‘The sad-eyed, raven-haired Guinevere of the international art film’s belle epoque, Anna Karina will always possess a hallowed place in movie history: She was its first postmodern heroine, its first obscure object of cinephiliac desire. Godard’s ambiguous ardor for Karina, still visible to the naked eye in the seven features they made together between 1961 and 1966, had everything to do with his love for cinema. Karina’s unique relationship with Godard’s camera (an electric nexus of casual hunger and locked gazes that has eluded Godard with any other actress, and Karina with any other director) is unprecedented in its reverberating fascination. The era’s other iconicized women—Monica Vitti, Jeanne Moreau, Liv Ullmann, Stephane Audran, Machiko Kyo, etc.—all had their communicants, but Karina’s role in the slipstream defined Movieness by being all things to all witnesses: star, beauty, impulsive Every-waif, director’s inamorata, self-conscious movie image, genre spoofer, liberated gender-combat totem. Perhaps most thrillingly of all, she was the audacious, and always somewhat remote, heartthrob at the center of cinema’s bravest self-exploratory liaison.
‘So, meeting Karina today, at 60 and decidedly removed from the grainy, restless seventh heaven in which we’ve come to know her so well, is a shock. For one thing, she’s tall. “Oh, everybody is surprised by that,” she says in a bouncy, cigarette growl. “I just looked small because my eyes are so big. It’s the structure of the face—Sophia Loren and Ursula Andress always seemed enormous, but actually they’re quite petite.”
‘Celebrating Rialto’s refurbished re-release of Band of Outsiders, Karina is more than happy to revisit her Godardian odyssey, but unsurprisingly her portrait of filmmaking with the master offers up no secrets. For one thing, she never asked questions—as in, Why is the center of a heist film taken up with the three protagonists just hanging out and dancing in a bar? It seems impeccably spontaneous and lovely to us after the fact, but on the set it must’ve seemed, well, irregular, no? “I did as I was told. I had my character; we’d discuss it—what she’d wear, what she’d think. . . . C’mon, this was Jean-Luc! You didn’t interrogate him. People would always accuse us of improvising, but it’s absolutely not true. Jean-Luc’s scripts were always carefully revised, red pages, blue pages, yellow pages. Sure, often he’d make up dialogue on the spot, but everything was rehearsed, particularly the dance sequence in Bande à Part. When I hear about actors trying to control their movies—tsk, tsk. When I work with a director, he’s the director; what he wants me to do, I do. Especially with Jean-Luc: He’s such a genius; you must trust him completely. And I did. Anyway, every actor should once direct a film, so next time he’ll give less shit.”
‘Godard a workaday autocrat, Karina an obedient ingenue? While life couldn’t have been that ordinary, it adds a shine to the Godard-filmed Karina, an impulsive and stunning creature who inhabits the film sphere alone. Of course, for Karina that was merely the beginning: In the years since their collaboration, the Denmark-born ex-model has been fiercely active, having made dozens of films, and also performed in scores of TV movies, cabarets, and plays. (Next, she’s appearing as a chanteuse in Jonathan Demme’s The Truth About Charlie.) This last year has been spent mostly on the road, singing and promoting her new CD. But she’s still pestered and beloved for those intimate little experiments as new audiences continually discover them. “It’s a gift, an honor—these movies were made so long ago, and yet young people come up to me and thank me for making them. In Japan, the U.S., Europe, wherever, youngsters as young as 15, they don’t say, ‘I like that old movie,’ they say, ‘My God, that’s it, that’s life, that’s how I think.’ You know, back then Jean-Luc was criticized for being too new. Now it seems just right.”‘ — Michael Atkinson, Village Voice
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Stills
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Extras
Anna Karina interview in the early 1960s
Anna Karina’s Closet Picks
Anna KARINA : “Gainsbourg voulait tourner avec moi avant de mourir” (2011)
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Further
Anna Karina @ IMDb
Anna Karina Fan Site
fuck yeah! anna karina
‘Beauty Icon: Anna Karina
Anna Karina interviewed @ The A.V. Club
Anna Karina @ The Criterion Collection
hello karina
Anna Karina @ mubi
Anna Karina @ newwavefilms.com
Créteil 31 Honors Anna Karina
‘Anna Karina and the American Night’
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Songs
‘Rollergirl’
Serge Gainsbourg & Anna Karina ‘Ne dis rien’
‘La vie est magnifique’
‘Ma ligne de chance’
‘Sous le soleil exactement’
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Interview: Anna Karina on Godard
from Projections 13: Women Film-makers on Film-making
How did you meet Jean-Luc Godard?
