I AM extremely pleased to announce that our “Auteures” series is 100% set for the dates teased to you at the end of last year (and, incredibly, we are already into the second month of 2024: time is now officially running at what the heroes of Star Trek called “warp speed”).
As Phoebe Green will begin sharing with you in greater detail next week, “Auteures” (also known as THE OTHER SIDE OF THE LOST CONTINENT ‘24) brings you fifteen (15) films focused on women’s issues that feature women of purpose and commitment who blazed various trails in the French film industry in the so-called “cinema de papa” period. (Truffaut’s ill-considered putdown of the previous generation might be more rightfully used to describe the prevailing patriarchal nature of film in France during those times.)
Writers (Colette, Louise de Vilmorin, Annette Wademant, Françoise Giroud, Solange Térac), directors (Jacqueline Audry, Marie Epstein), and actresses (Danièle Delorme, Claire Maffei, Edwige Feuillère, Micheline Presle, Marie-José Nat—and, of course, Jeanne Moreau) are the heroines of this series, which opens the door to a lost, overlooked chapter in French film long deserving its reclamation.
THE series begins on Saturday March 30 with four films built around the unique sensibilities of Colette, and continues with a matinee the next day (Sunday March 31) featuring two Jacques Becker films where his female collaborators gloriously take center stage. The evening double feature focuses on the eternal woman’s dilemma (“work vs. love”) with two films (LA MATERNELLE and L’AMOUR D’UNE FEMME) that show the stubborn stigmas that remained consistently in place over most of the “cinema de papa” period.
Monday April 1st showcases Jeanne Moreau in three films that remind us how the celebrated star helped to break through the limitations long imposed on films centered around women. MCP has focused on reconstructing Moreau’s early career, which has been hopelessly eclipsed by the gauzy haze of the Nouvelle Vague—here we see her in three distinct phases of her career: beginning her own “auteure” phase in 1958 with LES AMANTS (much more predictive of her subsequent career arc); ten years later, summing up her sexual-existential gravitas in Orson Welles’ THE IMMORTAL STORY; and, fascinatingly, beginning her career at age 21 in DERNIER AMOUR (1949), impossibly youthful yet already showing many of the characteristics that made her unique. No one has seen fit to do this for her previously, even after her death in 2017: thus this is a special event tucked inside a special series…
…WHICH continues on Tuesday April 2nd with two delightful comedies that take a somewhat more riotous approach to women’s dilemmas. The first (L’HONORABLE CATHERINE) reveals a brilliant comic side to Edwige Feuillère; the second , JULIETTA, gives us a fourth dose of Moreau but shines a brighter light on the neglected Dany Robin, whose doe-eyed looks tend to distract us from her skills as a comic actress.
And we conclude Wednesday April 3rd with an bold experiment from the impossibly underrated André Cayatte, who conceived and flawlessly executed a two-part “tale of a marriage” by giving over an entire film apiece to the husband (Jacques Charrier) and the wife (Marie-José Nat, who transforms from girlish ingenue into a fully-fledged leading lady in the midst of her performance here). LA VIE CONJUGALE was greeted with skepticism in some quarters sixty years ago; it was ahead of its time, as was so often the case for Cayatte’s socially-conscious work. It is more than ready for rediscovery—as are all of the films in the “Auteures” series.
All-festival passes will go on sale on March 4th; in the meantime, watch this space for more detailed previews of the films, most of them supplied by Phoebe Green, the principal mastermind of the OTHER SIDE idea, one that is a perfect and necessary counterpart to MCP’s long-running “lost French noir” series.
SO please save the dates, and watch this space for more , more, more about this singularly sensational series. A big merci to Phoebe and we hope to see you at the Roxie starting March 30…