Cinema St. Louis’ CLASSIC FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL Continues This Weekend with THE HOLE and More at Washington University

Cinema St. Louis presents the 11th Annual Robert Classic French Film Festival which takes place  March 8-10, 15-17, and 22-24, 2019. The location this year is Washington University’s Brown Hall Auditorium, Forsyth & Skinker boulevards. 

The 11th Annual Robert Classic French Film Festival — presented by TV5MONDE and produced by Cinema St. Louis — celebrates St. Louis’ Gallic heritage and France’s cinematic legacy. The featured films span the decades from the 1930s through the 1990s, offering a revealing overview of French cinema. The fest annually includes significant restorations, and this year features seven such works: Pierre Schoendoerffer “The 317th Platoon,” Marcel Pagnol’s “The Baker’s Wife,” Olivier Assayas’ “Cold Water,” Jacques Becker’s “The Hole,” Jacques Rivette’s “The Nun,” Agnés Varda’s “One Sings, the Other Doesn’t,” and   Diane Kurys’ “Peppermint Soda.” The schedule is rounded out by Robert Bresson’s final film, “L’argent,” and two 1969 films celebrating their 50th anniversaries: Luis Buñuel’s “The Milky Way” and Eric Rohmer’s “My Night at Maud’s.” This year’s edition of the fest is held at Washington University’s Brown Hall Auditorium.

Every program features introductions and discussions by film or French scholars and critics. The discussions will place the works in the contexts of both film and French history and provide close analyses.

TV5MONDE serves as the presenting sponsor. The global French-language entertainment network, TV5MONDE presents up to 300 films and dramas every year. Title-sponsor support is provided by the Jane M. & Bruce P. Robert Charitable Foundation, and additional support is provided by Arts & Education Council, American Association of Teachers of French, Alliance Française de Saint Louis, Centre Francophone at Webster University, Les Amis, Missouri Arts Council, Regional Arts Commission, Ann Repetto, Washington University’s Film & Media Studies, and Whitaker Foundation.

The fest continues this Friday March 15th with THE HOLE (LE TROU) at 7:30. With an introduction and post-film discussion by Andrew Wyatt, editor of and film critic for Cinema St. Louis’ The Lens and the Gateway Cinephile film blog. Ticket information can be found HERE

Four men in La Santé Prison, staring down the barrel at hard time, decide to execute a prison break and are forced to bring on a fifth member, Claude Gaspard (Marc Michel), when he is assigned to their cell. The particulars of the escape are rendered in painstaking detail as the five men dream of freedom. Director Jacques Becker (whose “Casque d’or” played at the 2018 Classic French Film Festival) cast the film largely with nonprofessionals, among them the actual “king of escapes,” Roland Barbat, on whose story the film is based. In Cahiers du Cinéma, director Jean-Pierre Melville said of “Le trou”: “How many pages would it take to enumerate the wonders of this masterpiece, of this film that I consider — and here I weigh my words carefully — as the greatest French film of all time?”

The Chicago Reader’s Dave Kehr writes: “Released alongside ‘Breathless’ and ‘The 400 Blows,’ Jacques Becker’s film was the last great flowering of French classicism; the ‘tradition of quality’ here goes out with a masterpiece. It’s a prison-break film, based on a true story, that follows the dictates of the genre almost every step of the way but makes the conventions shine with new life and meaning. The suspense is built slowly and carefully, through finely perceived physical details and quirks of character. The obvious comparison is to Bresson’s ‘A Man Escaped,’ but Becker has none of Bresson’s taste for abstraction; his film is rooted in the immediate, the concrete, the human.”

The Series continues Saturday March 16th with THE BAKER’S WIFE at 7:30pm. With an introduction and post-film discussion by Lionel Cuillé, the Jane and Bruce Robert professor of French and Francophone studies at Webster University. Ticket information can be found HERE

The warmth and wit of celebrated playwright-turned-auteur Marcel Pagnol (“The Marseille Trilogy” of “Marius,” “Fanny,” and “César”) shines through in this enchanting slice-of-life comedy. Returning once again to the Provençal countryside he knew intimately, Pagnol draws a vivid portrait of a close-knit village where the marital woes of a sweetly deluded baker (the inimitable Raimu) snowball into a scandal that engulfs the entire town. Marrying the director’s abiding concern for the experiences of ordinary people with an understated but superbly judged visual style, “The Baker’s Wife” is at once wonderfully droll and piercingly perceptive in its nuanced treatment of the complexities of human relationships.

Orson Welles heralded Raimu as “the greatest actor who ever lived,” and his lavish admiration also extended to “The Baker’s Wife,” which he described as “a perfect film.” Time Out London calls the film “flagrantly unfashionable, but bursting with bucolic vigour and sly satirical wit” and describes Raimu as “a French clown sans pareil.” Admirers of J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye” also should take note: Holden Caulfield, though generally disdainful of movies, took sistThe warmth and wit of celebrated playwright-turned-auteur Marcel Pagnol (“The Marseille Trilogy” of “Marius,” “Fanny,” and “César”) shines through in this enchanting slice-of-life comedy. Returning once again to the Provençal countryside he knew intimately, Pagnol draws a vivid portrait of a close-knit village where the marital woes of a sweetly deluded baker (the inimitable Raimu) snowball into a scandal that engulfs the entire town. Marrying the director’s abiding concern for the experiences of ordinary people with an understated but superbly judged visual style, “The Baker’s Wife” is at once wonderfully droll and piercingly perceptive in its nuanced treatment of the complexities of human relationships.r Phoebe, a discerning film fan, to see “The Baker’s Wife” and she found it “hysterical.”

The Series continues Sunday March 17th with THE BAKER’S WIFE at 7:00pm. With an introduction and post-film discussion by Cait Lore, film critic for Cinema St. Louis’ The Lens.Ticket information can be found HERE.

This unsung feminist anthem from Agnès Varda (“Faces Places,” “Vagabond,” “Cléo from 5 to 7”) is both a buoyant chronicle of a transformative friendship and an empowering vision of universal sisterhood. When 17-year-old Pauline (Valérie Mairesse) helps struggling mother of two Suzanne (Thérèse Liotard) procure the money for an abortion, a deep bond forms between the two, one that endures over the course of more than a decade as each searches for her place in the world — encountering the dawning of the women’s movement, dreamy boho musical numbers, and an Iranian adventure along the way. Initially divisive for its sunny, idealized view of female liberation, “One Sings, the Other Doesn’t” now seems all the more radical — and all the more vital — for its unabashedly utopian spirit.

The LA Times’ Justin Chang observes that Varda “remains justly beloved for her roving, exploratory approach to filmmaking, her influence on the French New Wave and a feminism that courses through her work as naturally and insistently as her impish sense of humor,” and that “all these qualities are on luminous display” in “One Sings, the Other Doesn’t.” Jonathan Romney in Film Comment writes: “Varda’s versatility, longevity and cheerful matriarch image have made her cinema’s most distinctive feminist role model, and the time is clearly right to rediscover different achievements of feminist history, meaning that ‘One Sings, the Other Doesn’t’ couldn’t be more timely a re-release.”