Michael Lonsdale

  • Édouard Molinaro – Le telephone rose AKA The Pink Telephone (1975)

    Édouard Molinaro1971-1980ComedyDramaFrance
    Le telephone rose (1975)
    Le telephone rose (1975)

    A satire about the French small businessman: A naive, middle-aged and paternal managing director (Mondy), subject to takeover by a wily American conglomerate, becomes besotted with Darc, supposedly the PR man’s niece but actually a callgirl hired as an inducement for the night.Read More »

  • Francis Reusser – Seuls (1981) (HD)

    1981-1990ArthouseDramaFrancis ReusserSwitzerland

    Seuls is a film about the symbolic order of love, a sort of fantastic thriller on Oedipus…” ~Francis Reusser

    Synopsis:
    Jean (Niels Arestrup), the lead character in this psychological journey is torn by a search for his lost childhood, the overwhelming need to love a woman of his dreams (someone he has invented), and a struggle with his latent bisexuality. Jean finds some photos inside an automatic photo station that look like his mother who died soon after he was born. He starts to fantasize about the woman, giving her a name and identity and waiting for her to appear. During this time, he meets Carole (Christine Boisson) and has an affair with her, all the while pretending he has this other relationship with the woman in the photo. Significantly, the couple who introduce him to Carole is childless, and they eventually split up – perhaps a comment on the importance of childhood to the adult world. In the end, Carole discovers that Jean’s “other woman” has no real existence, causing a crisis that finds a symbolic expression as the last scenes close on the story.Read More »

  • Marguerite Duras – India Song (1975) (HD)

    1971-1980ArthouseDramaFranceMarguerite Duras

    Marguerite Duras’s most celebrated work is a mesmerizing, almost incantatory experience with few stylistic precedents in the history of cinema. Within the insular walls of a lavish, decaying embassy in 1930s India, the French ambassador’s wife (Delphine Seyrig) staves off ennui through affairs with multiple men—with the overpowering torpor broken only by a startling eruption of madness. Setting her evocatively decadent visuals to a desynchronized chorus of disembodied voices that comment on and counterpoint the action, Duras creates a haunted-house movie unlike any other. (-criterion.com)Read More »

  • Catherine Binet – Les jeux de la comtesse Dolingen de Gratz (1981)

    1981-1990ArthouseCatherine BinetDramaFrance

    Quote:
    In Paris, a young woman, Louise Haines Pearson, visits her disturbed friend Nena who tells her that she has just written a book on the history of a little girl troubled by her senses, perhaps because of the tyranny of his mother and the absence of her father. Louise recognizes the difficulties of this little girl, being herself deeply affected by the indifference of her husband.Read More »

  • Marcel Hanoun – L’automne (1972)

    Marcel Hanoun1971-1980ArthouseExperimentalFrance

    Synopsis: Julien, a movie director, is on the phase of editing his new film, “Juliette sacrifiée”. Hurried by his producer, he asks for the help of a professional editor. It is Anne, with whom Julien is soon falling in love. During the whole of the movie, both are sitting in front of the editing table, where they listen to music, talk about politics and what movies should and should not be about, make love, and finally end up editing the film as was planned.Read More »

  • Jean Eustache – Une sale histoire AKA A Dirty Story (1977)

    Jean Eustache1971-1980DramaFrance

    Quote:
    A group of friends listen as one man tells them a story about a time when, in a small cafe, he discovered a peephole into the ladies’ bathroom and became addicted to looking through it at female genitals. They ask him questions and come to conclusions about sex. This is a filmed, scripted version. Then, the actual person who this happened to relates the same story; this time, however, it is an unscripted documentary, in which the same things occur as in the scripted one.Read More »

  • Marcel Hanoun – Le printemps (1971)

    1971-1980ArthouseExperimentalFranceMarcel Hanoun

    One could only enumerate the elements to let the film tell itself. And this is besides one possible purpose of Hanoun here. Just let things communicate between themselves without the coercition of usual continuums (space and time) and let’s see and feel what happens. Yet there are clues given, relations but they are separated when one could await a close editing and vice versa. There seems to have two worlds, cinematographic worlds I mean : B&W and colour and things circulate from one world to another, people too…

    But let’s just enumerateRead More »

  • Marcel Hanoun – L’hiver (1969)

    Marcel Hanoun1961-1970ArthouseExperimentalFrance

    Synopsis:
    Julien et son preneur de son, Michel, tournent à Bruges un documentaire de commande. Julien rêve au film qu’il pourrait tourner dans cette ville mystérieuse: une adaptation de Shakespeare ou de Musset. Le rejoint bientôt Sophie, sa femme, ancienne comédienne, qui souffre de la distance que Julien semble mettre dans leurs rapports. Bientôt, à une exposition de peinture, elle rencontre un artiste qu’elle voit sous les traits de Julien et qui l’invite à venir visiter Florence. Elle confie à Michel ses tourments. Julien, de son côté, vient d’accepter la proposition de son producteur: réaliser une “histoire” avec des “personnages” et, pourquoi pas, des “vedettes”… Alors qu’elle semblait décidée à suivre l’inconnu, Sophie se jette dans les bras de Julien. Le metteur en scène qui tourne un film intitulé “L’hiver” demande une nouvelle prise. Pour la seconde fois, Sophie se jette dans les bras de Julien. Le peintre inconnu s’en va…
    © Fiches du CinémaRead More »

  • Marguerite Duras – Son nom de Venise dans Calcutta désert (1976)

    1971-1980ArthouseExperimentalFranceMarguerite Duras

    When the film Son nom de Venise dans Calcutta désert was initially shown in 1976, many viewers found it hauntingly beautiful but deeply perplexing. Some, seeing it as a sign of Duras’ inability to separate herself from the making of India Song, even ascribed the film to a kind of postpartum depression. Since that time, the film has been placed in perspective as an inseparable component of the India cycle as a whole, although little has been written, with certain notable exceptions, on its specific relation to the other works. Son nom de Venise dans Calcutta désert is a purely metanarrative epilogue that culminates the progressive decomposition of spectacle as well as the dismantling of the neocolonial subject conceived as specular identity that was initiated by previous works in the India cycle.Read More »

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