Avenging the Destruction of True Love: François Truffaut’s ‘The Bride Wore Black’
“In ‘The Bride Wore Black,’ cruel fate rips true love away from the innocent, suggesting that Truffaut believed pure happiness is only found in fairy tales.”
The Crashing of the Wave: ‘Six in Paris’
“Despite being an uneven grouping hardly representative of the best these filmmakers had to offer, ‘Six in Paris’ is an interesting capsule of moments in time and space.”
Five Films to See at Rendez-Vous with French Cinema 2018
Marshall Shaffer’s Selections for Rendez-Vous with French Cinema (March 8-18, 2018)
The Anti-Romance of Agnès Varda’s ‘La Pointe Courte’
“The point is to look as closely as Varda herself, who watches every detail with curiosity, kindness and a relentless sense of wonder.”
Vague Visages Is FilmStruck: Jeremy Carr on Jacques Demy’s ‘Lola’
“Like his characters, Demy’s camera in ‘Lola’ moves everywhere but goes nowhere; it’s a paradoxically headlong hesitation.”
Political and Social Conventions in Jacques Demy’s ‘The Umbrellas of Cherbourg’
“Fifty-three years after initial release, ‘The Umbrellas of Cherbourg’ continues to be a formally and contextually innovative French New Wave production; a film that has influenced contemporary directors such as Barry Jenkins, Damien Chazelle and Joachim Trier.”
Vague Visages Is FilmStruck: Jeremy Carr on François Truffaut’s ‘Shoot the Piano Player’
“While Truffaut’s ‘Day for Night’ (1973) is his most pronounced and profound love letter to the moviemaking process, ‘Shoot the Piano Player’ is an exuberant tribute to the end result.”
Éric Rohmer’s Battle of the Sexes
“Rohmer cares more about posing questions than providing the comfort of a conclusion.”
The Aesthetic and Formal Challenges of Jean-Luc Godard’s ‘Contempt’
“‘Contempt’ is a daunting and formally labyrinthine work, calling its own fallibility to question even as it submits completely to the romance of cinema.”
Coffee and Cinephilia: A Conversation with J. Hoberman
Alejandra Rosenberg Interviews J. Hoberman
Why Criticism: Thom Andersen and the Critic as a Worker
A Weekly Column on Film Criticism by Justine A. Smith
Vague Visages on Agnès Varda’s 88th: ‘Vagabond’
“People often fear or misrepresent what they don’t understand.”
Vague Visages on Agnès Varda’s 88th: ‘Jane B. par Agnès V.’
“An uncompromising visionary, Agnès Varda seems unable to acknowledge precedent or standard practice when becoming involved with creative works.”
Vague Visages on Agnès Varda’s 88th: ‘The Gleaners & I’
“Varda’s sense of play, fun, silliness and humor comes from a collected bricolage of incident, travel and people.”
Vague Visages on Agnès Varda’s 88th: ‘Le Bonheur’
“Happiness for someone, then, is only achievable at the expense of someone else’s full experience?”
Vague Visages on Agnès Varda’s 88th: ‘La Pointe Courte’
“How unusual to see a woman’s perspective on love presented so plainly as Varda does in ‘La Pointe Courte.'”
When Magic Was Real: Jean Cocteau’s ‘Beauty and the Beast’
“Cocteau’s magical realism, with flight and cursed beasts side-by-side with the economic woes of an importer-exporter, gives his fantastic elements gravity while letting the humanist tale of greed lilt like music.”
Review: Kent Jones’ ‘Hitchcock/Truffaut’
“Although it contains very little new material, Hitchcock/Truffaut will undoubtedly find a home within the film education community and could become an important tool in introducing Hitchcock’s immense body of work to hoards of “uninitiated” cinema devotees.”
‘The Profound Desires of the Gods’ Is a Great Example of Film Excess
“Throughout much of his 60s work, Imamura often examined the balance between ordinary and unordinary people, and in The Profound Desire of the Gods, he finds an exceptional way of highlighting the extremity of this concept.”
Chasing Chabrol: ‘Les biches’
“Les biches remains one of the more elusive and symbolic films of Chabrol’s career, as the narrative adopts a dreamlike structure that often obscures reality and truth.”