The Eighth Annual Robert Classic French Film Festival — co-produced by Cinema St. Louis and the Webster University Film Series — celebrates St. Louis’ Gallic heritage and France’s cinematic legacy. The featured films span the decades from the 1920s through the early 1990s, offering a comprehensive overview of French cinema.
The fest is annually highlighted by significant restorations, and we’re especially pleased to present Jacques Rivette’s long-unavailable epic OUT 1: SPECTRE Additional restoration highlights include Jean-Luc Godard’s A MARRIED WOMAN and Max Ophüls’ too-little-seen FROM MAYERLING TO SARAJEVO. Both Ophüls’ film and Louis Malle’s ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS – with a jazz score by St. Louis-area native Miles Davis — screen from 35mm prints. All films will screen at Webster University’s Moore Auditorium (47- E. Lockwood)
Music fans will further delight in the Rats & People Motion Picture Orchestra’s accompaniment and original score for Carl Th. Dreyer’s masterful THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC. Given recent events in Paris — the Charlie Hebdo massacre and the November 2015 attacks — we thought Mathieu Kassovitz’s prescient HATE was an essential choice for this year’s festival; the film will be accompanied by a roundtable discussion. The schedule also includes such enduringly popular works as ARMY OF SHADOWS , DIABOLIQUE, LA CAGE AUX FOLLES, and RIFIFI.
Every program features introductions and discussions by film scholars and critics. The discussions will place the works in the contexts of both film and French history and provide close analyses.
All films are in French with English subtitles.
Tickets are $12 general admission; $10 for students, Cinema St. Louis members, and Alliance Française members; free for Webster U. students. Advance tickets can be purchased through Brown Paper Tickets. A service charge will apply, and only full-price $12 tickets are available in advance.
Here’s the schedule:
March 4th 7:30: ARMY OF SHADOWS
Atmospheric and gripping, “Army of Shadows” is Melville’s most personal film, featuring Lino Ventura, Paul Meurisse, Jean-Pierre Cassel, and the incomparable Simone Signoret as intrepid underground fighters who must grapple with their conception of honor in their battle against Hitler’s regime. This masterpiece by Jean-Pierre Melville about the French Résistance went unreleased in the United States for 37 years, until its triumphant theatrical debut in 2006.
“Army of Shadows” was met with near-universal acclaim on its belated U.S. premiere, with the New York Film Critics Circle naming it Best Foreign Film. Writing in Salon, Stephanie Zacharek — now film critic at Time — described “Army of Shadows” as “a lost masterpiece” and hailed it as “not just one of the great films of the ’60s, but one of the great films — period.” The New York Times’ Manohla Dargis echoed the praise, calling the film “a rare work of art that thrills the senses and the mind” and asserting that it’s “worthy of that overused superlative ‘masterpiece.’”
With an introduction and post-film discussion by Pier Marton, video artist and unlearning specialist at the School of No Media. Marton has lectured with his work at the Museum of Modern Art, the Carnegie Museum, and the Walker Art Center and has taught at several major U.S. universities. His father, photographer Ervin Marton, was in the French Résistance.
March 5th 7:30: ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS
In his mesmerizing debut feature, 24-year-old director Louis Malle (“Au revoir les enfants,” “Atlantic City”) brought together the beauty of Jeanne Moreau, the camerawork of Henri Decaë, and a now-legendary score by Miles Davis (whose much anticipated biopic, Don Cheadle’s “Miles Ahead,” premieres in April). A touchstone of the careers of both its star and director, “Elevator to the Gallows” is a richly atmospheric thriller of murder and mistaken identity unfolding over one restless Parisian night.
Britain’s Daily Telegraph writes: “Few debuts come punchier, cooler, and more influential than Louis Malle’s 1958 thriller about a Parisian murder plan unravelling, scene by fateful scene. Claude Chabrol’s ‘Le beau serge,’ released later that year, is generally considered the first film of the French New Wave — why not this? … (Malle’s) tight, resourceful, location-shot film, composed superbly with natural light by Henri Decaë, and achieving plenty of contemporary zing with its famous Miles Davis score, is a very clear precursor of the work of Godard and Truffaut.”
With an introduction and post-film discussion by Renée Hirshfield, adjunct professor of film studies at Southwestern Illinois College.
