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5 items from 2012

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L'Atalante and the Films of Jean Vigo – review

14 May 2012 2:57 AM, PDT | The Guardian - Film News | See recent The Guardian - Film News news »

(Jean Vigo, 1930-34, PG, Artificial Eye)

One of France's most revered film-makers, his father an anarchist murdered in jail during the first world war, Vigo died of leukaemia in 1934 at the age of 29. He left behind an oddly attractive short featuring the French swimming champion Jean Taris and three masterpieces: the silent, satirical portrait of life on the Côte d'Azur À propos de Nice (1930); Zéro de conduite (1933), a surreal comedy about a revolt in a horrendous boarding school; and above all L'Atalante (1934), which he didn't live to see in its complete version.

L'Atalante is a beguiling, truthful love story about the ups and downs of the marriage between a young man and the country girl (the beautiful Dita Parlo) he brings to live with him on the barge he plies on the Seine with a cranky old seafarer (the great Michel Simon). Inventive, poetic, funny and deeply moving, it's magnificently »

- Philip French

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This week's new films

6 April 2012 4:05 PM, PDT | The Guardian - Film News | See recent The Guardian - Film News news »

Headhunters (15)

(Morten Tyldum, 2011, Nor/Ger) Aksel Hennie, Synnøve Macody Lund, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Eivind Sander. 100 mins

It's a Scandinavian crime thriller, but for once, this isn't like The Killing or The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. It's closer to the Coen brothers, with enough unpredictable plot turns, eccentric touches and morbid laughs to banish the Nordic darkness. There's something of Steve Buscemi about its hero, too: Hennie plays a slimy corporate headhunter/secret art thief who meets his match, loses his grip and literally ends up in the toilet as a result.

Le Havre (PG)

(Aki Kaurismäki, 2011, Fin/Fra/Ger) André Wilms, Kati Outinen, Jean-Pierre Darroussin. 93 mins

Applying his gentle, silent-comical approach to the tale of an illegal immigrant and his French protectors reaps rewards for Kaurismäki in a movie that's whimsical on the surface but built on firm foundations.

This Must Be The Place (15)

(Paolo Sorrentino, 2011, Us) Sean Penn, Frances McDormand, »

- Steve Rose

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The 100 Greatest Madonna Songs

3 February 2012 6:47 AM, PST | AfterElton.com | See recent AfterElton.com news »

The premiere of Madonna's video for "Give Me All Your Luvin,'" the first single off her new album M.D.N.A., is today, children. It's bound to be a little over-the-top and nutty, like the deranged song itself, and I assume it's not going to live up to the greatest stuff in Madonna's catalog. Then I remember: What does live up to the best stuff in Madonna's catalog? Turns out, not much. Madonna's repertoire is a varied and thundering collection of self-empowering pop ditties, soulful ballads, and kooky little anomalies. And they're mostly all irreplaceable. In the tradition of Rolling Stone, who listed their 100 Greatest Beatles Songs a couple years ago, let's reinspect Madonna's complete history and name her definitive 100 jams. Ready? Start disagreeing Now.

100. "Dance 2Night" from Hard Candy

Hard Candy’s most euphoric groove (and best dancefloor-filler) makes the stilted duo »

- virtel

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L'Atalante – review

20 January 2012 9:24 AM, PST | The Guardian - Film News | See recent The Guardian - Film News news »

Jean Vigo's sole feature-length film is a masterpiece of sophistication, technique and human feeling

Jean Vigo achieved a mature masterpiece with this movie, his only full-length feature film, made in 1934 just before his death at the age of 29, now in a restored version. Combining simplicity and delicacy with enormous sophistication and technique, it is an urban pastoral that to an extraordinary degree inspires love – both love for the film and love generally. Dita Parlo is Juliette, who marries Jean (Jean Dasté), a barge captain. For their honeymoon, they will go on a journey on his craft, L'Atalante. The boat is somehow both cramped and yet as unexpectedly capacious as a haunted house. They are joined by the eccentric seadog Père Jules (Michel Simon). Juliette and Jean's relationship almost founders entirely, and yet this expedition cannot quite be reduced to a metaphor for love's pilgrimage. It is too playful, anarchic, »

- Peter Bradshaw

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The Forgotten: The One-Man Band

19 January 2012 5:59 AM, PST | MUBI | See recent MUBI news »

Ménilmontant (1926) was written, directed, produced, edited and co-photographed in Paris by Dimitri Kirsanoff. And it is, on any terms, a remarkable piece of writing, direction, production, editing and cinematography.

I'm not sure why Marcel L'Herbier and Jean Epstein seem to be regarded as almost marginal figures in cinema, important, but somehow off the beaten path. I think they're as major as you can get. But Kirsanoff is even more neglected: he barely has a toehold in film history at all. And he seems to me to be in their league, though as yet I've seen only a little of his work. I'd even say that for Ménilmontant alone he should be in the highest ranks of French silent filmmakers. His career includes short, experimental films, as well as low-life melodramas and a German mountain film with Dita Parlo. His last film dates from 1957, the year of his death.

Ménilmontant falls »

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2012 | 2011 | 2010

5 items from 2012

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