Mon oncle d'Amérique (1980)

User Rating:

7.8/10   

Director:

Alain Resnais

Writers:

Jean Gruault (writer)
Henri Laborit (writings)

Release Date:

17 December 1980 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy | Drama | Romance

Plot:

Prof. Henri Laborit uses the stories of the lives of three people to discuss behaviorist theories of survival...

Plot Keywords:

Paris France | Attempted Suicide | Psychology | Social Commentary | Scientist

Awards:

Nominated for Oscar. Another 8 wins & 7 nominations

Cast

Gérard Depardieu	...	René Ragueneau
Nicole Garcia	...	Janine Garnier
Roger Pierre	...	Jean Le Gall
Nelly Borgeaud	...	Arlette Le Gall
Pierre Arditi	...	Zambeaux, le représentant de la direction générale à Paris
Gérard Darrieu	...	Léon Veestrate
Philippe Laudenbach	...	Michel Aubert
Marie Dubois	...	Thérèse Ragueneau
Henri Laborit	...	Himself
Bernard Malaterre	...	Le père de Jean
Laurence Roy	...	La mère de Jean
Alexandre Rignault	...	Le grand-père de Jean / Jean's Grandfather
Véronique Silver	...	La mère de Janine
Jean Lescot	...	Le père de Janine
Geneviève Mnich	...	La mère de René

Also Known As:

Les somnambules
My American Uncle

Runtime:

125 min

Country:

France

Language:

French

Color:

Black and White (archive footage) | Color (Eastmancolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Hong Kong:I | Italy:T | UK:12 | Australia:PG | Sweden:15 | Finland:K-16 | France:U | Switzerland:16 | USA:PG | West Germany:16 | Singapore:PG

Filming Locations:

Café de la Gare - 41 rue du Temple, Paris 4, Paris, France

Company:

Andrea Films

Trivia:

Director Trademark: [Alain Resnais] [character name]Pierre Arditi's character is named Zambeaux.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Film Geek (2005)

A brilliant example of using narrative to bring abstract ideas alive

This film was made with the cooperation of psychologist Henri Laborit. It's broken down, like a greek drama, into narrative episodes and odes where the chorus, in this case psychologist Laborit, explains the meaning of the episodes. I love this movie because it makes clear the pretenance to everyday life of a discourse which is very rich as an interpretation of life, in exactly Matthew Arnold's sense, but at the same time so abstract that most people just, for example, reading Laborit's "Decoding the human message" would not see the immediate relevance of what was being said to their own daily concerns. I use this film to teach psychology. I open my intro class with it every term. Learning to read this film is learning to think like a psychologist. In the film, we cut from scenes of the human characters involved in various relationships to Laborit showing how lab rats react to stress under various conditions. The result is not dry or pedantic but funny as hell. It comes off as the rats doing a low burlesque of the human comedy. We also see the characters as children and as adults and scenes from various formative episodes along the way. When Laborit says "a person is a memory which acts" it seems a powerful commentary on what we are seeing on screen. We see one character as a tiny girl interacting with her factory worker father. He is a communist and he is teaching his newly articualte baby girl to repeat after him "USA go home". Watching this, I remember being taught to sing "Jeusus loves me" shortly after I started talking. This film is funny and wonderful dealing with the thing which matters most of all, the question of what it means to be a person.