March 6th at 7:00pm: FROM MAYERLING TO SARAJEVO
A little-seen masterwork by Max Ophüls (“Lola Montes,” “The Earrings of Madame de …”) traces the roots of World War I to doomed romance. In the wake of the murder-suicide of Prince Rudolph and his 17-year-old lover at Mayerling, stiff but broad-minded Archduke Franz Ferdinand (played by American actor John Lodge) becomes the heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian empire. But a distinctly unhappy Emperor Franz Josef opposes both Franz Ferdinand’s plans to reconfigure the empire and his courtship of Sophie Chotek (Edwige Feuillère) — not only a mere countess but also a Czech. Made in France and premiering just before it fell to the Nazis, this was Ophüls’ last picture before Hollywood and a surprisingly faithful, and lavishly produced, account of a Romeo-and-Juliet passion hindered not by family enmity but by levels of nobility.
The legendary film critic Robin Wood calls the film “one of Ophüls’ most neglected and finest works,” writing: “While its consciously defined political position falls within the bounds of progressive liberalism, its vision of love as in itself a revolutionary force is far more radical.” The New Yorker’s Richard Brody calls it “an exemplary political film, the counterpart to Jean Renoir’s ‘The Rules of the Game’ (from 1939) as a work of vast historical vision in a quasi-operatic form.”
With an introduction and post-film discussion by Robert Garrick, attorney, board member of the French-preservation nonprofit Les Amis, and former contributor to the davekehr.com film blog.
March 7th at 7:30: HATE
Mathieu Kassovitz took the film world by storm with “Hate,” a gritty, unsettling, and visually explosive look at the racial and cultural volatility in modern-day France, specifically the low-income banlieue districts on Paris’ outskirts. Aimlessly passing their days in the concrete environs of their dead-end suburbia, Vinz (Vincent Cassel), Hubert (Hubert Koundé), and Saïd (Saïd Taghmaoui) — a Jew, an African, and an Arab — give human faces to France’s immigrant populations, their bristling resentment at their marginalization slowly simmering until it reaches a climactic boiling point. A work of tough beauty, “Hate” is a landmark of contemporary French cinema and a gripping reflection of its country’s ongoing identity crisis.
When the film was released, the New York Times noted that “for American viewers, the eeriest part of Mr. Kassovitz’s precise and troubling film is how easily it reflects our own social problems.” Because of the seemingly intractable problems it documents, “Hate” remains powerfully relevant, whether in Ferguson or France. If anything, the situation has worsened: After the Charlie Hebdo attack in January 2015, Kassovitz stated that it was perhaps time to make “La Haine 2,” but the Guardian observes that a sequel “wouldn’t be a follow-up in the conventional sense but rather a much darker version of what was already a tough film.”
With an introduction by Calvin Wilson, film, jazz, and dance critic for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch; and a post-film discussion by Lionel Cuillé, the Jane and Bruce Robert professor of French and Francophone studies at Webster University; Jean-Louis Pautrot, professor of French and international studies at Saint Louis University; and Wilson.
March 12 5:00pm: OUT 1: SPECTRE
Jacques Rivette, a co-founder of the French New Wave, has always been that group’s most free-spirited and aesthetically radical member. This is very much on display in “Out 1,” his fourth feature film and magnum opus, in which a whimsical young man (Jean-Pierre Léaud) receives anonymous notes that put him on the trail of a mysterious group of people who might or might not be conspirators. Based on an utterly unique concept that includes the absence of a script and nods to Honoré de Balzac and Lewis Carroll, “Out 1” has been practically impossible to see for more than 40 years. “Out 1: Spectre” — the 1974 theatrical condensation of the eight-part, 13-hour full version released in 1971 — has now received a 2K restoration supervised by the film’s director of photography, Pierre-William Glenn (“Day for Night”). The colorful characters that Léaud encounters during his quest are played by Juliet Berto, Michael Lonsdale, Bernadette Lafont, Bulle Ogier, Françoise Fabian, Jean-François Stévenin, and other New Wave icons, with special appearances by directors Éric Rohmer and Barbet Schroeder.
Calling the film “a challenging and terrifying journey for all who can bear with it,” Time Out London writes that the film “enrages some spectators because it gives them so much to cope with.” An immensely involving, almost addictive blend of film, literature, and theater, the film has rightly been hailed as the Holy Grail of modern French cinema, with the New York Times writing, “In the annals of monumental cinema, there are few objects more sacred than ‘Out 1.’”
