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5 items from 2012

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Claude Miller obituary

6 April 2012 7:19 AM, PDT | The Guardian - Film News | See recent The Guardian - Film News news »

French film director and close associate of François Truffaut

The film director Claude Miller, who has died aged 70 after a long illness, was continually dogged by comparisons to his friend and mentor François Truffaut. Hardly a review of his films failed to mention Truffaut in some way or another. This came about for various reasons. Miller was Truffaut's production manager on several occasions and made subtle references to the older director's work in many of his own films, almost always mentioning him in interviews. He had a small role in Truffaut's L'Enfant Sauvage (The Wild Child, 1970) and adapted La Petite Voleuse (The Little Thief, 1988) from a 30-page screenplay that Truffaut had written a few years before his death.

When Truffaut was once asked whether he had started a school of directors, he denied it. "These people are more influenced by other directors than myself. If Claude Miller has points in common with me, »

- Ronald Bergan

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Claude Miller, director of La Petite Voleuse, dies aged 70

5 April 2012 5:51 AM, PDT | The Guardian - Film News | See recent The Guardian - Film News news »

Film-maker best known for film starring a young Charlotte Gainsbourg as a teenage serial thief has died

The French film director Claude Miller, best known for L'Effrontée and La Petite Voleuse, both featuring a young Charlotte Gainsbourg, has died aged 70.

Before becoming a director himself, Miller worked for a number of noted new wave directors: he acted as assistant director on Robert Bresson's Au Hasard Balthazar, Jacques Demy's Les Demoiselles de Rochefort, and Jean-Luc Godard's Weekend, before becoming production manager for a string of films by François Truffaut, including Bed and Board, Day for Night and The Story of Adele H.

With Truffaut's encouragement, Miller moved into a higher profile role, making his directorial debut in 1976 with The Best Way to Walk. His first significant success, however, was the multi-award-winning police procedural thriller Garde à Vue, with Lino Ventura and Michel Serrault.

In the mid-80s, Miller »

- Andrew Pulver

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Attention NYC: Win The Rialto DVD Box Set & Tickets To 15th Anniversary Screenings At Film Society Of Lincoln Center

19 March 2012 1:23 PM, PDT | The Playlist | See recent The Playlist news »

While New Yorkers have plenty of opportunity to see classic films on the big screen, you'll be hard pressed to find a lineup as front to back awesome as the Film Society Of Lincoln Center's "15 For 15: Celebrating Rialto Pictures."

The series honors the reknowned arthouse distribution shingle founded in 1997 that has brought some of the best known (and previously unknown) classics of cinema to American audiences. And the selection here by programmers Scott Foundas, Eric Di Bernardo and Adrienne Halpern represents the breadth and scope of the films Rialto has put their stamp on, ranging from the French New Wave ("Breathless") to film noir ("Rififi") to comedy ("Billy Liar") and more. There is something here for everybody and with the series kicking off tonight, we've got a special prize for some lucky readers.

Courtesy of Film Society Of Lincoln Center, we've got a copy of the excellent Rialto DVD »

- Kevin Jagernauth

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The Garlic Gangster – The 5 Best Films of Jean-Pierre Melville

13 March 2012 6:35 AM, PDT | Obsessed with Film | See recent Obsessed with Film news »

Jean-Pierre Melville (October 20, 1917 – August 2, 1973), was a French film director often looked upon as the ‘king crime-noir films’. His body of work and mise-en-scene style heavily influenced Scorsese, John Woo and Tarantino to name but a few. Under-stated and minimalist, he managed the difficult process of making an artistic film also commercially viable. Melville would control everything from set design, writing the script, and running the camera, mixing obsessive gangster pastiches with restrained, precise and sensitive symbolism.

Described as the ‘Poet of the underworld’ and the ‘garlic gangster’, he was considered to be the “father of the nouvelle vague”, a major influence on the French New Wave movement. But it was the American gangster films of the ’30s and ’40s starring James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart that really caught his imagination. Melville recreated the genre for a new wave audience using weapons, trench coats and fedora hats, to shape a characteristic look in his movies. »

- Matthew Gunn

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The Forgotten: Fortune's Fools

12 January 2012 6:05 AM, PST | MUBI | See recent MUBI news »

Thought #1: contact sports have given us an unusual number of fine actors. George C. Scott's nose testified to his travails in the ring, as did John Huston's. France offers Michel Simon, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Italian emigre Lino Ventura. Ventura, a former boxer and wrestler, is perhaps the least celebrated of this triumvirate, but he is beyond great. Initially typed as toughs, understandably given his squat frame and flattened menhir of a nose, he demonstrated such conviction that he could be cast as an art dealer in Montparnasse 19 and as an intellectual freedom fighter in Melville's Army of Shadows. His combination of muscle and brains makes him a perfect choice to play an engineer in—but wait...

Thought #2: It's remarkable how many truly horrible character Alain Delon has played. Impressive that he'd do that—either he's unusually interested in villainy, or directors just see him that way, »

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2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008

5 items from 2012

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