French films in 70′s revolutionized the way we look at films today
These films questioned conventional narrative and challenged established wisdom
These are 7 Revolutionary 70′s French Films that will strike you with their vision and make you ponder in the process
Director: Chantal Akerman
Cast: Aurore Clément, Helmut Griem, Magali Noël, Hanns Zischler, Lea Massari, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Alain Berenboom, Françoise Bonnet, Thaddausz Kahl, Laurent Taffein, Victor Verek
Genre: World Cinema
Year: 1978
Original Title: Les Rendez-vous d’Anna
Chantal Akerman’s Anna’s Meetings is the descriptive diary of a three day trip its main character makes. Anna – played by Aurore Clément - is a film-maker travelling to Germany to an awards ceremony, staying in a series of anonymous rooms. During the course of her journey she encounters different people, but she is detached, listening to them without engaging. In a pivotal scene Anna lies in her mother’s bed in Brussels and confesses her love for another woman
Anna’s Meetings reveals Chantal Akerman’s avant-garde roots in its use of real time and minimal camera movement, and this restraint is testing – Anna’s Meetings forces us to confront the everyday and the mundaneThrough the course of her conversations we learn something of Anna’s past, but Chantal Akerman’s approach distances us just as Anna distances herself from her encounters. Anna’s Meetings forces us to question our responses to film
http://youtu.be/6rKzyc8aYWs
Director: Bertrand Tavernier
Cast: Philippe Noiret, Jean Rochefort, Jacques Denis, Yves Afonso, Julien Bertheau, Jacques Hilling, Clotilde Joano, Andrée Tainsy, William Sabatier, Cécile Vassort, Sylvain Rougerie, Christine Pascal, Liza Braconnier, Hervé Morel, Sacha Bauer
Genre: World Cinema
Year: 1974
Original Title: L’horloger de Saint-Paul
The Watchmaker of St. Paul is the first film directed by ex-critic Bertrand Tavernier, and shows as much precision in its production as its main character does in his work. Philippe Noiret plays the part of the watchmaker Michel Descombes, who is told that his son is wanted for murder. The Watchmaker of St. Paul is not a detective story but rather examines the two main relationships – that of Michel with his son, and also the friendship that develops between Michel and the police investigator, Inspector Guilboud – played by Jean Rochefort. It transpires that Michel’s son has killed a man who had been bullying his girlfriend at the factory where she worked
Through the course of The Watchmaker of St. Paul Michel comes to understand what his son has done, and although he does not approve of murder, he is, by the end, in some ways proud of his son. The Watchmaker of St. Paul is a metaphor for the wider issues highlighted by the events of May ’68, and looks at the disillusionment felt at society’s institutions and the political system. The Watchmaker of St. Paul won the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in 1974
Director: Jean Eustache
Cast: Bernadette Lafont, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Françoise Lebrun, Isabelle Weingarten, Jacques Renard, Jean-Noël Picq
Genre: World Cinema
Year: 1973
Original Title: La maman et la putain
Jean Eustache wrote and directed The Mother and the Whore, the film which Cahiers du Cinema called the best film of the 1970s. Shot in black and white, The Mother and the Whore uses the style of cinema verite documentary and the script is based entirely on real conversations, and on one level, is outstanding as a diary of everyday Parisian life. But The Mother and the Whore is more than that. Eustace wrote the part of Alexandre specifically for Jean-Pierre Léaud, who had made his first appearance as a troubled teen in François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows in 1959 - one of the seminal films of the French New Wave. Following the social unrest and political upheaval of May’68, Jean Eustache felt that the French New Wave had lost its way. In The Mother and the Whore Alexandre is an unemployed vain dilettante who lives off the women in his life
Following the mores of the time Alexander is involved with two women, Marie who he lives with and who represents the mother, and Veronika, a Polish nurse who thinks of herself as sexually liberated and who represents the whore. In examining Alexandre’s way with women The Mother and the Whore also questions how women see men, and more generally, what – if any – gains had been made by the supposed social and sexual revolution
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