Classics Before Christmas

Remember the Night

Home Programme Classics Before Christmas Remember the Night

Credits

Country :
USA
Year :
1941
Director :
Mitchell Leisen
Version :
vostFR
Duration :
94 minutes
Format :
digital
Actors :
Barbara Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray, Beulah Bondi, Elizabeth Patterson

synopsis

A Bittersweet Barbara Stanwyck Christmas

Accused of theft, Lee Leander is released on bail and placed under the care of lawyer John Sargent. He takes her to spend the holidays with his family in Indiana, and over the days, an unexpected love story develops between them.

Visuel : Remember the Night

Premier film du duo Stanwyck-MacMurray, développant une chimie magique que l’on retrouvera plus tard dans Double Indemnity de Billy Wilder et There’s Always Tomorrow de Douglas Sirk. Le film est scénarisé par Preston Sturges, son dernier film à titre de scénariste avant de passer à la réalisation, et réalisé par un ‘petit maitre’ de la comédie américaine, Mitchell Leisen. Le film n’est pas la plus grand réussite de Leisen, ni de Sturges, mais il a un charme indéniable, dû entre autres à quelques trouvailles scénaristiques et à une distribution impeccable. »

Cinemaniak

Blessed with a characteristically brut champagne script by Preston Sturges, Mitchell Leisen’s Remember the Night is special even by the bright standards of the romantic comedies that Hollywood studios pulled off so breezily in 1940. It’s the cinematic equivalent of oven-warm gingerbread.

The Guardian

Also in this retrospective

Also see

See the programme

Classics Before Christmas

Christmas in Connecticut

Home Programme Classics Before Christmas Christmas in Connecticut

Credits

Country :
USA
Year :
1945
Director :
Peter Godfrey
Version :
vostFR
Duration :
102 minutes
Format :
digital
Actors :
Barbara Stanwyck, Dennis Morgan, Sydney Greenstreet, Reginald Gardener
🎄 The screening on December 18 will be preceded by a Christmas Drink starting at 6:30 PM | Single ticket price for this screening: €6

synopsis

A Bittersweet Barbara Stanwyck Christmas

Elizabeth successfully manages the lifestyle and family column in a major popular newspaper. Although she is unable to cook an egg, she has always managed to convince her boss that she lives on a large farm. She finally agrees to marry her long-time suitor, as he owns a farm in Connecticut. Everyone will gather there for a rather eventful Christmas celebration…

Visuel : Christmas in Connecticut

Cette comédie de Noël attendrissante mais jamais mièvre est un cadeau idéal pour les fêtes de fin d’année. Signée par un réalisateur peu connu, c’est une sorte de mélo à rebondissement qui a la vivacité heureuse de certaines comédies du grand Lubitsch. Cette comédie culinaire devient vite un chassé-croisé amoureux entre Stanwyck, fausse femme mariée, et Morgan, authentique crooner sexy. La scène du baiser qui n’en finit pas de ne pas venir est fabuleuse de suspense malin.

Libération

Delightfully cheerful screwball comedy that is especially suited for the Christmas holidays.

Dennis Schwartz

Also in this retrospective

Also see

See the programme

Japan’s Golden Age of Cinema

The Munekata Sisters

Home Programme Japan’s Golden Age of Cinema The Munekata Sisters

Credits

Original title :
Munekata shimai
Country :
Japon
Year :
1950
Director :
Yasujiro Ozu
Version :
vostFR+EN
Duration :
112 minutes
Format :
digital
Actors :
Kinuyo Tanaka, Hideko Takamine, Ken Uehara, Chishu Ryu, So Yamamura
In collaboration with the Japan Foundation and the Japanese Embassy in Luxembourg

synopsis

Setsuko is unhappily married to Mimura, an engineer with no job and a drinking habit. She’s always been in love with Hiroshi, but he left for France years ago without proposing. Suddenly, Hiroshi is back and Setsuko’s sister Mariko tries to reunite them, although secretly she loves him too.

Superb central performances by Kinuyo Tanaka and Hideko Takamine. Takamine is a sprightly comic presence, afforded many lovely funny moments but also appropriately moving in dramatic scenes. And as the film progresses and we learn how trapped Tanaka’s character is in her marriage, how duty drives her daily life, how she is deserving of the happiness constantly denied her, the pain in her performance becomes almost unbearable.

Movies in the City

Retroactively fun as a glimpse into the later years of Japan’s postwar occupation. While no foreigners appear, their influence is plainly visible: an office building rife with English signs for Time, Life, and Bible House; a café with a Coca Cola sign prominently hung from the ceiling. Meantime, the characters reminisce about the war and prewar years: a bartender character is a former pilot, and Mariko attended junior high in Manchuria, infamously annexed by Japan in 1931. And there’s a pleasure consistent across all surviving Ozu works: the exquisite sense of design, the natural flow of images.

