I can't find any threads about Alain Resnais...

i'm sure xyzzz has talked abt his films somewhere on ilx...but search doesn't seem to throw up any threads w/resnais in the subject line.

my search was prompted by reading an interesting piece from an ex-ilxor (to the best of my knowledge) in the new sight and sound, abt the now-common view that at present, american television is creatively better than american movies. in particular this paragraph:

'In 2006 Alain Resnais, interviewed in Positif, praised the virtuoso mise en scene and decoupage of Kim Manners, director of 52 episodes of The X-Files (1993-2002), adding: "In Millennium, The Shield, The Sopranos, 24 , and others, I find the cinematic syntax more rich and inventive than in the majority of cinema."

"the majority of cinema" is not presently, or ever, overwhelming, but he is not describing the majority of TV.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDbHwz6JGzo

Anyhoo,

S: iNight and Fog, Hiroshima mon amour, Last Year At Marienbad, Le guerre est le finie, Je t'aime, je t'aime (Fox needs to pull their finger out and license this to Criterion or Shout! Factory), Mon oncle d'Amérique (Criterion needs to pull their finger out and get this beyond "Hulu Exclusive"), Private Fears In Public Places

Want To Like More: Muriel, Stavisky

Overrated: Wild Grass

Haven't seen: the rest

I've seen a number of his recent films and Wild Grass is easily the best of those; stands with all but his top couple classics.

I was more enthused by the fact that Resnais is still such a cinephile, so engaged w/ some p recondite examples of popular culture (Millennium!) - it's the same man who collaborated w/ Stan Lee on two screenplays!

He made a comic book adapatation in the late 80s didn't he? Not seent that one.

I wonder who that old ilxor could be :) A lot of ppl are revelling at what they perceive to be a death of cinema; usually people that hate most cine-culture, which was predominantly made from a left perspective. In tandem w/this I skimmed through an article on how most actors are now looking at TV roles moreso than cinema.

Of course I very much doubt that's what NRQs article is doing.

And then again its not even TV, its the box-set - no appointment televsion anymore. Many people will watch a boxset but happily admit they "don't watch TV".

Nothing to do w/Resnais: who has also used Mark Snow (who scored many Eps of the X-Files) in his later films. He has always had a very wide palette of interests - look at the docs by Varda and Marker. That group of people just had wider interests...

Ward - have you seen any of his films? I just recalled somewhere you said you hadn't seen Hiroshima Mon Amour.

xyzzzz, i am p resnais-ignorant - but i did finally catch up w/ Hiroshima - loved it - and have seen Last Year in Marienbad - looking forward to those newly announced bfi robbe-grillet blurays. have muriel on the teetering to-be-watched stack.

rightly or wrongly, i am a bit wary of his ayckbourn collabs

Great! Private Fears in Public Places is nothing to get excited about but it goes back to what you were saying re: his interests in popular culture, but also his wider interests in theatre and lit. I think Resnais and Ayckbourn met when Resnais went to see a play of his and was spotted by a mutual acquaintance iirc, so he wasn't looking to be introduced.

Everything he did in the 60s was great, then jump to Mon oncle d'Amérique. Depardieu was on an awesome run at that time on various ppls films.

Robbe-Grillet's films aren't all that, I'd say. Duras' films I think are the ultimate lost French films. Love to see those restored (have very shagged out copies of a couple of 'em).

Muriel is absolutely great. I saw Smoking at CPH PIX last april, and wow, it was boring. So long. You could hear the audience groan at the last few repetitions. Don't.

well, I've been curious to see Providence for 36 years; presuming this edition will be around elsewhere, as I may not be free for NYFF.

http://www.filmlinc.com/nyff2013/films/providence

saw the swan song tonight, You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet. A cumulative power similar to Altman's Prairie Home Companion.

RIP Alain, apparently

http://www.lepoint.fr/ces-gens-la/le-cineaste-alain-resnais-est-mort-02-03-2014-1796944_264.php

:-(

RIP

Pretty cool that he ended his career by winning the Alfred Bauer prize in Berlin, for a film that "opens new perspectives on cinematic art". A renewer to the end.

