's not what he and at first we think she is...he is summoning up a ghost of a relationship and getting deeper and deeper into the fantasy.... Its formulaic and seems to be some sort of derivative of Dont Look Now. A quick check of the internet reveals that the film seems to have disappeared after its first release but now, after a superb restoration, it may be getting some recognition via Mastroianni tribute seasons. 

The Testament of Dr Mabuse was Fritz Lang's second crack at Mabuse and Le Champo is screening a superb digital copy with both astonishingly good picture and sound. A title in German only at the start of the film explained I think the various iterations of the film's duration, 3300 metres+ when it premiered in Budapest. An excision of 500 metres or so shortly thereafter and the length of  the reconstructed version. I think. Released in 1933 it resurrects Mabuse as a ghost able to malignantly influence the course of human history by unleashing sheer terror on the population. I think. There are so many character strands that connecting the dots is a bit difficult. It was the last film Lang made in Germany before his exit for safer pastures first in France for Liliom and then on to the States for the next two decades. Le Champo is screening the film as part of a German Expressionism season alongside The Blue Angel, The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, Pandora's Box, M and Metropolis. 

Claude Sautet at the Randwick Ritz - Sue Williams introduces CÉSAR AND ROSALIE (France, 1972)

Hello, I am Sue Williams from the Australian Film Critics Circle and I am here to introduce today’s movie César et Rosalie – one of Claude Sautet’s best-known, and best-loved, films.

Although it was made in 1972, César et Rosalie has all our modern obsessions – love, loneliness, bromance … and real estate.

It features a tug of love between the older, coarser César (a rich scrap metal dealer played by Yves Montand) and the younger, more handsome graphic artist David (Sami Frey).

They are vying for the affections of Rosalie, played by the glowing Romy Schneider. 

It’s a romantic comedy, by any definition, but considering it was made in a country that revered Jerry Lewis, it is actually quite restrained. That said, it fairly rattles along … there are no “longeurs” in this movie.

But it is very French.  Where else could a young man approach his love rival and say “I love your wife …” and have the older man reply “take a number and join the queue.”

The film conjures up several familiar French phrases. Ménage a trois … cherchez la femme and ‘Ca Pleine Pour Moi.” OK, Plastic Bertrand was Belgian … ça ne fait rien.

I have exhausted my limited French, you’ll be glad to hear, but what this movie reminded me was that three things had not yet made it to France in 1972 – seat belts, feminism and smoke alarms.  

Hollywood uber-critic Roger Ebert said this was "too pleasing a movie not to review", and that it was "the sort of thing the French, with their appreciation for the awesome complexities of a simple thing like love, do especially well." 

I agree.

It’s an intelligent and funny romance, and what further makes it worth watching is the interplay between Yves Montand, Romy Schneider, and Sami Frey. 

And keep your eyes peeled for a 19-year-old Isabelle Huppert appearing in only her fifth movie.

So bienvenue and please enjoy César et Rosalie.

Cinema Reborn - Janice Tong introduces Claude Sautet's - MAX AND THE JUNKMEN (France, 1971)

Romy Schneider, Michel Piccoli, Max and the Junkmen

Thanks so much for the invitation Geoff and Cinema Reborn and StudioCanal for putting together this fantastic Claude Sautet season at the Ritz 

**************

 

Max and the Junkmen or Max and the Scrap Merchants is the second of Claude Sautet’s films that pairs the enchanting Austrian-born actress Romy Schneider with one of cinema’s greats - actor Michel Piccoli, who sadly passed away in May this year. I think it’s a timely reminder for us to pay tribute to this vital actor, whose screen presence and cinematic influence will be sorely missed. 

 

Orson Welles once described Romy as someone who is very attractive, but behind that beautiful face, hides a secret and whatever that secret is, when one finds out, it would turn out to be an enormous joke. I’ve always wondered about that comment, as I’m not sure if it was witty or mean, or both, and if it at all described her personality. Instead, I thought Piccoli remembered her best - in that he saw her not as a great actor, but as a star. And like all stars, they burn brightly but for a short time, (her losing her husband to suicide, then her 14 year old son in an accident, before finally succumbing to a heart attack at the age of only 42). There’s a lot to be said about her tragic fate - and Piccoli’s comment makes you think that it was predestined.

