Michèle Morgan and Jean Gabin star in Jean Grémillon’s 1941 melodrama REMORQUES
French Institute Alliance Française
Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Tuesdays in June from June 7-28, $10
212-355-6160
www.fiaf.org
Born in Normandy in 1901, French auteur Jean Grémillon got his start in the world of film by playing violin accompaniment to silent films, then making documentaries, silent pictures, and, ultimately, feature-length narratives. Ranging from melodramas to social realism, his films were popular in his native country, especially during a particularly fruitful period around WWII, but he has not retained the international notoriety associated with such contemporaries as Marcel Carné and Jean Renoir. But institutions such as the Harvard Film Archive and now the French Institute Alliance Française are reexaming the career of the man who once said, “Who could fail to sense the greatness of this art, in which the visible is the sign of the invisible?” For its “CinémaTuesdays: The Magic of Jean Grémillon” series, FIAF will be screening four of Grémillon’s films on Tuesdays in June, beginning tonight with what is considered his masterpiece, Lumière d’été, followed by Daïnah la métisse on June 14, Little Lise on June 21, and Remorques (Stormy Waters), starring the great Jean Gabin, on June 28. [Ed. note: The June 7 screenings of Lumière d’été were canceled because of delays in shipping the print to FIAF; there has been one screening rescheduled for June 17 at 7:30, and admission is free.]