An online bibliography (with more to come)

http://filmstudiesforfree.blogspot.de/2014/03/toute-la-memoire-du-monde-in-memoriam.html

He died too late to make it tonight's RIP segment

RIP. Night and Fog is the only one of his I've seen, I'm sorry to say.

Don't think I've watched Night and Fog or Hiroshima since university. Muriel and Marienbad played here a few years ago--the latter is perplexing, to put it mildly. La Guerre est Finie looks like the most accessible, but I've never seen it. Are Godard and Varda the last two left from that era?

watch last year at marienbad asap, preferably on blu-ray or in a theater, and without pausing for snacks or going to the toilet. xp

I was gonna say Chabrol, but forgot he passed in 2010. xp

Marienbad would probably be on my all-time top 20.

and Rivette. xxp (dazzling tribute, clem)

Wild Grass is the late masterpiece.

As he was never even nominated or given a special award, this is a reminder that the Oscars are shit and always have been.

Wild Grass is the only film of his I loved. PBS showed Providence often in the nineties; Resnais had problems with English, and in this film so did Gielgud.

Sorry, Morbius, let me backtrack: I understood Marienbad perfectly and it changed my life.

Resnais himself wasn't nominated, but Robbe-Grillet did get cited by the screenwriters that year. FWIW. Not that it matters. Because Marienbad is eternal.

For those of you who do love Marienbad, can you tell me approximately how far into the film that one jarring shot is--I think it's a reverse tracking shot into the couple's room. I want to show that to my class, and I'm not finding it scanning the film online.

moullet lives, straub as well though he isn't really new wave i guess

My write-up of Life of Riley: http://centrifugue.blogspot.com/2014/04/cphpix-day-7-small-homeland-quiet-roar.html

Scroll down, it's number three out of four. Short version: It's fun, but also quite minor, and contrary to what the Berlin Jury thought, it doesn't really 'open new perspectives' on cinema. It's quite a lot like Smoking, the only other of his Aycbourn-adaptions I've seen. I really want to see Private Fears in Public Places, though.

caught up with Stavisky... (ellipsis and all) yesterday. Belmondo brings a lot of energy and Charles Boyer brings the wit, but Kael is right in saying that the techique is "beautiful but inexpressive." It's like Bugsy with more lawyers and fewer bullets.

idk about that quote I think Resnais can handle doing things with a lack of expression. He made Marienbad = he can do cold.

Rosenbaum essay for today's BR/DVD release of Je t’aime, je t’aime

http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/2015/11/trapped-in-time-alain-resnais-je-taime-je-taime/

Giving this a hurried reading - tx, its about time Je t'aime, Je t'aime was on DVD.

I'm not sure its a misconception that his films are 'cold', and I wouldn't say that this is a bad thing. Although he is only said to be like this because of Marienbad, which lets face it doesn't offer easy warmth.

Resnais always feels in control of highly dense, textual material. Don't go along with the intellectual = writing short hand Rosenbaum is using. Resnais is the most intellectual of directors by the way he shoots and controls a wide range of material and interests.

The 'Another Gaze' collective (its a feminist film journal) are putting a film season of Marguerite Duras' films. This is the nearest thread to all that.

The Lorry is screening this Thursday:

https://www.regentstreetcinema.com/programme/india-song/

That’s a good one.

Its fucking great btw. I saw Straub-Huillet's History Lessons a couple of days ago on MUBI and it uncannily follows a similar structure, alternating between a dialogue and silent shots of a drive around.

Straub-Huillet have a particular way of framing and Duras has a literary quality -- her sentences are full of 'hooks' -- so she is able to sustain a spoken text on film like almost nobody can. Not that many have tried.

What is perhaps unspoken is the 'star' quality Depardieu brings to The Lorry. iirc he was pretty much the silent hunk in this. There is a very odd, unique chemistry between the two of them which I don't think I've come across anywhere else.

kael loved the lorry iirc

Kino is issuing a new Marienbad blu next month, for those unaware.

Going to give all his big films another go this summer (series at the Lightbox). Has always lost me.

It's a mess of a movie, but Gielgud in Providence is really really funny.