Maurice Pialat

[wilder]

A Pialat retrospective is currently playing at Laemmle's Royal in Los Angeles. These films will be released on blu-ray later this year or next by Cohen Media Group. Trailers and background information on the director below.

Laemmle's Royal - Showtimes & Tickets


September 26

Under the Sun of Satan (1987) - 7:25pm

Loulou (1980) - 9:45pm


September 27

Loulou (1980) - 12:00pm

The Mouth Agape (1974) - 2:40pm

Graduate First (1978) - 4:40pm

Van Gogh (1991) - 6:45pm

Under the Sun of Satan (1987) - 10:00pm


September 28

Loulou (1980) - 2:15pm

The Mouth Agape (1974) - 4:45pm

Graduate First (1978) - 7:00pm

Van Gogh (1991) - 9:00pm

Under the Sun of Satan (1987) - 12:00pm


September 29

Under the Sun of Satan (1987) - 3:15pm

Loulou (1980) - 5:30pm

The Mouth Agape (1974) - 8:10pm

Graduate First (1978) - 10:10pm

Van Gogh (1991) - 12:00pm


September 30

Graduate First (1978) - 12:00pm

Van Gogh (1991) - 2:10pm

The Mouth Agape (1974) - 5:30pm

Loulou (1980) - 9:45pm

Under the Sun of Satan (1987) - 7:30pm


October 1

The Mouth Agape (1974) - 12:00pm

Graduate First (1978) - 2:00pm

Van Gogh (1991) - 4:10pm

Loulou (1980) - 7:25pm

Under the Sun of Satan (1987) - 10:00pm

From Wikipedia:



Maurice Pialat (31 August 1925 – 11 January 2003) was a French film director, screenwriter and actor noted for the rigorous and unsentimental style of his films. His work is often described as being "realist", though many film critics acknowledge that it does not fit the traditional definition of realism.

The films of Maurice Pialat are often noted for their loose yet rigorous style and for their somewhat elliptical editing, which emphasizes an unsentimental worldview. Describing the unique aesthetics of Pialat's work, film critic Kent Jones wrote: "Even more than Jean Eustache [...] Pialat was an irascibly private artist, charting a twisted, crook-backed path with each new movie, almost always emerging with works in which the mind-bending vitality of immediate experience trumps all belief systems, allegiances, plans. [...] More than Cassavetes, more than Renoir, Pialat wanted every frame of celluloid bearing his name to be marked by the here and the now. [...] He was always willing to bend his narratives around experience. And the frequent ruptures, discontinuities, perspective shifts, and ellipses in his work are less single-minded than those of Cassavetes, more far-reaching in their implications."

Pialat's work is marked by the use of long takes, which often feed from sudden peaks of dramatic intensity in character interaction. He also has played supporting roles in some of his movies.


Filmography & Availability

• L'Enfance Nue (Naked Childhood) (1968)
  Criterion DVD
  Masters of Cinema DVD (UK)

• La maison des bois (TV series) (1971)
  French DVD (no subtitles)

• Nous ne vieillirons pas ensemble (We Won't Grow Old Together) (1972)
  Kino blu-ray
  Masters of Cinema DVD (UK)
  French blu-ray

• La Gueule ouverte (1974)
  The Films of Maurice Pialat Vol. 1 - Cohen Media Group
  Masters of Cinema DVD (UK)

• Passe ton bac d'abord (Graduate First) (1979)
  The Films of Maurice Pialat Vol. 1 - Cohen Media Group, Masters of Cinema DVD (UK)

• Loulou (1980)
  The Films of Maurice Pialat Vol. 1 - Cohen Media Group, French blu-ray

• À nos amours (To Our Loves) (1983)
  Criterion DVD
  Masters of Cinema DVD (UK)
  French blu-ray

• Police (1985)
  Kino DVD
  Masters of Cinema DVD (UK)
  French blu-ray

• Sous le soleil de Satan (Under the Sun of Satan) (1987)
  Under the Sun of Satan - Cohen Media Group
  Masters of Cinema DVD (UK)
  French blu-ray

• Van Gogh (1991)
  Van Gogh - Cohen Media Group
  Masters of Cinema blu-ray (UK)
  French blu-ray

• Le Garçu (1995)
  

Note: The all-region French blu-ray releases have English subtitles

Everyone in LA - Go!

