No 1: The Nun (Rivette, 1966) + La Chinoise (Godard, 1967): ICA Cinema, 1.30pm
This screening will be introduced by Michael Witt and is part of the Jean-Luc Godard: Unmade and Abandoned season at the ICA (details here). This presentation is a double bill devoted to Godard’s extensive engagement with theatre in the 1960s: Jacques Rivette’s The Nun (1966), which evolved out of a stage production funded by Godard, and La Chinoise (1967), which was the culmination of his exploration of theatrical forms in this decade.
Chicago Reader review of The Nun:
Jacques Rivette’s controversial though chaste second feature (1966),
originally banned for a year both in France and for export, was trimmed
and slightly reedited by its U.S. distributor (years later it was
restored to its original form and 140-minute running time). As a direct
and indirect commentary on institutional repression and the depravity
that arises from compulsory religious training, it’s a feminist movie
with particular relevance for our era. Adapted from Denis Diderot’s
famous 18th-century novel about Suzanne Simonin (the remarkable Anna
Karina)—an illegitimate teenager forced to enter a convent by her
family—this is the most accessible by far of all of Rivette’s features.
It has a straightforward narrative that mainly concentrates on Suzanne’s
experiences at two convents—one severe and punitive, the other
“progressive” and more worldly (though no less stifling for Suzanne when
she finds herself pursued by the lesbian mother superior)—before she
escapes to encounter a different kind of oppression in the world
outside. Far from a nonbeliever, Suzanne is a devout character without a
religious calling, and the film as a whole is a complex celebration of
her continuous drive toward freedom. Rivette’s highly original and
formal “cellular” construction uses a striking contemporary score (by
Jean-Claude Eloy) and selective sound effects (by Michel Fano) to
balance the feeling of confinement with a nearly constant sense of the
world outside; the intense mise en scene and use of camera movements
often recall Carl Dreyer (though Rivette’s conscious model was Kenji
Mizoguchi); and the metallic colors and resourceful use of settings
conspire to create a world that’s both material and abstract. A great
film that remains one of the cornerstones of the French New Wave.
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Chicago Reader review of La Chinoise:
One of Jean-Luc Godard’s most underrated and misunderstood films, this
1967 feature isn’t so much an embrace of France’s Maoist youth movement
as a multifaceted interrogation of it—far more nuanced and lively than
the theoretical agitprop Godard would make with others after the May
1968 uprisings. Though it explores the dogmatism and violence of a
Maoist cell in Paris, Godard is equally preocccupied by such things as
French rock, the color red, the history of cinema, the “revisionism” of
the French Communist Party, and the rebels’ youthful romantic longings.
The spirited cast–including Anne Wiazemsky, Jean-Pierre Léaud, and
Juliet Berto–make all this touching as well as troubling. The movie
helped inspire student revolt at Columbia University soon afterward, but
that’s a tribute to its style and energy, not its political
intelligence.
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Here (and above) is a trailer for The Nun.
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No 2: Mélodie en sous-sol (Verneuil, 1963): Cine Lumiere, 2pm
Chicago Reader review:
A thwarted caper film in the vein of Melville’s Bob le flambeur and Kubrick’s The Killing,
Henri Verneuil’s 1963 feature stars Jean Gabin, the avatar of
world-weary criminality, in one of his finest roles. Fresh out of
prison, he enlists a former cell mate (Alain Delon) in a daring plan to
rob a casino on the Riviera. Though the film was an international hit,
Verneuil’s conventional narrative style attracted the scorn of the
French New Wave. Forty years later it stands as a well-crafted noir with
a long, tautly executed heist and a protracted denouement that’s even
more engrossing.
Joshua Katzman
Here (and above) is the trailer.
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