Anna Karina: I did a lot of commercials for soaps and things like that. Jean-Luc saw a couple and asked me to come and see him because he was preparing Breathless. He said, “There’s a little part in the film. You have to take your clothes off.” I said, “I don’t want to.” And he said, “In that case, you don’t do the film.” That was fine by me and I left. Three months later he sent me a telegram saying there might be a part for me in another film. I showed it to my friends and said, “This guy wants to go to bed with me or something. I don’t want to go there.” They said, “You must be crazy. He just did a picture called Breathless. It’s not out yet but everyone says it’s fantastic. You absolutely must go and see him.”
I went back to his office. He said he wanted me to do the part and that I should sign the contract the next day. I asked him what the picture was about and he told me it was political. I said, “I could never do that. My French is not good enough and I know nothing about politics.” He said, “It doesn’t matter – you just have to do what I tell you to do.” And I said, “But do I have to take my clothes off?” And he said, “Not at all.” I told him that I couldn’t sign because I was underage. He said I should come back with my mother and that the production would fly her down from Copenhagen. I phoned her and said, “Mother, I’m going to star in a picture in France, and it’s very important you come.” “In a picture – you?” she said. “Yes, and it’s a political picture, Mother.” She said, “You must be out of your mind. You have to go to the hospital to see if you’re ok.” And I said, “No, Mother, you have to take the plane tomorrow because if you don’t come they might change their mind!” She hung up because she didn’t believe it. I phoned back and swore on my grandad’s head it was for real – she knew he was the person I loved the most. So she took the plane and we signed the contract. That’s how I got into The Little Soldier.
How did you and Jean-Luc get together?
That happened while we were shooting the picture in Geneva. It was a strange love story from the beginning. I could see Jean-Luc was looking at me all the time, and I was looking at him too, all day long. We were like animals. One night we were at this dinner in Lausanne. My boyfriend, who was a painter, was there too. And suddenly I felt something under the table – it was Jean-Luc’s hand. He gave me a piece of paper and then left to drive back to Geneva. I went into another room to see what he’d written. It said, “I love you. Rendezvous at midnight at the Café de la Prez.” And then my boyfriend came into the room and demanded to see the piece of paper, and he took my arm and grabbed it and read it. He said, “You’re not going.” And I said, “I am.” And he said, “But you can’t do this to me.” I said, “But I’m in love too, so I’m going.” But he still didn’t believe me. We drove back to Geneva and I started to pack my tiny suitcase. He said, “Tell me you’re not going.” And I said, “I’ve been in love with him since I saw him the second time. And I can’t do anything about it.” It was like something electric. I walked there, and I remember my painter was running after me crying. I was, like, hypnotized – it never happened again to me in my life.
So I get to the Cafe de la Prez, and Jean-Luc was sitting there reading a paper, but I don’t think he was really reading it. I just stood there in front of him for what seemed like an hour but I guess was not more that thirty seconds. Suddenly he stopped reading and said,” Here you are. Shall we go?” So we went to his hotel. The next morning when I woke up he wasn’t there. I got very worried. I took a shower, and then he came back about an hour later with the dress I wore in the film – the white dress with flowers. And it was my size, perfect. It was like my wedding dress.
We carried on shooting the film, and, of course, my painter left. When the picture was finished, I went back to Paris with Jean-Luc, Michel Subor, who was the main actor, and Laszlo Szabo, who was also in the film, in Jean-Luc’s American car. We were all wearing dark glasses and we got stopped at the border – I guess they thought we were gangsters. When we arrived in Paris, Jean-Luc dropped the other two off and said to me, “Where are you going?” I said, “I have to stay with you. You’re the only person I have in the world now.” And he said, “Oh my God.” We took two rooms at the top of a hotel and he went to the cutting room every day.
