Louis Malle: Search

and possibly destroy? although i doubt that there's much to destroy. There's a thread on ILF but no one loves ILF so...

I'm not very too familiar with his work. I love two of his later films so deeply that i wonder why i know so little of it.

"My Dinner with André" is probably in my all time top ten. Of course the play is amazing but in lesser hands the film could have been a disaster. Malle had the absolute confidence to do as little as necessary. It's a perfect thing.

"Au Revoir, Les Enfants" is closely observed and subtle and precise and utterly devastating. pretty close to perfection too, no?

the faber & faber malle on malle is really good, i never really thought of his body of work as a whole before that

feu follet is good, the heart murmur one is gr8

most are worth seeing

I was thinking about him because corey mentioned Le Feu Follet on facebook and it reminded me that i should see it.

feu follet is my favorite, i think its an incredible film. its not 'perfect' but its both pleasurably stylish and thoughtfully affecting

elevator to the gallows and murmur of the heart are also really great although they didnt grab me as much as the fire within did

elevator to the gallows
atlantic city
everything else

really love lift to the scaffold too as a policier. dude stuck in a lift all movie while jeanne moreau roams paris lit by shopwindows and two streetrats a bout de souffle avant la lettre

Au Revoir is too genteel, especially after The Fire Within, Murmur of the Heart, etc.

My favorite: Atlantic City.

Search: the India documentaries.

err elevator to the gallows yes. Ascenseur pour l'échafaud. miles davis improvised the score live to to the movie one night. a young malle approached him in a paris restaurant and asked him to iirc.

he kind of got dealt a bad hand falling between the cinema du papa and the new wave/left bank ppl. but the faber book makes a good case for looking at him in the latter light and also as a cinema direct practitioner. "we were all children of the new kodak film", he says.

as for destroy, Crackers seems to have been a disaster.

many years ago i saw a Robert Lepage play based around elevator to the gallows. that was good too. he was good then!

i havent seen it since i was a teenager but ill rep for 'vanya on 42nd street' too

id like to read malle on malle really. i watched a bunch of his early stuff that criterion put out last summer and felt like hes the sort of director whos work is v pleasurable to immerse oneself in

Zazie dans le metro is sort of tati crossed with new wave and is quite unsuccessful imo. Vanya on 42nd Street is beautiful imo.

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y109/fez_/3frames/bm3.gif

this one looks... mental.

Black Moon, btw.

joe dallasandro in it

Au Revoir is too genteel

i don't really feel this. it's perhaps a little too glossy but it makes the last scene all the more devastating.

Damage is interesting!

Zazie is worth a watch - every minute has a "isn't this the most charming and clever thing you've seen!" moment. I can't help but think of it as a movie that must have immediately dated the week after it was released.

Haven't seen it in a while - my opinion may change.

Damage is awful -- certainly his worst film.

Vayna on 42nd Street has several of my favorite performances on film/stage.

yeah i haven't seen Black Moon, i want to see it in a theater! i didn't like Damage when i saw it but "damaged ppl are dangerous" is so haunting.

Damage is certainly memorable although the weird artificiality of half of the scenes jars with the rest.

La Feu Follet was exhilirating the first time I saw it. The second time I was trying to quell the voice in the back of my head shouting "Fake!".

It was the first time I understood Kael's dislike of rewatching movies.

Damage is awful -- certainly his worst film.

this is very true. my uncle loves it, though, and he's usually got great taste.

It was the first time I understood Kael's dislike of rewatching movies.

yeah -- rewatching the Criterion edition last year, I noticed how stilted it was.

Damage is like the "don't play it for real until it gets real" audition scene in Mulholland Drive but for like two hours.

Damage got pretty good reviews -- Siskel & Ebert in particular. But the movie exists to give Miranda Richardson an Oscar nom.

hahaha. her genuine "doing the easy things well" compliment was so withering

i think i'm turning into a Damage apologist itt

wish i could chime in more on this but have been lazy about following up my intention to watch a bunch of malle over the last while - black moon & god's country particularly, but:

Zazie is worth a watch - every minute has a "isn't this the most charming and clever thing you've seen!" moment. I can't help but think of it as a movie that must have immediately dated the week after it was released.

what was weird to me about zazie, which i agree was sorta unsuccessful but fun enough, was seeing after that it was made in iirc 1960, and so was pretty much contemporaneous - like not far off - from those other first films of the wave, (not the shorts & not varda but the godard-on-the-streets-camera-in-tow-jump-cutting a bout de souffle etc etc). and it's weird to view through that prism, of being a kinda more bombastic, jump-cut, lively french thing, from the same place, but on a different scale.

i haven't seen for ages though so.

Got Vanya on 42nd Street on Criterion from the library

Also: a frail but still alert George Gaynes in the making-of documentary. Aww.

