April 12, 2008

2:00 pm

The Mother and the Whore (La maman et la putain)
April 12 at 2:00
East Building Concourse, Large Auditorium
One of the monumental achievements of midcentury cinema (and “an icy comment on the French New Wave”), this nearly four-hour film puts a magnifying lens on the tangled relationships between a self-absorbed young Jean-Pierre Léaud and the women in his life. As the viewer observes daily comings and goings, monologues and dialogues (culled, according to the director, from real-life conversations) form a large part of the soundtrack. “The same way that Flaubert’s novels gave a reading of a personal trajectory as well as a tableau of an era, La maman et la putain offers a close up of three individuals, a medium shot of a micro-society, and a wide shot of French society in the early 1970s,” noted one writer. (Jean Eustache, 1973, French with subtitles, 35mm, 220 minutes)

http://www.nga.gov/programs/film/jean_eustache.shtm

 Send to a Friend