Were you aware that he was reinventing cinema?
We knew we were doing something special. We’d take the films around Paris and out to the provinces and talk to the audiences after the screenings. And some people loved them and some people hated them. One day Jean-Luc and I were sitting in a cafe in Boulevard St Michel and we heard these two students talking about My Life to Live. One was screaming, “I love this picture!” and the other one, who had his back to us, was saying, “I hate spending money on this kind of shit.” And Jean-Luc tapped him on the back, gave him ten francs and said, “OK, you didn’t like my picture. Why don’t you go and see a picture you really like?” The guy was very red-faced and apologetic.
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22 of Anna Karina’s 79 films
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Guy Debord On the Passage of a Few Persons Through a Rather Brief Unity of Time (1959)
‘Karina’s first film appearance, although uncredited, dates from 1959, when a soap advertisement in which she appeared as a model was included near the end of Guy Debord’s On the Passage of a Few Persons Through a Rather Brief Unity of Time. The image was accompanied by Debord’s voice-over: “The advertisements during intermissions are the truest reflection of an intermission from life.” Jean-Luc Godard, then a film critic for Cahiers du cinéma, first saw Karina in Debord’s film in a bathtub covered in soapsuds. He was casting his debut feature film, Breathless. He offered her a small part in the film, but she refused when he mentioned that there would be a nude scene. When Godard queried her refusal, referring to the supposed nudity in the Palmolive ads, she is said to have replied “Are you mad? I was wearing a bathing suit in those ads — the soapsuds went up to my neck. It was in your mind that I was undressed.”‘ — collaged
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The entirety
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Jean-Luc Godard Le Petit Soldat (1960)
‘Despite his lack of political convictions, photojournalist Bruno Forestier (Michel Subor) is roped into a paramilitary group waging a shadow war in Geneva against the Algerian independence movement. Anna Karina is beguiling as the mysterious woman with whom Forestier becomes infatuated. Banned for two and a half years by French censors for it’s depiction of brutal tactics on the part of the French government and the Algerian fighters alike, Le petit soldat finds the young Godard already retooling cinema as a vehicle for existential inquiry, political argument, and ephemeral portraiture in other words, as a medium for delivering truth twenty-four times per second.’ — The Criterion Collection
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Jean-Luc Godard A Woman is a Woman (1961)
‘Nouvelle vague euphoria was at its height when Jean-Luc Godard made his enormously clever third feature, A Woman Is a Woman (1961). This big-budget, widescreen extravaganza appeared as the payoff for the unexpected success of Breathless (1959) and the follow-up political scandal of Le Petit soldat (1960), banned for its treatment of France’s Algerian War. A Franco-Italian co-production, shot in color and CinemaScope and starring Godard’s soon-to-be wife Anna Karina, A Woman Is a Woman was, he would say, his “first real film.” Although often described as a musical, A Woman Is a Woman is, despite its moments of singing and dancing, something else. The filmmaker called it “the idea of a musical,” “nostalgia for the musical,” and, most provocatively, a “neorealist musical.” For the first time, Godard was making a movie about its own making.’ — J. Hoberman
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Agnes Varda Cleo From 5 to 7 (1962)
‘There have been many films, from Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope (1948) to Alexander Sokurov’s Russian Ark (2002), devoted to the challenge of capturing or reconstituting the experience of “real time.” Agnès Varda’s 1961 Cléo from 5 to 7—an account of an hour and a half in the life of a normally carefree young woman who is gravely awaiting a medical diagnosis—is one of them, but it dispenses with the single-camera-take concept that Hitchcock cleverly faked (and that Sokurov would heroically maintain); it is as jazzily photographed and busily edited as any more conventional narrative film. Rather, Varda seizes the kind of immediacy and tension associated, at the start of the sixties, with the cinema verité documentary movement and uses it to create a new form of fiction. Unlike traditional story films, which skip everywhere in both time and space, Varda gives us a gauntlet: every second piling up, every step traced out. And she picked the best possible site for this gauntlet walk: the Left Bank of Paris is preserved for us in all its early sixties vibrancy and diversity. Indeed, Varda once described the film as “the portrait of a woman painted onto a documentary about Paris.”’ — Adrian Martin
