Jean-Pierre Léaud Retrospective Philippa Hawker July 2014 2014 Melbourne International Film Festival Dossier To be anointed as the child of the nouvelle vague could be a burden for any actor to bear, but Jean-Pierre Léaud has carried it with grace, inventiveness and humility over more than half a century of cinema. In...
Children of the Revolution – Truffaut and Les Quatre cents coups David Melville July 2014 2014 Melbourne International Film Festival Dossier “I lie... but only once in a while. At times, if I told the truth they wouldn’t believe me. So I tell lies.” - Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud), Les Quatre cents coups In the first scenes of François Truff...
Le Départ Bruce Hodsdon July 2014 2014 Melbourne International Film Festival Dossier Jerzy Skolimowski’s Le Départ (1967) was shot in three weeks on a budget of just $US100,000 – a low cost even in the mid-1960s (1). There was also a good deal of improvisation in this film, the first Skolimowsk...
“Thirteen Others Formed a Strange Crew”: Jean-Pierre Léaud’s Performance in Out 1 by Jacques Rivette Daniel Fairfax July 2014 2014 Melbourne International Film Festival Dossier Jean-Pierre Léaud strides down the middle of a narrow Parisian street, declaiming a few lines of nonsense poetry, which he repeats several times over in circular fashion, such that one soon loses track of any s...
Irma Vep John Fidler July 2014 2014 Melbourne International Film Festival Dossier Originally published in Senses of Cinema Issue 56, August 2010 With its rapid cuts, roaming camera, passel of characters (some of them so pitiful they seem always in need of a hug or maybe a swat on the behi...
The Mother and the Whore Martine Pierquin July 2014 2014 Melbourne International Film Festival Dossier Originally published in Senses of Cinema Issue 48, August 2008 La Maman et la putain/The Mother and the Whore (1973 France 215 mins) Prod Co: Elite Films/Ciné Qua Non/Les Films du Losange/Simar Films/V. M...
October Love Song: the 51st Viennale Daniel Fairfax November 2013 Festival Reports There are festivals that are objectively deemed to be ‘major’, and then there are festivals that have a special place in our individual hearts. The Viennale certainly occupies this latter position for me, but I...