Alain Resnais

  • Alain Resnais – I Want to Go Home (1989)

    Alain Resnais1981-1990ComedyFrance
    I Want to Go Home (1989)
    I Want to Go Home (1989)

    Joey Wellman, a cantankerous American cartoonist, accepts an invitation to come to an exhibition in Paris, because his estranged daughter Elsie is a student there. He arrives with his girlfriend Lena, and very soon wants to go home as the culture shock is too much for him. Elsie puts off meeting him because she is busy trying to find Professor Christian Gauthier, in order to get him to read her thesis on Flaubert. However Gauthier is enamored with American culture, and invites Joey and some other Americans to his mother’s house for the weekend. Elsie arrives at the gathering in time for the masquerade party and to see her father beginning to appreciate French culture.Read More »

  • Alain Resnais – Nuit et brouillard AKA Night and Fog (1955)

    1991-2000Alain ResnaisDocumentaryFrance

    The history of Nazi Germany’s death camps of the Final Solution and the hellish world of dehumanization and death contained inside.Read More »

  • Alain Resnais – Mélo (1986)

    1981-1990Alain ResnaisArthouseDramaFrance

    In Paris in the 1920s, a concert violinist meets and falls in love with a stylish young flapper who’s the wife of an old friend. Romaine instigates the affair with Marcel, and carries it forward even as her husband, Pierre, falls ill. She may even be purposely giving Pierre a treatment that adds to his misery. After Marcel returns from a concert tour and Romaine stoops to a new low in abandoning Pierre for an assignation, she reconsiders the affair and takes a drastic step. Three years later, Pierre pays Marcel a visit to demand the truth. Will the jealous and aggrieved Marcel manage a convincing performance?Read More »

  • Alain Resnais – Muriel ou Le temps d’un retour AKA Muriel, or The Time of Return (1963)

    Alain Resnais1961-1970Amos Vogel: Film as a Subversive ArtArthouseDramaFrance

    Synopsis:
    Seyrig is a fortyish widow dealing antique furniture from her apartment, who invites an old flame she hasn’t seen since the Algerian war to visit her and her troubled eccentric filmmaker stepson (Thierre), whom she shares an apartment with in Boulogne (a city in the provinces). The stepson is a recent veteran of the Algerian war who can’t escape the memory of a young girl named Muriel he tortured and killed during the war, as he watches grainy 8mm film clips of newsreels which remind him of the Arab girl.Read More »

  • Alain Resnais – On connaît la chanson AKA Same Old Song (1997)

    Alain Resnais1991-2000ComedyFranceMusical

    Quote:
    Simon secretly loves Camille. Camille, due to a misunderstanding, falls for Marc Duveyrier. Marc, a handsome realtor, who’s also Simon’s boss, is trying to sell an apartment to Odile Lalande, Camille’s sister. Odile really wants this apartment, despite the silent disapproval of her husband, Claude. Claude, somewhat wan in character, finds it hard to stomach the reappearance, after many years, of Nicolas. Nicolas, an old friend of Odile’s becomes the confidant of Simon… The dialogue is in part made up of extracts of French hit songs, sung in situation by the actors.Read More »

  • Jacques Doillon & Alain Resnais & Jean Rouch – L’an 01 AKA The Year 01 (1973)

    Jacques Doillon1971-1980Alain ResnaisComedyFranceJean RouchPoliticsThe Films of May '68

    Quote:
    The film narrates a utopian abandonment, consensual and festive of the market economy and high productivity. The population decides on a number of resolutions beginning with “We stop everything” and the second “After a total downtime will be revived-reluctantly-that the services and products including lack will prove intolerable. Probably: water to drink, electricity for reading at night, the TSF to say “This is not the end of the world, this is an 01, and now a page of Celestial Mechanics”. The implementation of these resolutions is the first day of a new era, Year 01.Read More »

  • Alain Resnais – L’année dernière à Marienbad AKA Last Year at Marienbad (1961)

    1961-1970Alain ResnaisArthouseDramaFrance

    A cinematic puzzle, Alain Resnais’ Last Year at Marienbad is a radical exploration of the formal possibilities of film. Beautifully shot in Cinemascope by Sacha Vierny, the movie is a riddle of seduction, a mercurial enigma darting between a present and past which may not even exist, let alone converge. The film stars Giorgio Albertazzi as an unnamed sophisticate attempting to convince a similarly nameless woman (Delphine Seyrig) that they met and were romantically involved a year ago in the same enormous, baroque European hotel. Read More »

  • Alain Resnais – La guerre est finie AKA The War Is Over (1966)

    1961-1970Alain ResnaisArthouseDramaFrance

    from rogerrobert.com
    The hero of the film (Yves Montand) is a Spanish citizen who has been engaged ever since the war’s end in a variety of underground anti-Franco movements. He is part of a network that moves people and information in and out of Spain, prepares reports, calls general strikes, prints propaganda newspapers and does everything else that seems to be indicated. But the members of the underground are weary; they subscribe to political dogmas that no longer seem relevant, except to a few of them; they can show few tangible results.Read More »

  • Alain Resnais – Le chant du Styrène AKA The Song of Styrene (1958)

    1951-1960Alain ResnaisDocumentaryFranceShort Film

    Quote:
    From a plastic bowl to petroleum, we trace back through the complete industrial process that leads to the manufacture of plastic objects. The force of the commentary composed in alexandrine verse by Raymond Queneau matches the wide screen of CinemaScope proportions.Read More »

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