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Jean Luc-Godard Vivre sa vie (1962)
‘Vivre sa vie presents 12 episodes in the life of a young woman who turns to prostitution to pay her rent. Each episode features a theatrical scene preceded by a title that lists the characters in the episode, its location, and a brief summary of the action. As he would throughout his career, director Jean-Luc Godard uses prostitution as a metaphor for both economic life in general and the position of the filmmaker under capitalism. Vivre sa vie stars Anna Karina, who was married to Godard at the time. Her performance was largely improvised as Godard refused to give Karina her lines until just before each scene was shot. In order to maintain the freshness of the performances, Godard rarely made more than one take of each shot. The film is shot in stunning black-and-white by Raoul Coutard. The improvised acting and fragmented story give the viewer the impression of watching a documentary about a woman’s life that is also a series of essays about aesthetics and economics. In addition, the film’s camera style presents a catalogue of alternatives to conventional shooting strategies.’ — Rovi
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Jean-Luc Godard Bande à part (1964)
‘Bande à part is a movie with a main motion—not of a noir or a policier, but a love story. Like so many Godard films, it’s a love story with a bullet in it. And like the most fiercely involved romances, it’s a map of difficult frontiers: between big city and still-rustic suburbs, prewar singularity and the masses of mass culture, between natural light and the color of money. Characters meet, notes the director, “at the crossroads of the unusual and the ordinary.” An encyclopedic litterateur, Godard recalls the sublime phrase of proto-Surrealist Raymond Roussel, envisioning the art of the new century as “the marriage of the beautiful and the trivial.” That might describe all of Godard; certainly all the film’s characters. Still, beyond the vexed romance of Arthur, Odile, and Franz, there is a more encompassing love story. Shot by Raoul Coutard in a filtered black and white that renders the Bastille neighborhood flat and workaday, the suburban landscape charged and ghostly, Band of Outsiders is more than anything a melancholy love letter to Paris and to time.’ — Joshua Clover
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Behind the scenes
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Roger Vadim La Ronde (1964)
‘This uneven remake of the 1950 Max Ophuls feature from the play by Arthur Schnitzler takes place in Paris just before World War I instead of Vienna at the turn of the 20th century. A soldier (Claude Giraud) sleeps with a prostitute (Marie Dubois) before he seduces Rose (Anna Karina), and a willing but married Sophie (Jane Fonda). A night of drinking finds the soldier back with the prostitute again in this feature directed by Roger Vadim.’ — Dan Pavlides, Rovi
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Jean-Luc Godard Alphaville (1965)
‘Alphaville is science fiction without special effects. Godard couldn’t afford them in 1965 or ever, but he probably wouldn’t have wanted them even if he’d had unlimited financing. His whole theme, imagination versus logic, is consistent with his deployment of Paris as it was in the ’60s—or at least, those portions of Paris which struck Godard as architectural nightmares of impersonality. Sub-Nabokovian jokes on brand names abound. There is much talk of societies in other galaxies, but their only manifestation is the Ford Galaxy that Eddie Constantine’s Lemmy Caution (a low-rent French version of Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe) moves about in. Most of Alphaville is nocturnal or claustrophobically indoors. Yet there is an exhilarating release in many of the images and camera movements because of Godard’s uncanny ability to evoke privileged moments from many movies of the past.’ — Andrew Sarris
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Jean-Luc Godard Pierrot le fou (1965)