[Larry]

holy shit
they are having a Pialat retrospective in Toronto as well, but they had not yet released the titles to any of the films. the exciting part is that i havent heard of most of these films..!!



WILDER-- how do you feel about Pialat in comparison to some of his French contemporaries? I would be love to hear some titles recommended

[wilder]

He's my very favorite French director...with an extremely bitter but not pessimistic worldview. There's always a glimmer of hope lurking beneath his orientation to the world...an extremely sensitive man who protects himself from hurt with layers of emotional armor, and who acts on the offense to prevent any kind of attack. His characters are full of self-directed anger that they lack the maturity to reconcile with and end up taking out on everyone else in their lives.

We Won't Grow Old Together and Under the Sun of Satan are my favorites. You could really start anywhere maybe save Van Gogh, since the source material isn't as autobiographical. There's a lot of Pialat as a person in all of his films. A nos amours is great, Police... The Mouth Agape is terrifying - a precursor to Amour.

As with any director his personal style is more fully formed later on - you'll probably see more parallels with his contemporaries in his early film Naked Childhood, just in the sense that it follows the vein of the French's coming of age tradition, but Pialat is a singular voice all his own. A nos amours seems a good middle-career starting point to sink your teeth into.

There's also a great book by Marja Warehime available if you want to dig deeper

[jenkins]

xx

Laemmle's Royal was once one big giant theater, then they did the thing those theaters do where they chopped it into a theater with three screens, the original screen still at the front but with fewer seats. it's where Phoenix played for five weeks or so. it's west of the 405, the 405 sometimes referred to as LA's line of division. all people i know who visit LA i tell them: go west if you want to see why LA has its bad reputation, since the vast majority of vacationers telling bad stories about LA tell stories from Santa Monica.

such a wonderful thread, represent. 12pm is the afternoon 12. schedule-wise i'm SOL until Tuesday when I might make a special trip to go, since Under the Sun of Satan and Judex are the two dvds i own on region 2, i've owned them for like four years and have never been able to watch those dvds (have sampled Judex and it was so good i later cried over the dvd). if i drive there and everything the ideal plan would be to skip Van Gogh since you also said to skip Van Gogh, for a plan of Under the Sun of Satan -> Loulou -> The Mouth Agape -> Graduate First. i'll only drive there once and i most want to see Under the Sun and Graduate First, so will my whole Tuesday be spent watching movies? well that sounds wonderful but we'll see.

also: We Won't Grow Old Together, which i've so badly wanted to watch since you brought it up here, it's currently $22.05 new from Amazon, and $25.92 used from Amazon marketplace, but for some reason it's $13.95 new from Amazon marketplace. thinking about doing it.

[wilder]

Edit - the retrospective is actually running through Thursday, added the showtimes above

[wilder]

From Laemmle's website:

Maurice Pialat’s influence in the years after his death in 2003 was everywhere, but while he was alive he wasn’t part of any movement. A late bloomer who was 40 before he finished his first fiction feature (1968’s “Naked Childhood”), he missed the New Wave—a fact he seemed to resent, though his irascible personality likely meant he wouldn’t have belonged to any club which would have had him as a member.

Pialat made rule-breaking, violently disorienting movies full of temporal leaps and jagged improvisations, impolite movies about insoluble dilemmas and impossible personalities—women and men who can’t or won’t allow themselves to be tamed, and the tug-of-war between desire and responsibility. While intensely grounded in the cinema, citing the Lumière Brothers as his masters, Pialat rejected cinephile culture and lunged headlong into the material stuff of life, love, sex, and death. (He’s often compared to John Cassavetes, but this overlooks the particularities of both men.) Pialat’s films aren’t exercises but exorcisms, wounded howls at the injustice of existence whose anguished power is intensified by an acute awareness of the beauty of being alive. In a national cinema often associated with dainty sophistication, Maurice Pialat is the epitome of raw power.