Malle's son was at school with me. He was on my football team and dated my sister for a few months when they were both in seventh grade. Wish I'd had more of a clue who Malle senior was back then, weird to see movies now with the dedication 'To C______' on them and think "oh yeah, that guy".

has anybody worked through the eclipse box? i just found my library has it, & a couple of things on there - calcutta & whatever his downhome-USA doc is called - always looked real interesting to me.

I own it and like it very much.

Black Moon is bonkers. I thoroughly enjoyed it, although I'd have liked to see more of the war between the sexes apparently happening in the surrounding countryside.

http://www.vivementdimanche.net/boutique/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/p/1/p11014.jpg

The Lovers, wow. Jeanne Moreau could evoke worlds by brushing her hair.

And then what she does in the last 20 minutes pushed the film all the way to the US Supreme Court.

this revive is not getting enough attention, considering it's to do with oral sex

https://www.criterion.com/films/539-the-lovers

https://scontent.fbed1-2.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/31947981_10216462132243509_7418791800309022720_n.jpg?_nc_cat=0&oh=02821cf5ceb6dfe5fef4dee965bda924&oe=5B958C1B

Elevator to the Gallows reminded me far more of a Columbo episode than I'd expected (not a insult).

Lol.

Co-invented the underwater documentary, in 1956:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8KkNC2bCBk

S: Atlantic City, My Dinner with Andre, Lacombe Lucien

D: Murmur of the Heart, Au Revoir Les Enfants

Not sure: Black Moon

& whatever his downhome-USA doc is called

i think you mean god's country, which i found really unexpectedly affecting. i didn't grow up too far away from where malle was shooting, a bit more suburban and in touch with a metro area than some of his subjects were, and his timeframe coincides with the very earliest part of my life - but it's like he condensed my childhood milieu, or the aspects of it that kept lingering on well past that time, given their longue duree character, into sociological types.

rewatched Vanya on 42nd Street. It's fine, especially as I saw a play in that decrepit theater before they renovated it, but i'd like it even more if someone better than Wallace Shawn was playing Vanya.

Brooke Smith and (especially) George Gaynes were the standouts when I saw it last.

Not surprisingly, didn't get a whole lot out of Atlantic City when I was 20 (in thrall to Scorsese), but 40 years later, I liked it. Good getting-old film, good shaggy-dog Altman narrative. Unless you're from here, you can't appreciate how wildly Canadian-centric the cast is: Kate Reid, Hollis McLaren, Robert Joy, Al Waxman, Moses Znaimer, Sean Sullivan, Harvey Atkin, Louis Del Grande.

I love it, certainly my pick for most fully realized Malle, though it has competition. Malle still hasn't received his due.

I've never had any desire to see On Golden Pond, so I can't say for sure, but I suspect it lost some Academy Awards for acting that it should have won.

I don't care that the characters were cynical, but the film seemed to encourage us to agree, "yup, there's no moral way to get along, what can you do but sell drugs?"

but the drugs bought wine lessons and lobster

I didn't really get any message being forced on me, but then I studiously avoid thinking about such things. (Dylan: "Myself, what I’m going to do is rent Town Hall and put about 30 Western Union boys on the bill. I mean, then there’ll really be some messages.") Sarandon seemed pretty moral: she grabbed some bad money and set out for a new life.

The characters in films like Le Feu Follet or Lacombe, Lucien often do bad things, but there's a moral complexity to those films that this lacked.
I barely drink wine and don't eat lobster (*moralist*).

Elevator to the Gallows reminded me far more of a Columbo episode than I'd expected (not a insult).

― Police, Academy (cryptosicko), Monday, July 23, 2018

The 1958 Elevator the Gallows is showing for free Friday night at the Library of Congress and I am intrigued due in part to the score-- In a late-night session on December 4, 1957, Miles Davis and his French quintet recorded an improvised, modal score for Louis Malle’s debut film “Ascenseur pour l'échafaud” (Elevator to the Gallows).

Anyone else already see it?

Looks like it is streaming also

It's been out on DVD via Criterion for almost 20 years. A bit less on Blu-ray.

https://www.criterion.com/films/778-elevator-to-the-gallows

I've seen it. It's a solid film, Moreau as usual is excellent, but Miles's score is easily the great thing about it. Worth seeing projected, especially for free.

XP ...and it comes with footage of that recording session!

It's second-tier Malle with a first-class score.

Place De La Republique rules. Some times "ordinary people talking about their lives" is my fave genre of media (this, Studs Terkel, the 7up series, Chronicle Of A Summer, etc.)

His docus and "Atlantic City" are really the only Malles I rate highly.

I was completely obsessed with Murmur of the Heart in high school. I should rewatch Au Revoir Les Enfants one of these days