‘Pierrot le fou (1965) is Jean-Luc Godard’s sixth film staring Anna Karina, his first wife. It is the story of Ferdinand (Jean-Paul Belmondo) and Marianne (Karina). They meet when Ferdinand’s wife hires Marianne as a baby-sitter. As he drives Marianne home, Ferdinand decides to run away with her. The couple get caught up in a mysterious gun-running scheme involving Marianne’s brother (Dirk Sanders). With Pierrot le fou Godard returns to the story of A bout de souffle (Breathless): the tale of a couple on the run. But in the six years between the two films Godard developed a more complex and often difficult style. Pierrot le fou incorporates musical numbers, references to the history of cinema and painting, and quotations from literature. The film features Godard’s most extended use of color to that point, as the shots are filled with blocks of bright primary colors. Pierrot le fou is a catalogue of cinematic inventions and of gestures made by couples in love.’ — Rovi
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Jacques Rivette La Religieuse (1966)
‘Jacques Rivette’s La Religieuse (The Nun), 1966 is the adaptation of Denis Diderot’s novel (1760). The movie tells a harrowing and simple story of 16 year old Suzanne Simonin (played by incredible Anna Karina), who is forced by her mother to enter a convent where she undergoes a lot of suffering including beatings, humiliations, semi-starvation, lesbian attentions from the Mother Superior (charming Liselotte Pulver of Das Wirtshaus im Spessart) and attempted rape by a priest. Made by the acclaimed New Wave director, The Nun feels more like a traditional (in the best meaning of this word) film, linear, poetic, moving, and very sad. Even before the film was completed and shown to the viewers, the association of former nuns and the parents of students in “free” schools demanded a banning order. This film was met with great controversy upon its release and was banned despite initial approval. Ironically, the scandal had benefited to the increased interest for the novel – many copies of Diderot’s book were sold following the banning of the movie. Despite its controversy, the movie is not so much a criticism of the Catholic Church but more a condemnation of the society in which a woman had only two choices allowed by her family – marriage or the convent.’ — IMDb
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Jean-Luc Godard Made in the USA (1966)
‘One of the fifteen essential rockets the director launched in the sixties that made the decade his and his alone, Made in U.S.A (1966) was only festival-shown in its day before getting stalled and closeted by the producer’s messy rights trouble with the Donald Westlake novel it barely references. Riffing impishly on noir clichés, composing life as if it were a comic strip, fracturing an ersatz story into slivery mirror shards, lallygagging through dramatic confrontations, cutting in splats of audio and advertising and visual punctuation, tossing off movie-movie allusions, indulging in irrational jokes, lacerating Americanization and the crassness of modern culture—it’s all there, all stewed together into a feverish, mysterious brew that’s less a traditional masterpiece than an open-source exploration of the cinema-life interface.’ — The Criterion Collection
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Pierre Koralnik Anna (1967)
‘The charismatic singer/songwriter Serge Gainsbourg was Karina’s next collaborator on a TV musical entitled Anna, which he wrote especially for her. The film, which included the hits, Sous le soleil exactement and Roller Girl, both sung by Karina, has since become a cult favourite.’ — newwavefilm.com
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Anna Karina présente Anna
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Luchino Visconti The Stranger (1967)
‘In an atmosphere of political tension when the French still control Algiers, an Algerian is killed on the beach and a French man who has lived in Algiers all his life is arrested for the murder. A trial takes place. One of the witnesses was at the funeral of Arthur Meursault’s mother. It bothers other mourners and Mersault himself that he showed no emotion when his mother died. His eventful day at the beach takes place a short time after the funeral when he is examining what his life has been and what path should he take in the future.’ — IMDb
the entire film
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George Cukor Justine (1969)
‘Justine (1969) is a drama film directed by George Cukor and Joseph Strick. It was written by Lawrence B. Marcus and Andrew Sarris, based on the 1957 novel Justine by Lawrence Durrell. Set in Alexandria in 1938, a young British schoolmaster named Darley meets Pursewarden, a British consular officer. Pursewarden introduces him to Justine, the wife of an Egyptian banker. Darley befriends her, and discovers she is involved in a plot against the British, the goal of which is to arm the Jewish underground movement in Palestine. The plot fails, Justine is sent to jail, and Darley returns to England.’ — Wiki
