Maurice Pialat

  • Maurice Pialat – La maison des bois (1971)

    Maurice Pialat1971-1980FranceTVWorld War One

    Quote:
    Made in 1971 for French TV, the epic LA MAISON DES BOIS
    comes from early in the Pialat’s belated
    feature-filmmaking career. Rather like Loach’s DAYS OF
    HOPE (Cinémathèque 2004) or Edgar Reisz’s HEIMAT
    series, it begins in costume drama and an ethnographic
    view of rural French life during World War One, and in
    an apparently sentimental tale of war orphans. But
    then it irises out from costume drama conventions into
    the transcendental, exploring Pialat*s spiritual
    themes, as well as the social dynamics, trauma and
    collective experiences of war.Read More »

  • Maurice Pialat – L’amour existe aka Love Exists (1960)

    Maurice Pialat1951-1960FranceShort Film

    A social commentary on post-war France’s urban developments.Read More »

  • Maurice Pialat – Janine (1962)

    Maurice Pialat1961-1970FranceShort Film

    Janine (1962)

    Two men are disappointed by women and united by a whore.Read More »

  • Maurice Pialat – À nos amours aka To Our Loves (1983)

    1981-1990DramaFranceMaurice Pialat

    Quote:
    In a revelatory film debut, the dynamic, fresh-faced Sandrine Bonnaire plays Suzanne, a fifteen-year-old Parisian who embarks on a sexual rampage in an effort to separate herself from her overbearing, beloved father (played with astonishing magnetism by Pialat himself), ineffectual mother, and brutish brother. A tender character study that can erupt in startling violence, À nos amours is one of the high-water marks of eighties French cinema.Read More »

  • Maurice Pialat – Passe ton bac d’abord… aka Graduate first (1979)

    1971-1980DramaFranceMaurice Pialat

    The world sometimes seems divided into two camps: those who recall their teenage years as having been an exhilarating dream, and those who remember them as having been an infernal, nightmarish hell. So it might do to describe Passe ton bac d’abord… [Graduate First… / Pass Your Bac First…] as Maurice Pialat’s “The Best Years of Our Lives”, while bearing in mind all that such a description might suggest: an unsparing portrait of the era when the words ‘sixteen candles’ still might have first conjured the image of flames.Read More »

  • Maurice Pialat – La gueule ouverte AKA The Mouth Agape (1974)

    1971-1980DramaFranceMaurice Pialat

    Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote:
    “Pialat’s third feature takes up a theme which, on the face of it, could not seem more uninviting: a middle-aged woman dying of cancer, and how this affects her husband and son. But what Pialat makes of this is so recognisable, embarrassing and moving – even, on occasion, funny – that he more than justifies his use of a forbidding subject. He has ideas about how emotions involving sex and death are intimately related – and about the clarity and lack of it that they shed on everything else, as son and father each go lusting after every woman in sight. He has ideas about cinema, too, and an expressive style that can encapsulate a lifetime of memories in a single shot. Without a trace of sentimentality or easy effect, this seemingly semi-autobiographical work is as intense in its way as The Mother and the Whore, and unforgettable.”Read More »

  • Maurice Pialat – Van Gogh [+Extras] (1991)

    1991-2000DramaFranceMaurice Pialat

    Quote:
    VAN GOGH deals with the last three months of the painter’s life. It was shot in Auvers-sur-Oise, a small village 30 kilometres outside Paris where Van Gogh actually spent the last three months of his life (May-July 1890). He had just spent a year at the asylum in Saint Remy and although still suffering from depression he was in better health. His three months in Auvers-sur-Oise was a time of great creative activity. He painted a canvas every day spent in Auvers and some of his greatest masterpieces.Read More »

  • Maurice Pialat – Van Gogh (1991) (HD)

    1991-2000DramaFranceMaurice Pialat

    A memorable depiction by one of the great French film-makers of the last 67 days of Vincent Van Gogh’s life. Deliberately steering away from sensationalism, the film covers the period after Van Gogh (Jacques Dutronc in a César-winning performance) comes to stay in Auvers-sur-Oise, near Paris and not far from his supportive brother Théo, to be treated by the physician Dr Paul Gachet. Beset by self-doubt, financial worries, and increasing signs of depression, Van Gogh feels himself attracted to the world of brothels and cabarets even as he pursues an intense, fluctuating relationship with Gachet’s much younger daughter Marguerite. He paints furiously as the depression takes hold and those around him must reassess their feelings for him….Read More »

  • Maurice Pialat – À nos amours AKA To Our Loves [+Extras] (1983)

    1981-1990ArthouseDramaFranceMaurice Pialat

    Synopsis:
    With his raw style of filmmaking, Maurice Pialat has been called the John Cassavetes of French cinema, and the scorching À nos amours is one of his greatest achievements. In a revelatory film debut, the dynamic, fresh-faced Sandrine Bonnaire plays Suzanne, a fifteen-year-old Parisian who embarks on a sexual rampage in an effort to separate herself from her overbearing, beloved father (played with astonishing magnetism by Pialat himself), ineffectual mother, and brutish brother. A tender character study that can erupt in startling violence, À nos amours is one of the high-water marks of eighties French cinema.Read More »

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