 

Even with this knowledge, it nonetheless disturbed me to learn that during the shoot for this film, Romy would frequently ask Piccoli about her appearance. And he would always pay her the compliment she wanted to hear: that her lipstick was perverse, or that she looked despicable, ungracious. This would always make her smile - she took pleasure in hearing these words from him, as though they were the ultimate validation of her embodiment of her character, the German streetwalker Lily.

 

Despite her fate, and perhaps because of her fragility, the onscreen presence of this couple is sublime. Romy’s Lily was dressed by Saint Laurent – bright coloured dresses in scarlet, magenta pink or brilliant violet with a matching ribbon tied around her throat. Or, in the now infamous black vinyl trenchcoat that hid her little black dress with the plunging neckline - her wardrobe was so of the moment and new; and caused a sensation at the time. Her outfits also helped set her world in contrast to Max’s. An ex-judge turned detective, with a private income, as rigid as he was suave in his double-breasted suits, his fedora worn just so - a hint of Melville’s The Samurai, and an echoing of his earlier role in Godard’s Contempt. Lily and Max looked to be the essence of cool: neo-noir in the 70s. 

 

Max  is based on a novel by Claude Néron, who went on to be one of Sautet’s regular collaborators. Piccoli was actually reading this very book during the shoot of The Things of Life (the film that was screened here last week) whilst waiting for resets and between takes in the apartment with Romy, and they jokingly decided that Sautet should make it into a film. 

 

Whilst I don’t want to give too much of the plotline away, this is not a film that can be easily classified as a police story or crime drama, nor is it classic film noir, the femme fatale is not really one. Sure, there’s a prostitute, a detective, there’s a gang of petty criminals, and yes, there’s a heist, guns and a shootout too. But you shouldn’t carve a path along these lines; to do so, would be to undermine the narrative that Sautet is interested in telling. The characters and who they represent is simply the surface, and the film, like Orson’s Romy, hides a secret.

 

Sautet cleverly and seamlessly stitched his introduction of the small-time crooks like that of a casting call: a nickname, a freeze frame and a petty account of any previous crimes. They were dirty, sweaty, laughing, even in the face of unemployment, they were full of life and vitality in contrast to Max, who came across as hard working and principled, was instead monied and cunning, and whose face was but a blank canvas. This mask was later echoed in Daniel Auteuil’s character in A Heart in Winter, and again, this indifference repeats itself disguised in the elegance of Monsieur Arnaud (you’ll get to catch Nelly and M. Arnaud later in December, to be shown as the final film in season). 

 

In Max and the Junkmen, the blue-toned washed out palette matched the coolness of Max’s moods, casting a deeper shadow over his sombre ilk, and the grainy film stock reminiscent of The French Connection that came out in the same year. Incidentally, the French word ‘flic’ (meaning cop) in its etymological form can be seen as the embodiment of Max’s character, a corruption of all that he knew, the word is itself a corruption of the German word ‘flique’, a criminal slang for a young man, a spy or a tattletale, and Max is a manipulator, of Lily, of his old friend Abel, and even the system in which he serves.

 

In all of Sautet’s films, there was always an underlying tension, brewing beneath the surface - just like real life; something is always hidden from view, a secret. 

 

Alienation, corruption, deceit and betrayal - these themes under the direction of Sautet are no longer mere ingredients of a policier story. They are instead the four points of an obtuse moral compass. The impetus that propels Max’s fate (which then links him to everyone he touches) was not, as he reveals to his commissioner, that he did not get the results he needed to catch criminals, or that he was made a fool of by his informer. I think this film delivers Max’s actions as an existential dilemma - one can easily fall one way or another - the compass neither guiding nor abetting - it is simply, just there. Inevitably, the characters lead a life that is governed by random choices in the charting of one’s own destiny. 