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Volker Schlöndorff Michael Kohlhaas – Der Rebell (1969)
‘This is another of those films from the 1960’s that have apparently disappeared into the black hole that ought to have been reserved for some of the big-budget trash being made nowadays. It harks back to an era when halfway intelligent scripting and depth of characterization were deemed more important than brain-curdling eye candy and mindless special effects. And although not exactly what I would call a classic, it is nonetheless worthy of remembrance, at least among those of us elderly enough to remember it. Although fairly faithful to its original sources, the film does have a tendency to portray the character as a revolutionary, and at times even as a bit of a patriot and folk hero, rather than as the mere vengeful victim of injustice and local rabble-rouser that the real Kohlhase probably was. Nonetheless, the essential point of the story is not lost.’ — collaged
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Tony Richardson Laughter in the Dark (1969)
‘Weird business, this. Tony Richardson switches from inventing kitchen-sink realism to cod-Nouvelle Vague about the upper crust surprisingly well, but it’s all in service of a Vladimir Nabokov story that might have been shocking at the time but only hits any heights of perversity in the last third these days. Worth watching for Nicol Williamson and Anna Karina, though, and the fact that this – a Woodfall film from one of Britain’s most groundbreaking directors – has never been issued on any home release format is a shaming indictment of our lack of interest in our cinema heritage.’ — Cinema Eclectica
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André Delvaux Rendez-vous à Bray (1971)
‘Set in France in 1917, this film is about non-combatant pianist Julien (Mathieu Carriere) and the numerous efforts of his friend Jacques (Roger Van Hool), a military flier, to come to his aid, both in terms of finding concert opportunities and in arranging romantic assignations. At the film’s opening, Julien has received a telegram inviting him to visit Jacques at his country estate. When he arrives, Jacques is absent, but Julien manages to take the servant girl to bed with him. He leaves without ever seeing Jacques. On another occasion, Jacques arranges an opportunity for Julien to play at a rich man’s dinner party, an offer that Julien turns down.’ — Clarke Fountain, Rovi
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Anna Karina Vivre Ensemble (1973)
‘Breaking away from being seen as ‘just Godard’s muse’ and into a filmmaker of her own merit, Anna Karina’s Vivre ensemble (Living Together) showcases her talents both in front and behind the camera — by going quadruple duty in the process: writing, directing, producing, and starring as Julie in the matter of 4 weeks. To me, this was compelling from start to finish and clearly, she was capable of being an established filmmaker. I wish she had more opportunities to work behind the camera, but I am grateful to have found and seen this hidden gem. I also love her explanation: “I just wanted to see if I could do it, that’s all,” — in her humble words and with the utmost respect; clearly she loved cinema as much as it loved her back.’ — Jackie
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Rainer Werner Fassbinder Chinese Roulette (1976)
‘Chinese Roulette was Fassbinder’s first international co-production and his most expensive film up to that point. It was shot during seven weeks between April and June 1976. The location for the country house where the story takes places was actually a small castle at Stockach in Unterfranken that belonged to Fassbinder’s cinematographer, Michael Ballhaus. The cast is formed by actors from Fassbinder’s regular troupe: Margit Carstensen, Brigitte Mira, Volker Spengler and Ulli Lommel. Being a French co-production Fassbinder used two French stars: Anna Karina and Macha Méril, both of whom had earlier appeared in the films of Jean-Luc Godard. Fassbinder added another German actor, Alexander Allerson. A sophisticated and stylish cinematic physiological game, Chinese Roulette was coldly received in West Germany. Criticism centered on the cold intellectualism of the film. American critic Andrew Sarris devoted an entire university course to the analysis of Chinese Roulette.’ — collaged
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Raoul Ruiz Treasure Island (1985)
