French films are shit. Porquoi?

Every year the Glasgow Film Festival takes part in a season of French cinema that features quite a lot of films by new or young French filmmakers, so it still feels like French is a productive cinema country (more so than the UK, anyway). These are films in an arthouse mode, generally - I have no idea about what constitutes 'popular' cinema in France now, if it even exists (I remember family holidays in France in the 1970s, when you would see big posters for obscure French comedies that would never ever play in the UK - would love to see a season of that stuff now - Ozon's Potiche seems to be partly a tribute to that 'genre'). As always, it's hard to make general comments about a large national cinema when we only get to see a tiny fraction of the totality, but any country where Godard, Dumont, Bonello, Denis, Desplechin, Assayas etc are still active can hardly be written off entirely.

i don't know if it's still subsidised, but france is large enough population-wise to sustain a film industry without having to worry enormously about selling same all round the world

(also -- or at least this was true back when i read whatever it was that taught me this^^^ -- it doesn't give a cultural fvck about its TV, and as a consequence a lot of its film basically fills some of the dramatic slots that TV offers in the UK)

that sounds about right but Peak TV is beginning to hit france too with some quality stuff like Trepalium and Bureau Des Legendes

but yes LOADS of stuff that just never gets translated.

yes there've been a handful of things getting into the nordic slot during scando downtime -- spiral most obviously (also a belgian thing abt a fancy bank robbery)

Yes, Spiral.

Was gonna say Carlos by Assayas was a made for TV thing (which played here at the cinemas, but I saw it on DVD).

As for French films this year there have def been a couple (and there always is a couple). Loved Things to Come.

well most mainstream French cinema consists of comedies, all more or less descending from the 70's "Les Bronzés" mold (ie middle class shenanigans in communal settings)
In a very different syle, I saw "Le Prénom" ("What's in a Name") the other day and thought it was surprisingly good for a mainstream comedy.

Caught up with Bonello's Nocturama at its NY premiere, variously put in mind of Bresson, mid-60s Godard and Rio Bravo. Maybe his best, along with the brothel movie.

http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/article/toronto-international-film-festival-2016-bertrand-bonellos-nocturama

http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/reviews-recommendations/nocturama-review-bertrand-bonello-terrorism-consumerism

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J122E5Ygz5s

I might have preferred Saint Laurent (to both of them) but yeah, it's really good.

https://d26dzxoao6i3hh.cloudfront.net/items/1w1B2G1r2I3F3z0J2r3C/image1.JPEG

tsk tsk

see BPM btw

my god Betty Blue, a recent beneficiary of the Criterion treatment, is garbage.

lol. otm

have never been an avid cinemagoer, so my opinion might be ignorable, but still: the only film showing I ever walked out of (this must have been ‘87), because it was just so not good and so not for me (my companion felt exactly the same).

the sheer quantity of french films about bourgeois city dwellers 'out of water' on a ill-advised adventures to the countryside where they learn to connect with what's real and also have a fling with a local or two before returning to the real world wiser and more fulfilled is just staggering, is there a quota or something?? it's like the french version of origami, or king cab pickups - a timeless art that they can produce endless minute variations on for centuries

"city dwellers 'out of water' on a ill-advised adventures to the countryside where they learn to connect with what's real and also have a fling with a local or two before returning to the real world wiser and more fulfilled"

my family and ! have been joking that is the plot of every Hallmark Christmas movie (except in those there is only one fling and there is no return to the real world)

I really enjoyed Petite Maman and Only the Animals recently, which fit these conditions to a point

The free translated opening from a paywalled Le Monde article:

In recent weeks, the rare images filmed by Jean Eustache (1938-1981) that were roaming the Internet have vanished; to be reborn better, in the coming months. After a meticulous restoration, the works of the filmmaker close to the New Wave, author of the legendary La Maman et la Putain (1973) , will finally find their way back to theaters.

The dispute which hindered the distribution of his filmography, never released on DVD and rarely shown on television , has just been lifted, following an agreement between the heir, Boris Eustache, and Les Films du Losange, as well as reveals to the world its new president, Charles Gillibert . Passed by MK2, founder of CG Cinéma, this 44-year-old producer took over this emblematic New Wave authors' house in July 2021, with two partners, investor Alexis Dantec and entrepreneur Jacques Veyrat.

