Jean-Pierre Léaud Retrospective
To be anointed as the child of the nouvelle vague could be a burden for any actor to bear, but Jean-Pierre Léaud has carried it with grace, inventiveness and humility over more than half a century of cinema. In...
Children of the Revolution – Truffaut and Les Quatre cents coups
“I lie... but only once in a while. At times, if I told the truth they wouldn’t believe me. So I tell lies.”
- Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud), Les Quatre cents coups
In the first scenes of François Truff...
Le Départ
Jerzy Skolimowski’s Le Départ (1967) was shot in three weeks on a budget of just $US100,000 – a low cost even in the mid-1960s (1). There was also a good deal of improvisation in this film, the first Skolimowsk...
“Thirteen Others Formed a Strange Crew”: Jean-Pierre Léaud’s Performance in Out 1 by Jacques Rivette
Jean-Pierre Léaud strides down the middle of a narrow Parisian street, declaiming a few lines of nonsense poetry, which he repeats several times over in circular fashion, such that one soon loses track of any s...
Irma Vep
Originally published in Senses of Cinema Issue 56, August 2010
With its rapid cuts, roaming camera, passel of characters (some of them so pitiful they seem always in need of a hug or maybe a swat on the behi...
The Mother and the Whore
Originally published in Senses of Cinema Issue 48, August 2008
La Maman et la putain/The Mother and the Whore (1973 France 215 mins)
Prod Co: Elite Films/Ciné Qua Non/Les Films du Losange/Simar ...
October Love Song: the 51st Viennale
There are festivals that are objectively deemed to be ‘major’, and then there are festivals that have a special place in our individual hearts. The Viennale certainly occupies this latter position for me, but I...