3
Oct/10

CinémaTuesdays: HOLLYWOOD LOVES FRENCH CINEMA

3
Oct/10

Richard Gere begs audiences to take another look at his 1983 remake, BREATHLESS

French Institute Alliance Française
Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
October 5-26, $10, separate admission for each screening
212-355-6160
www.fiaf.org

Continually bereft of original ideas, Hollywood producers are constantly mining through foreign films they can remake in English for their next big hit. One of their favorite targets is France, which has led to such American movies as THREE MEN AND A BABY, COUSINS, TRUE LIES, THE BIRDCAGE, and DINNER FOR SCHMUCKS. All this month, the French Institute Alliance Française’s excellent CinémaTuesdays program is taking a look at this fruitful and fruitless relationship, screening four French classics alongside four American remakes. The series begins October 5 with screenings of the fiftieth anniversary restoration print of Jean-Luc Godard’s seminal 1960 Nouvelle Vague stunner À BOUT DE SOUFFLÉ and Jim McBride’s 1983 version of BREATHLESS; let’s just say that Richard Gere and Valérie Kaprisky are no Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg. On October 12, Jean Renoir’s BOUDU SAUVÉ DES EAUX (BOUDU SAVED FROM DROWNING) can be directly compared to its Hollywood offspring, Paul Mazursky’s quirky 1986 comedy DOWN AND OUT IN BEVERLY HILLS. The most fascinating pairing is Henri-Georges Clouzot’s harrowing 1953 drama LE SALAIRE DE LA PEUR (THE WAGES OF FEAR) and William Friedkin’s surprisingly gripping 1977 remake, SORCERER, with Roy Scheider doing an outstanding job playing the torturous Yves Montand role as a driver who must go through hell to try to get a shipment of nitroglycerine to its intended destination. The series concludes with a couple of lesser-known films, Marcel Carné’s LE JOUR SE LÈVE (DAYBREAK, 1939), starring the elegant Jean Gabin, and Anatole Litvak’s 1947 remake, THE LONG NIGHT, with Henry Fonda in the lead role. Please note that separate admission is required for each screening; unfortunately, these are not double features.

Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg star in Jean-Luc Godard’s anarchic, iconic BREATHLESS (courtesy Rialto Pictures/StudioCanal)

BREATHLESS (À BOUT DE SOUFFLE) (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)
French Institute Alliance Française
Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Tuesday, October 5, $10, 12:30 & 7:00
212-355-6160
www.fiaf.org

The fiftieth-anniversary restoration of Jean-Luc Godard’s Nouvelle Vague classic, BREATHLESS, will leave audiences, well, breathless. Godard’s first feature-length film, buoyed by an original treatment by François Truffaut and with Claude Chabrol serving as technical adviser, is as much about the cinema itself as it is about would-be small-time gangster Michel Poiccard (an iconic Jean-Paul Belmondo), an ultra-cool dude wandering from girl to girl in Paris, looking for extra helpings of sex and money and having trouble getting either. Along the way he steals a car and shoots a cop as if shooing away a fly before teaming up with Patricia Franchini (Jean Seberg) and heading out on the run. Godard references William Faulkner and Dashiell Hammett, Humphrey Bogart and Sam Fuller as Michel and Patricia make faces at each other, discuss death, and are chased by the police. Anarchy prevails, both in Belmondo’s character and the film as a whole, which can go off in any direction at any time. Godard himself shows up as the man who identifies Michel, and there are also cameos by New Wave directors Jean-Pierre Melville and Jacques Rivette. The beautiful restoration, supervised by the film’s director of photography, Raoul Coutard, also includes a brand-new translation and subtitles that breathe new life into one of cinema’s greatest treasures.