Cool, thanks.

Excellent news!

niiiice!

Could someone give me some hints as to what the most essential French filmmakers of the 70's and 80's were? Making my way through a Tavernier box and would like to get a better grasp of the context he was operating in. Feels like international attention stayed focused on the nouvelle vague/left bank crowd for the most part.

Pialat probably first and foremost

Bertrand Blier too.

Beineix.

I know Chabrol was technically nouvelle vague but he was so damned prolific, and seemed to do the bulk of his most acclaimed work in that 70s/80s period.

Don't know how high his commercial profile was at the time, but André Téchiné?

Bit obvious but Rohmer?

Malle
Pialat
Beineix
Rohmer
Denis

Pialat
Sautet
Eustache

Rohmer and Malle are part of that 60's canon I mentioned before, thanks for all the other recs!

Yeah, but they were at their best in the '80s. Rohmer never topped his 1980s filmography.

Not disagreeing, it's just that my initial prompt for asking is that I feel 70's and 80's French cinema is v much overshadowed by those figuring towers from the 60's and I wanted to explore what was going on beyond that.

Guess his standing isn't great but I caught some 80s Carax and I liked them.

Will respectfully disagree that Malle was at his best in the 80s

Bresson still essential in the 70s
Jacques Deray made a number of interesting, mainstreamish thrillers throughout the 70s and 80s
Marguerite Duras stands alone
Claude Berri's Jean De Florette and Manon des Sources - MASSIVE hits in the 1980s
I don't really know Claude Sautet's work from the 70s, but again I think he was a reliable, more mainstream auteur

Two favourites from the 1980s:

Le Cop aka My New Partner (1984) - genuinely entertaining French comedywith a great lead performance from Phillipe Noiret as a corrupt cop
La Letrice (1988) - a film about reading and erotic pleasure, couldn't really get any more French if you tried

"Marguerite Duras stands alone"

Very much so.

If Swiss and Belgian Francophones count, Alain Tanner and Chantal Akerman.

Malle began the decade with two of his strongest films, though, yeah, Au Revoir les Enfants is meh.

New 4K restoration of The Mother and the Whore opens Cannes with Jean-Pierre Léaud and Françoise Lebrun in attendance:

https://www.cahiersducinema.com/actualites/eustache-les-yeux-neufs/?fbclid=IwAR0K8g-Z9Bt6TdEh3Aqlg4xgZQn31zDUg3KGgol14-KIfyURajRLGRsDPwk

Is there an ok for a DVD?

I think that's the plan - legit, remastered physical media releases for all of Eustache's stuff, finally approved by his estate.

Great, great news!

Janus Films has the US rights, so forecasters are anticipating Criterion Collection editions.

Did the auteur movement signify a shift in opportunity and power from playwrights to screenwriters to directors? How was this enabled by Hollywood? Has a similar shift ever been thought possible from composers to conductors? Is there a difference in performative or interpretive license or in recognition of sources of inspiration or authorship? Does the concept of inspiration in the arts or in human endeavor originate from what one can do with language?

What does a shift in opportunity mean?

I think if it means power or credibility or prestige then there is some of that. You seldom get a retro season which is focused on a producer or cinematographer though you get seasons on an actor. The focus on a director definitely takes it away from the array of technicians that work on film.

Auteur theory was never a 'movement'

My apologies for poor word choice. I blame Wikipedia, although retrospectively a source for self-justification in the face of ILX critics ;) :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_New_Wave

I think I meant directors realized they had leverage in the culture among critics and gatekeepers and influences to create or modify popular understanding of a genre.

influencers

Sorry I can't really make sense of your second post. Directorial power in and out of Hollywood existed before and after auteurism and was of course economically based - ie if you were a proven hitmaker (like Chaplin, say) you had much greater freedom than a studio contract director. I can't think of any directors who set out to 'modify popular understanding of a genre', or what this actually means in practice - what genres in particular do you mean?

Don't ever use 'influencers,' especially applied retroactively