‘Pretty kooky meta-adaptation of Treasure Island from Ruiz. It’s a shame that this one suffered from production issues as there’s a probable masterpiece in the four hour version that Ruiz wanted to create; one can see even from the two hours at hand that there’s a hell of a lot of story to work with here, and with a cast this great (Martin Landau, Lou Castel, Anna Karina, Jean-Pierre Léaud!) it’s easy to see that we’re missing out on something big. But anyway, there are plenty of things to love in this: Ruiz’s penchant for split diopters and painting faces in frame as if they were landscapes and, of course, the usual oneiric use of space and dimension to turn each scene into some sort of formal abstraction. It’s certainly a good addition to the Ruiz canon even if this wild story of doubles is not what it could’ve been.’ — Redfern
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the entire film
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Jacques Rivette Haut Bas Fragile (1995)
‘Jacques Rivette’s leisurely musical fantasy Up-Down-Fragile is not a movie to quicken the pulse of those who like their cinema taut and action-packed. This quirky semi-improvised homage to old-time MGM musicals sprawls over nearly three hours, and not much really happens. If Up-Down-Fragile captures the jaunty pie-in-the-sky spirit of American movie musicals, it steers clear of pat Hollywood formulas. Boy may meet girl, but little that happens afterward points the way to an ending that is either happy or unhappy. What Mr. Rivette has concocted might be described as a lighthearted existential romp in which life is a playful dialogue between reality and fantasy, between musical comedy and drama, and you never know when one will turn into the other.’ — Stephen Holden, NYT
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Jonathan Demme The Truth about Charlie (2002)
‘The Truth About Charlie is a 2002 remake of the 1963 classic film Charade. It is also an homage to François Truffaut’s 1960 film Shoot the Piano Player complete with that film’s star, Charles Aznavour, making two surreal appearances singing his song “Quand tu m’aimes” (first in French, later in English). This version closely mirrors the plotline of the original film. It is once again set in Paris and features several famous French actors. Director Agnès Varda makes a cameo appearance. Actress/Chanteuse Anna Karina sings a Serge Gainsbourg song in one scene. The film received a mixed reception from critics and was a flop at the box office, bringing only $7 million worldwide.’ — collaged
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p.s. Hey. ** scunnard, Hey. We’ve got everything squared away, I think. Thanks again, man. ** Montse, Hey!!! Nina Garcia’s great. Try to see her live if she plays there. Thank you so much for the good word about the film. Enjoy your friends. Big love, me. ** _Black_Acrylic, Mm, I don’t know if she does film work. Destroy those machines’ self-confidence. ** jay, Playgirl, haha. Okay, kind of grr about the job interview kind of scam, but you sound like you came out on top. A weird exhibition about Cobain? Weird in what sense? I’m good, and I can tell you are. ** Sypha, I’ll save Chappell Roan for when you guest-curate a gig. (Don’t get any funny ideas.) Well, it surely it is time for you to organise your fifty novels. I’ll read it with notepad in paw. I had a root canal a few years ago, and I was really surprised by how easy-peasy it was. ** Midnight Matt, Hi! Yeah, Derek got in touch with me about that. I’m not yet sure if we’ll still be there on the 28th. It doesn’t look hugely likely, but I will definitely be at the reading if I am. Thanks! ** Roma, Hi, Roma! You’re welcome, and thank you. Well, I hope you’ll be back in Toronto by then, but of course I would hope that, wouldn’t I? I often have all kinds of documents when I’m working on a novel. It can work. Don’t be intimidated, all those docs are your mind’s slaves. All the luck on finding all the writing time you need this weekend. ** Steve, I’m glad you liked those, especially the Rip Van Winkle of course. MC Yallah is so good. I’m really into that album. That’s so strange and intense, yeah. Keep your head and heart screwed on tight. ** Alice, Hi. As someone with lots of pigeons living around my windows, I can vouch for how difficult it is to earn their trust, so victoire! I’ve always had that problem. My work is ‘transgressive’ but it’s very sincere, and it never ceases to surprise me how hard it is for people to enter that combo. I think my work’s sincerity is probably its most ‘transgressive’ aspect. We’re getting that with our film too, which is very sincere, and people who think a haunted house movie needs to be hard in a certain way just aren’t getting it. I’ve long since given up caring. It’s some kind of human condition. Me, I wouldn’t bother trying to convince those people who don’t get it. You probably can’t. Great