I mentioned yesterday being obsessed with Paris lately; a good chunk of that is watching more French films, most of them set in Paris (Godard‘s Band of Outsiders and Une femme est une femme, Melville‘s Bob le flambeur, the recent Avenue Montaigne and Paris, je t’aime). Also, trying to learn more about the French New Wave, which grew up in Paris, around the Cinematheque Française. When considering the question of what historical time and place I would want to go back to if I could go back in time, I always used to say the Old West, around the time the railroads were being built. I’d still like that, but I think now I might choose 1950s-60s Paris, so I could attend the Cinematheque Française and witness the revitalization of American genre film and the birth of the New Wave. Not to mention getting to see all those classic films on the big screen with other cinephiles! This video clip is from a documentary about Bernardo Bertolucci‘s film The Dreamers, which is set in the mid-1960s, when the Cinematheque founder Henri Langlois was removed from its administration by the French government, much to the outrage of the film community. I’ve reedited the clip a bit to highlight the Cinematheque more than The Dreamers. ;) The first male voiceover is Bertolucci, and the color clips are from The Dreamers; Matthew is the main character of the film. The rest is documentary footage from the 1960s.
*sigh* Ah, well.
If I can’t go to the original Cinematheque Française (it still exists, but in a different place, and obviously Langlois is no longer around), can I at least go to New York’s Film Forum? Look at their list of showings this summer: Metropolis, Laura, Sorry, Wrong Number, The Lost Weekend, Taxi Driver, Cat People, Rear Window, Rope, The Wrong Man, Wait Until Dark, Love Me Tonight, Queen Christina, Silk Stockings, Blood and Sand, The 400 Blows, La Chinoise…and more! Wow. If I lived in New York, I fear movie-going would threaten to overshadow rent in significant expenses. Maybe I could just live at Film Forum. That’d be more efficient.