 

I would say that this sense of foreboding that permeates throughout Sautet’s body of work resonates on the level of poetry rather than malice. It requires that audiences be attentive to details, and not only of what we see, but what we hear as well - to listen to the conversations, the music, the ambience, as well as the silences. After all, Sautet had one of the finest ears in the business; in an interview he said that as a child, he remained mute and shy for a long time and that he only cared about music. So I hope that you will take notice of Phillipe Sarde’s score, an unhappy waltz that sounds more like a funeral march with its heavy underscoring of the ¾ time; waltzing its characters to their inevitable future. It is an earworm that refuses to yield and forges on until the very end.

 

I’d like to end by turning the focus onto Max’s character - his glacial exterior, immaculate in sharply cut pinstriped suits, his fedora, the money and his little flat are but props. Does this exterior belie a burning interior? Can we detect the fleeting telltale signs of the surfacing of Max’s conscience - was it deep hurt we see in his eyes at the beginning of the film, was that a slight twitch of his lips when he was observing Lily, or the whiteness of a sweat-stricken face? Or did we imagine all these things? A judge would certainly be able to tell right from wrong...we can’t help but wonder. There is only one thing we know for sure, that Max lived by his own philosophical convictions to the very end. 

 

Sautet’s long time friend, the film critic and film director Bertrand Tavernier said of this film, “[t]he policier structure of Max et les Ferrailleurs (1971), [is] one of [Sautet’s] greatest achievements, worthy of Fritz Lang”. Indeed this film can be seen as a neo-noir tone poem that has deep resonances with a man’s futile search for destiny in a humanistic world. Although Max has all the hallmarks of an anti-hero, Sautet’s film leaves tensions unresolved, or rather, his film tells us that certain things are unresolvable and must remain hidden. The commissioner sums it up very well, he said “Max you’re funny, you go in search for something, and when you find it, you’re not happy.” 

 

Do enjoy the film!

 

************

 

The screening was introduced by Janice Tong – a cinephile and one-time film scholar who has written a major study of Claude Sautet published on the Senses of Cinema Great Directors list. By day Janice is the commercial director for a tech media company, by night she enjoys watching films and good British crime dramas. She also has a particular interest in director Wong Kar-wai, as well as French and German cinemas.

 

CLICK HERE TO BOOK TICKETS TO THE FILMS BY CLAUDE SAUTET

On CESAR AND ROSALIE and more - Author, critic and film-maker Scott Murray recommends a deep dive into the Sautet season at the Randwick Ritz

Sami Frey, Romy Schneider, Yves Montand
César et Rosalie

César et Rosalie is for many their favourite Sautet, with a love triangle that is remarkable for its tender depiction of the relationship between the two men of different generations (Yves Montand, Sami Frey) competing for the heart of Rosalie (Sautet’s first great muse, Romy Schneider). The ending is up there with Bresson’s Pickpocket, the melancholic score (as in all Sautet films from Les Choses de la Vie) by Philippe Sarde.

Sautet would create an equally exquisite variation of this love triangle 20 years later with Un Cœur en Hiver (not screening in the Ritz season, but incandescent on the SUBTITLED STUDIOCANAL BLU-RAY). The two suitors are now of a similar age (André Dussollier, Daniel Auteuil), and their desired is played by Sautet’s second great muse, Emmanuelle Béart.

 

"...Sautet's first great muse..."
Romy Schneider, César et Rosalie

Béart also stars in Sautet’s final film, Nelly & Monsieur Arnaud, about an out-of-work and-love young woman who temps for a retired judge (Michel Serrault) while he completes his memoirs. This a love story that does not defy the 35-year age gap between the characters but explores the connections that exist because of it. The restaurant scene (with the Château d’Yquem), and the one when Nelly awakes while being gently observed, and the heart-stopping moment of reflection at the airport all demonstrate why Sautet is placed by some (including me) alongside Bresson. 