With an introduction and post-film discussion by Robert Hunt, film critic for the Riverfront Times and former adjunct professor of film studies at Webster University.
March 13th at 4:00pm: LA CAGE AUX FOLLES
Renato (Ugo Tognazzi) and Albin (Michel Serrault) — a middle-aged gay couple who are the manager and star performer at a glitzy drag club in Saint-Tropez — agree to hide their sexual identities, along with their flamboyant personalities and home decor, when the ultraconservative parents of Renato’s son’s fiancée come for a visit. This elegant comic scenario kicks off a wild and warmhearted French farce about the importance of nonconformity and being true to oneself. A breakout art-house smash in America, Edouard Molinaro’s “La Cage aux Folles” inspired a major Broadway musical and the blockbuster remake “The Birdcage.” But with its hilarious performances and ahead-of-its-time social message, there’s nothing like the audacious, dazzling original movie.
Describing “La Cage aux Folles” as “basically the first sitcom in drag,” the late, great Roger Ebert hailed the film: “The comic turns in the plot are achieved with such clockwork timing that sometimes we’re laughing at what’s funny and sometimes we’re just laughing at the movie’s sheer comic invention. This is a great time at the movies.” Writing in 2015, Slant Magazine says that the film has lost none of its comedic power: “‘La Cage aux Folles’ remains rambunctious and capable of drawing blood. Though its politics are still quite progressive, ‘La Cage aux Folles’ is ultimately a work of classicism, crafted with precision and efficiently paced.”
Newly restored, this overlooked masterwork from Godard’s extraordinary ’60s period follows a bourgeois housewife (Macha Méril) as she bounces between trysts with her actor lover (Bernard Noël) and domestic life with her aviator husband (Philippe Leroy). Godard fashions a provocative dissection of consumer culture in this modernist melodrama, trapping his characters in a web of omnipresent advertising and secret codes hidden in signage. Shot in cool black-and-white by the great Raoul Coutard, “A Married Woman” is a key work in the director’s oeuvre in which the playful exuberance of his early style is pushed toward abstraction.
“The film heralded a major leap in Godard’s evolution as an artist,” says the Village Voice, “announcing the arrival of a sophistication further honed the next year in ‘Alphaville’ and ‘Pierrot le Fou.’ But it’s also an extraordinarily rich and provocative picture in its own right.” And even 50 years after its release, the film has lost none of its timeliness. The Chicago Reader observes: “The freshest movie in town this week is the one directed by the eternally youthful Jean-Luc Godard…. The film is almost as stuffed with ideas as Godard’s recent ‘Goodbye to Language,’ and it even covers some of the same intellectual territory. ‘A Married Woman’s’ critical portrait of consumer culture still stings, which makes it one of the most relevant of Godard’s ’60s films.”
With an introduction and post-film discussion by Cate Marquis, film critic for the St. Louis Jewish Light and co-founder of the St. Louis Film Critics professional association.
March 13th at 7:00: A MARRIED MAN
Newly restored, this overlooked masterwork from Godard’s extraordinary ’60s period follows a bourgeois housewife (Macha Méril) as she bounces between trysts with her actor lover (Bernard Noël) and domestic life with her aviator husband (Philippe Leroy). Godard fashions a provocative dissection of consumer culture in this modernist melodrama, trapping his characters in a web of omnipresent advertising and secret codes hidden in signage. Shot in cool black-and-white by the great Raoul Coutard, “A Married Woman” is a key work in the director’s oeuvre in which the playful exuberance of his early style is pushed toward abstraction.
“The film heralded a major leap in Godard’s evolution as an artist,” says the Village Voice, “announcing the arrival of a sophistication further honed the next year in ‘Alphaville’ and ‘Pierrot le Fou.’ But it’s also an extraordinarily rich and provocative picture in its own right.” And even 50 years after its release, the film has lost none of its timeliness. The Chicago Reader observes: “The freshest movie in town this week is the one directed by the eternally youthful Jean-Luc Godard…. The film is almost as stuffed with ideas as Godard’s recent ‘Goodbye to Language,’ and it even covers some of the same intellectual territory. ‘A Married Woman’s’ critical portrait of consumer culture still stings, which makes it one of the most relevant of Godard’s ’60s films.”