about your confidence in your furry identity and that you have a place to be completely free about that. Much luck at the library. Did it work? ** Mari, Yeah, she’s really something live. And I’m glad some of the gig music crossed over into you. Thanks for the Spit Mask link. I’ll listen. NiN, ah, okay. I’m sure that the problem was Trent didn’t have his contact lens in. Otherwise, surely your dream would be in its truth phase. Parasociality … I’ve always been someone who was prone to it, and once I figured that out with the help of my writing and understood the dividing line between the imagined vs. the possible/realistic, I’ve found it very useful. I think a lot of my work comes from that inclination. You? I don’t really think about it relative to the blog because it feels like a two-way street here. My Thursday just kind of flew by. I hope your Friday registers in the positive realm. And thanks for the sinnykitt link. I’ll go look. ** Darby 🦇, Dude, I’m up pretty much and the sky’s rapidly heating up outside and ugh on that front. Wishes directed to your laptop and your access. Rambling can be the skeleton key. Ramble on. Gosh, obviously high hopes that that seemingly very sensible psyche person can set you free. I think I don’t know what I’m doing when I do things, but I learned to assume I must be doing something right and to follow my habits’ lead. I loved being a looky-loo re: your revelation. You seemed like you have all the impetus and inspiration you need. ** Hugo, Yeah, Nina Garcia’s terrific. Arto Lindsay is in the running for best extant guitarist in my book. That book ‘Wrong’, god love it, has quite a number of inaccuracies, and there’s one. Like I think I said to Alice, I just wouldn’t give a shit about the opinions of people who don’t get it. There are defences in some people that are just uncrackable. Find your tribe by eliminating the power of people who don’t understand and aren’t wiling to understand. The old saying: quality over quantity. May your day expel loveliness too. ** Steeqhen, Hi. That’s an oddball shared birthday list. jay gave you a rundown of the guro term if you didn’t see it. You make me glad I don’t remember my dreams. ** Carsten, Happy you liked a couple of them. Thanks, yeah, nice about Chicago and Toronto. I don’t know Submittable, I’ll see what that is. When you’re doing/writing something special, you always get a majority rejections. Editors and programmers are often more lazy and scared than not. ** julian, My pleasure, of course. Thanks for your tips. I’ll investigate asap. Awesome about your almost finished album! That title’s too long? That doesn’t make any sense to me, but I don’t know. ** HaRpEr //, Thank you. Yeah it was fun to catch up with Gina Birch. I’ll check your suggestions. And I’ll take an audio peek at the new Alice Glass. I haven’t much liked any of her post-CC stuff so far. Well, yeah, not holding the old breath for new MBV albums. They are going tour. Maybe they’ll hurl something out around then to offset any ennui about them being a legacy act? ** Connie, Right. Yeah, I’ll find out. Luckily the tickets are only $16 which isn’t too bad. If I’m there and can, I’ll try to come your Gay Church. Whoa, that’s cool. Oh, mm, ‘Liber Null’ … I was interested in working chaos magick into the form and structure and content of ‘Guide’ so I read up on how it worked and paid attention to a friend who was really into it at the time, Honestly, I don’t remember very much about that book, although at the time I obviously thought I had a bead on it. I don’t remember how it ended. I may not have ended up reading that far. I was just looking to grasp the idea and find things that would be useful to me. Nice day back to you! ** Ryaha, Oh, good, that’s really good to know. There’s this bar here in the Marais that’s kind of a puppy bar, and there are all these puppies who hang out outside, and when I walk by something they’ll woof at me, and I’ve just said hi back to them because I was afraid if I woofed I might accidentally do so with some nuance that I didn’t mean. I’m so happy if my writing is making you want to write. That’s the ultimate reward. And thank you so much for saying that about my writing. That means a lot. A lot of people just skim looking for the saucy bits. I think the answer to your question is probably yes, yes. I’ll be careful with my voice, thank you. ** horatio, Oh, you know I’m Being Good, cool. Yeah, agreed. And my god Robert Pollard is behind ‘Six Black Horses’ so yay on that too. Thank you about ‘Guide’, pal. A most excellent day to you! ** Okay. Today the blog celebrates the great Anna Karina, and please have at it. See you tomorrow.
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