 

Michel Serrault, Emmanuelle Béart,
Nelly and M. Arnaud

In between César and Nelly, Sautet made (amongst others): Vincent, François, Paul … et les autres, his finest ensemble film, so rarely available with sub-titles, which celebrates the myriad bonds between men; UnMauvais Fils, also rare, exploring the friction between generations, in this case an ex-prisoner (Patrick Dewaere) and his unforgiving father (Yves Robert); and Quelques Jours avec Moi, an edgy and occasionally uncomfortable film, seldom seen, about a retrenched man (Daniel Auteuil) and his attempts to have a young woman (Sandrine Bonnaire) love him.

 

Sautet was never reluctant to tackle difficult subjects or delight in the love between men, and for women. He also made extraordinary films from a female perspective, including Une Histoire Simple and Mado, both radiant and precise, and staring Romy Schneider. (Neither is screening, but Pathé’s Blu-ray of Histoireis glorious and Pathfinder’s DVD of Madoa treasure.)

 

Sautet could do anything he sought to, with rare sensitivity and rigour.

 

BOOK TICKETS TO ALL FIVE REMAINING FILMS IN THE SEASON BY CLICKING HERE

Claude Sautet

CINEMA REBORN - Claude Sautet at the Randwick Ritz - THE THINGS OF LIFE/LES CHOSES DE LA VIE (France, 1969) - Sunday 15 November at 4.00 pm

On Sunday 15 November The Ritz Cinemas Randwick begin a seven film retrospective of films by French master Claude Sautet (1924
-
2000) 

A mainstay of high-quality French cinema from the mid-1950s to mid-1990s, Claude Sautet’s career was always influential. 
Films like 
The Things of Life
(1969) were trend-setting international art house hits. He was closely associated with the careers of some of French cinema’s acting icons; especially Romy Schenider, whose 
five radiant performance for Sautet 
(who claimed her on-screen presence was an entree
 into 
"an intangible and better world’) 
are the centerpiece of her final decade of work. 
0

But there’s never quite been enough consensus around Sautet’s body of work for individual critics not to announce his ‘rediscovery’ every few years.
Sautet’s uncompromising, stop-start
—
but also generous
—
career path partially explains this. In the late
1950s and early 1960s he made emotionally
and politically-charged 
‘série noire’ thrillers, influenced by 
his friendships with director Jean-Pierre Melville and actor Lino Ventura. 

 

From 1969 until the 1983, his 
collaborations with actors Schneider, Michel Piccoli and Yves Montand 
pinned-down
the crisis in 1970s 
French middle-class values with some of the same frank insight that the 
‘Poetic 
Realist’ 
films of Jean Renoir, Julien
Duvivier and 
Marcel Carné had brought to the hubris of 1930s France. 

 

Finally, from the late 1980s, there are the three art house hits Sautet made in a lighter, comic, but also 
autumnal tone, exploring loneliness and disconnection.
The gaps in between were never empty. François Truffaut once called Sautet the 
‘fixer’ of French cinema, and
he worked
constantly as a
credited scriptwriter
and uncredited
,
go-to script-doctor
for other.
filmmakers. But at least twice
—
in the early 1960s with the coming of the French 
New 
Wave, in the 1980s
after a series of box office failures
—
he seemed to retire, feeling out of step with audience and critical 
taste.
But in the 2020s, 
the 
co0nsistency and insight 
of 
Claude Sautets work is
clear. His fourteen feature films
constitute a Balzacian chronicle of the lives and manners of the French middle classes,
in a world where 
love and emotion are frequently difficult.


 

Sydney’s pre-eminent cinephile David Stratton has long been a champion of Sautet’s work and during his years as Director of the Sydney Film Festival selected many of the director’s films for inclusion in the festival program. Among David’s favourites is the first film in the season at the Ritz Les Choses de la Vie/The Things of Life.

 

David Has sent through his thoughts on the film for onward dispatch to Cinema Reborn supporters:

In Les choses de la vie, Michel Piccoli plays a middle-aged architect who, despite the fact that he is married, is involved in a passionate affair with a younger woman (Romy Schneider).  Sautet, a master at delineating the manners and mores of the French middle class,  transcends the clichés inherit in that scenario by revealing the story of its flawed yet likeable protagonist at exactly the moment he is involved in a brutal car crash while driving at speed along a country road, a brilliantly-staged sequence that is shown several times in different forms – slow motion, full speed, etc.  Piccoli and Schneider give great performances, with Lea Massari also impressive as the wife.  Like all of Sautet’s films Les choses de la vie makes you care desperately about the characters, despite the fact that they are prone to making serious, life-changing, mistakes.