With an introduction and post-film discussion by Cliff Froehlich, executive director of Cinema St. Louis and longtime adjunct professor of film studies at Webster University.
March 18th at 7:30: DIABOLIQUE
Before “Psycho,” “Peeping Tom,” and “Repulsion,” there was “Diabolique.” This thriller from Henri‑Georges Clouzot, which shocked audiences in Europe and the U.S., is the story of two women — the fragile wife and the willful mistress of the sadistic headmaster of a boys’ boarding school — who hatch a daring revenge plot. With its unprecedented narrative twists and terrifying images, “Diabolique” is a heart-grabbing benchmark in horror filmmaking, featuring outstanding performances by Simone Signoret, Véra Clouzot (the director’s wife), and Paul Meurisse. Featuring a bathroom murder that was said to have inspired the Master of Suspense to make “Psycho,” “Diabolique” is often referred to as the best Hitchcock film that Hitchcock never made. (A further connection: The authors of “Diabolique’s” source novel also wrote the book on which “Vertigo” was based.)
The Guardian calls the film “satisfying, elegant and nasty” and an “icily brilliant suspense thriller.” Noting that the movie “still has the power to scare the heebie-jeebies out of audiences,” the Telegraph concludes: “‘Les Diaboliques’ is not only a black comedy about the limits of sisterhood; it’s an exhilaratingly cold film that treats all its characters as flawed or self-interested. It’s a diabolical masterpiece.”
With an introduction and post-film discussion by Kathy Corley, professor and chair of the Electronic and Photographic Media Department at Webster University.
March 19th at 7:30pm: THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC
With its stunning camerawork and striking compositions, Carl Th. Dreyer’s “The Passion of Joan of Arc” convinced the world that movies could be art. Renée Falconetti gives one of the greatest performances ever recorded on film, as the young maiden who died for God and France. Long thought to have been lost to fire, the original version was miraculously found in perfect condition in 1981 — in a Norwegian mental institution. In the 2012 edition of Sight & Sound’s once-a-decade poll of film critics, “The Passion of Joan of Arc” was ranked No. 9 on the list of cinema’s greatest works.
Time Out London writes: “Dreyer’s most universally acclaimed masterpiece remains one of the most staggeringly intense films ever made. It deals only with the final stages of Joan’s trial and her execution, and is composed almost exclusively of close-ups: hands, robes, crosses, metal bars, and (most of all) faces. The face we see most is, naturally, Falconetti’s as Joan, and it’s hard to imagine a performer evincing physical anguish and spiritual exaltation more palpably. Dreyer encloses this stark, infinitely expressive face with other characters and sets that are equally devoid of decoration and equally direct in conveying both material and metaphysical essences. The entire film is less moulded in light than carved in stone: it’s magisterial cinema, and almost unbearably moving.”
With live accompaniment by the Rats & People Motion Picture Orchestra
With an introduction and post-film discussion by Andrew Wyatt, film critic for St. Louis Magazine’s Look/Listen arts-and-entertainment blog and the Gateway Cinephile film blog.
March 20th at 7:00pm: RIFIFI
After making such American noir classics as “Brute Force” and “The Naked City,” the blacklisted director Jules Dassin went to Paris and embarked on his masterpiece: a twisting, turning tale of four ex-cons who hatch one last glorious robbery in the City of Light. “Rififi” is the ultimate heist movie, a mélange of suspense, brutality, and dark humor that was an international hit, earned Dassin the best-director prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and has proven wildly influential on the decades of heist thrillers that have come in its wake.
Cited as “the best film noir I have ever seen” by no less an authority than François Truffaut, “Rififi” has earned legendary status. Michael Sragow in the New York Times calls the film “just about flawless,” concluding: “For lovers of tough-guy moviemaking, ‘Rififi’ really means perfection.” Rhapsodizing over the film’s “moody-poetic-nightworld artistry” — and calling the central heist sequence “perfect, the underworld equivalent of a sublime French meal” — Entertainment Weekly’s Owen Gleiberman also observes that “as ‘Rififi’ goes on, it becomes as savage as ‘Reservoir Dogs,’ ‘The Killing,’ or any of the other dozens of films over which it still casts a shadow.”
With an introduction and post-film discussion by Diane Carson, professor emeritus of film at St. Louis Community College at Meramec and adjunct professor of film studies at Webster University.