“The director who has the strongest and most consistent influence on young French filmmakers is not Jean-Luc Godard, but Maurice Pialat.” — Arnaud Desplechin, filmmaker.

“To say that Pialat marched to the beat of a different drummer is to put it mildly. In fact, he didn’t really march at all. He ambled, and fuck anybody who got it into their head that they’d like to amble along with him. Or behind him. Or ahead of him.” — Kent Jones, film critic.

[Larry]

http://tiff.net/fall2015-cinematheque/love-exists

[jenkins]

well what i did is i ordered We Won't Grow Old Together and i'm excited about that, and i look forward to these Pialat movies being released on blu-ray next year or whenever for me to then wait another year or so to order them and finally watch them, you know, a natural course of events in my life. it's definitely this topic that motivated me to order We Won't Grow Old Together.

Finders Keepers is the movie i'm most likely to go see tonight and i don't think i'll go see it. also, today i remembered i bought Delicatessen like last december and forgot i did that until today, i should watch it sometime. also, wilder or anyone have you watched Gangs of Wasseypur? i watched the first part last night and it's absurdly good. it's impressively and inspiringly good, Gangs of Wasseypur. also, yesterday i left a clarifying edit note on my The Assassins post, mentioning i said a theater was going to open on a future date that was actually a past date and does that describe me, kinda, i think i'm a past date for the future and ok.

[wilder]

The retrospective has moved to Museum of the Moving Image in NY and runs through November 1st

[wilder]

May 17, 2016

The Films of Maurice Pialat Vol. 1 on blu-ray from Cohen Media Group



-The Mouth Agape (1974)
-Graduate First (1978)
-Loulou (1980)
-Love Exists (2007)

The Films of Maurice Pialat Vol. 1 - Amazon

[jenkins]

that's really exciting to me

[wilder]

June 14, 2016

Under the Sun of Satan (1987) on blu-ray from Cohen Media Group



Donissan is a self-abasing curate tortured by questions about his role in God’s plan — before an encounter with a material Satan touches off a powerful revelation. At the crux of his vision is Mouchette, the madly profligate sylph whose fate ruptures in a blast of gunpowder and the slash of a razor. As events unfurl, the director himself provides witness as Menou-Segrais the seasoned cleric who pronounces the words: “God wears us down.”

Under the Sun of Satan (1987) - Amazon

[wilder]

July 12, 2016

Van Gogh (1991) on blu-ray from Cohen Media Group



After leaving the asylum, Vincent Van Gogh settles in Auvers-sur-Oise, in the home of Doctor Gachet, an art lover and patron. Vincent keeps painting amidst the conflicts with his brother Theo and the torments of his failing mental health. He has an affair with Marguerite, his host's daughter. However, she soon realizes that he doesn't love her and that his heart beats only for his art.

Van Gogh (1991) - Amazon

[wilder]

February 21, 2017

Police (1985) on blu-ray from Olive Films



Mangin, a cop whose brutal method of investigation finds its obsessive outlet in an attempt to crack a Tunisian narcotics ring. It is when Mangin enters into close acquaintance with the defiant Noria that the film proceeds to chart an unexpected, emotionally ambiguous course — and the lines between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, and ‘power’ and ‘freedom’, terminally blur.

[Drenk]

I watched Van Gogh again last night. What an incredible movie. And I discovered À nos amours which is absolutely mesmerizing and Sous le soleil de Satan: such a weird and fascinating movie and I am glad it won the Palme d'Or the way it did: under people's miscontentment.  Pialat had a way to show life breathing on screen. You really want to grab a camera and try to do the same when you watch one of his movies—even if, apparently, shooting with him was a painful experience...

Sandrine Bonnaire, Jacques Dutronc, Depardieu...they are giving their best performances with him.

I'll watch Loulou next.

You can watch this great documentary he did about the suburbs in the sixties.