 

The screening will be introduced by Janice Tong a cinephile and one-time film scholar who has written a major study of Claude Sautet published on the Senses of Cinema Great Directors list. By day Janice is the commercial director for a tech media company, by night she enjoys watching films and good British crime dramas. She also has a particular interest in French and German cinema."

 

BOOK TICKETS HERE

CINEMA REBORN - On the big screen at the Randwick Ritz - A SEASON OF FILMS BY THE FRENCH MASTER CLAUDE SAUTET

 

Claude Sautet

CLAUDE SAUTET: AFFAIRS OF THE HEART

 

“Claude Sautet’s cinema is an intimate one, and like the perfume on a lover’s skin it is ephemeral and fragile, and yet, traces of it remain with you, lingering like an afterimage.”

(Janice Tong, Senses of Cinema)

If the Australian perception of French cinema seems particularly skewed, it is surely because we do not receive the full stereophonic effect of this rich and diverse output.... 

Claude Sautet is one of the major French directors who gets lost in this sorry shuffle. His films ...are not the least bit strident or aggressive, and that sets him well apart from the post Nouvelle Vague generations. By the same token, the small-scale, jewel-like intimacy of his chamber dramas – almost always concerned with average, middle class people – is pitched at a far less sensational or spectacular level than most French blockbusters of the Cyrano de Bergerac type. 

(Adrian Martin, online review at Filmcritic.com)

*************************************

Between 1955 and 1995 Claude Sautet was a mainstay of high quality French cinema. His fourteen feature films constitute a Balzacian chronicle of the lives and manners of the French middle classes in a world where love and emotion are frequently difficult. 

 

From November 15 the Ritz Cinemas Randwick are presenting seven programs of Sautet’s work, a panorama of high quality French cinema ranging across a quarter century of the director’s life. By the end you will find it hard not to agree with David Stratton on the SBS Movie Show when he said “I love Sautet’s films almost unreservedly. He’s never made a film which I didn’t really love." 

 

DATES AND TIMES

Nov 15 at 4.00 pm - The Things of Life( Les Choses de la Vie, 1970)

Nov 22 at 4.00 pm -Max and the Junkmen (Max et les Ferrailleurs,1971)

Nov 29 at 4.00 pm - César and Rosalie (César et Rosalie,1972)

Dec 6 at 4.00 pm - Vincent, François, Paul and the Others (Vincent, François, Paul et les Autres,1974)

Dec 13 at 4.00 pm - A Bad Son (Un Mauvais Fils,1980)

Dec 19 at 4.00 pm - A Few Days with Me (Quelques Jours Avec Moi,1988)

Dec 20 at 4.00 pm - Nelly and Mr. Arnaud (Nelly et M. Arnaud,1995)

 

Michel Piccoli, Romy Schneider, The Things of Life

The Things of Life (Les Choses De La Vie, France, 1970, 89 minutes)

Sautet’s first stylish romantic melodrama, and first collaboration with Michel Piccoli and Romy Schneider, established his international reputation. The film begins with the aftermath of a violent car crash along a rural motorway. As Piccoli, lies in a semi-conscious stupor amidst the burning wreckage of his MG, his life flashes before his eyes—chronicling his relationship with two very different women: his dutiful, long-suffering wife (Léa Massari) and his adoring, free-spirited mistress (Schneider). A masterful portrait of a man literally and figuratively caught at life’s crossroads. A fabulous score by Philippe Sarde which you can hear a sample of if you click here 

BOOK TICKETS HERE

 

Romy Schneider, Michel Piccoli, Max and the Junkmen

Max and the Junkmen (Max et les Ferrailleurs, France, 1971, 107 minutes)

Sautet’s elegant and sophisticated crime drama stars the great Michel Piccoli as Max, a Paris detective hellbent on justice at any cost after watching one too many wily criminals slip through his fingers. Max decides to lure a gang into committing a bank robbery ... so that he can then catch them red-handed. So Max poses as a wealthy banker and begins a series of illicit rendezvous with the high-class prostitute Lily (Romy Schneider). But there’s one thing the cold-hearted Max doesn’t factor into his diabolical scheme: the possibility of falling in love. A taut thriller with the heart of a great melodrama.

BOOK TICKETS HERE

 

Yves Montand, Romy Schneider, Cesar and Rosalie

César and Rosalie (César et Rosalie, France,1972, 107 minutes)

The divorced Rosalie (Romy Schneider) is attending a family wedding with her new lover, the wealthy scrap metal merchant César (Yves Montand), when she encounters her ex-boyfriend David (Sami Frey), a cartoonist newly back from America. At the reception, David tells César that he still loves Rosalie, and César can see that the feeling isn’t entirely one-sided. Sautet’s magnificent ménage-à-trois César and Rosalie, in which these two very different men compete for the fickle affections of their impulsive lady love, only to slowly form their own grudging friendship…. 

 “An enchanting story of what love is all about. The enchantment of Sautet’s film is his acknowledgment that it is in the daily living rather than the nightly bedding that meaningful relationships exist.”—Judith Crist, New York Magazine

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Gerard Depardieu, Yves Montand, Michel Piccoli
Serge Reggiani, Vincent, Francois, Paul and the Others

Vincent, François, Paul and the Others (Vincent, François, Paul et les Autres, France, 1974, 118 minutes)

Sautet recruited three of the leading French stars of their generation—Yves Montand, Michel Piccoli and Serge Reggiani—for this wise, beautifully acted, enormously moving portrait of a trio of lifelong friends at the crossroads of middle age. All three men try to vicariously relive their youth through Vincent’s protégé (Gérard Depardieu), an aspiring professional boxer. Sautet weaves us through these men’s lives as myriad crises erupt, concessions are made, and time marches on. Itranks among Sautet’s finest contemplations of the human condition.

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Brigitte Fossey, Patrick Dewaere, A Bad Son

A Bad Son (Un Mauvais Fils, France,1980, 110 minutes)

A key Sautet theme—the fraught relationships between adult children and their parents—comes to the fore in this heartbreaking family drama. In one of the great, nervous, end-of-his-tether performances that typified his tragically brief career, the extraordinary Patrick Dewaere stars as Bruno, a young man returning to Paris after serving a prison sentence. Now clean and determined to rebuild his life, Bruno takes up residence with his widower father and begins drifting through a series of menial jobs. and contact with the beautiful Catherine (Brigitte Fossey). Steeped in the working-class milieu of Sautet’s own childhood. 

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Sandrine Bonnaire, Daniel Auteuil, A Few Days with Me

A Few Days With Me (Quelques Jours Avec Moi, France,1988, 131 minutes)

Sautet was lured by a simple proposition: to make a film with actors, screenplay collaborators and technicians he had never worked with before. It was to be the beginning of a late-career renaissance for the director. Daniel Auteuil stars as Martial Pasquier. Newly released from a psychiatric hospital, Martial is dispatched to the sleepy provincial town of Limoges to perform a routine check-up on one of the family stores. Then he takes up with Francine, a semi-literate housemaid (Sandrine Bonnaire). The story turns from gentle class satire to full-blown farce. Among Sautet’s personal favorites. 

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Michel Serrault, Emmanuelle Beart, Nellly and M. Arnaud

Nelly and Mr. Arnaud (Nelly et M. Arnaud,1995, 106 minutes)

Sautet’s profoundly moving final feature is a tale of unrequited love and the male gaze. Emmanuelle Béart is the beautiful object of an emotionally withdrawn man’s curiously expressed affections. Nelly is a freelance literary editor struggling to make ends meet for her and her unemployed husband in the recession economy of the early 1990s. She meets the septuagenarian businessman Pierre Arnaud (Michel Serrault), who offers to pay her debts. At first suspicious of the old man’s motives, they form a bond that is at once more than mere friendship and less than physical intimacy. 

BOOK TICKETS HERE