Our Culture Magazine

Also in this retrospective

Also see

See the programme

Japan’s Golden Age of Cinema

The Life of Oharu

Home Programme Japan’s Golden Age of Cinema The Life of Oharu

Credits

Original title :
Saikaku ichidai onna
Country :
Japon
Director :
Kenji Mizoguchi 
Version :
vostEN
Duration :
136 minutes
Format :
digital
Actors :
Kinuyo Tanaka, Toshiro Mifune, Hisako Yamane, Jukichi Uno
Awards :
Competition, Venice Film Festival 1932
In collaboration with the Japan Foundation and the Japanese Embassy in Luxembourg

synopsis

In feudal Japan, Oharu, the daughter of royal samurai Shinzaemon, secretly has a passionate romance with Katsunosuke, a man with a low social standing. When they are found out, Katsunosuke is put to death and Oharu and her family are banished from the kingdom. Destitute and disgraced, Shinzaemon sells Oharu into prostitution, and she spends years searching for love.

Mizoguchi’s limpid heartbreaker is also a fierce denunciation of the subjugation of women, the power of wealth, and Japan’s unjust though splendid traditions.

The New Yorker

The Holy Grail of Japanese Cinema. This portrait of a 17th-century woman’s repeated humiliation by her patriarchal society is devastating from beginning to end, but its genius is not so much Mizoguchi’s caustic criticism of a money-obsessed society’s refusal to acknowledge its accountability for her degradation, but that Mizoguchi uses Oharu’s life to peel back the layers of the physical self and reveal the soul that lies bruised beneath.

Slant Magazine

Also in this retrospective

Also see

See the programme

Japan’s Golden Age of Cinema

A Story from Chikamatsu

Home Programme Japan’s Golden Age of Cinema A Story from Chikamatsu

Credits

Original title :
(The Crucified Lovers) Chikamatsu monogatari
Country :
Japon 
Year :
1954
Director :
Kenji Mizoguchi
Version :
vostEN
Duration :
102 minutes
Format :
digital | 4k Restoration
Actors :
Kazuo Hasegawa, Kyoko Kagawa, Yoko Minamida, Eitaro Shindo
Awards :
Compétition, Festival de Cannes 1955
In collaboration with the Japan Foundation and the Japanese Embassy in Luxembourg

synopsis

In Edo-period Japan, Ishun flourishes in business but remains stingy and cruel, often mistreating his wife, Osan. When her brother desperately needs money, Osan teams up with Ishun’s employee, Mohei, and steals the sum from her husband. After Ishun learns of the theft, he accuses Osan and Mohei of having an affair – an act then punishable by crucifixion. Ironically, the pair flee together and become lovers on the lam. But Ishun’s men aren’t far behind…

Condenses a vast array of injustices – as well as an extraordinary romantic power – into its teeming action. Mizoguchi builds the drama on such underlying pathologies as the sexual harassment of a female worker, the martial cruelty of the samurai class, and a repressive moralism that treats women like property. The tale morphs into a hectic, passionate flight for freedom as the protagonists try to save their own lives and, in the process, discover their love for each other; Mizoguchi films their devotion unto death with a fiercely defiant exaltation.

The New Yorker

Here is the rare Japanese period film of its era that also explicitly recognizes the double standards of sexual morality between the sexes.

The Retro Set

Also in this retrospective

Also see

See the programme

Japan’s Golden Age of Cinema

Tokyo Story

Home Programme Japan’s Golden Age of Cinema Tokyo Story

Credits

Original title :
Tokyo monogatari 
Country :
Japon
Year :
1953
Director :
Yasujiro Ozu
Version :
vostEN
Duration :
136 minutes
Format :
digital
Actors :
Chishu Ryu, Chieko Higashiyama, Setsuko Hara, Haruko Sugimara
Awards :
#4 in the Sight and Sound poll of The Greatest Films of All Time, 2022
In collaboration with the Japan Foundation and the Japanese Embassy in Luxembourg

synopsis

An elderly take couple from a small village go to visit their adult children in Tokyo. Their son, a doctor, and their daughter, a hairdresser, don’t have much time to spend with their aged parents, and so it falls to the widow of their younger son, who was killed in the war, to keep her in-laws company.

 

 

 

In this exquisite merging of specific and universal, infinite and infinitesimal, Tokyo Story perhaps most clearly illuminates that Ozu is not the most Japanese of filmmakers, but the most human.

Slant Magazine

The already towering reputation of this film and its director continues only to grow.

The Guardian

Also in this retrospective

Also see

See the programme

Redford Remembered

Three Days of the Condor

Home Programme Redford Remembered Three Days of the Condor

Credits

Country :
USA
Year :
1975
Director :
Sydney Pollack
Version :
vostFR
Duration :
122 minutes
Format :
digital
Actors :
Robert Redford, Faye Dunaway, Cliff Robertson, Max von Sydow
📖 D’après : le roman de James Grady

synopsis

A CIA agent discovers an enemy network within the agency. When his colleagues are killed, he becomes the target…

Visuel : Three Days of the Condor

Ce film dénonçant les méthodes de la CIA suit à la trace les thrillers de Hitchcock. Mise en scène fluide et brillante, suspense habile et deux grands atouts : Robert Redford devant la caméra et Sydney Pollack derrière.

Télérama

This peerless Sydney Pollack thriller hasn’t just aged well, it’s become positively prophetic, or at least eerily resonant.

The Times

Also in this retrospective

Also see

See the programme

Redford Remembered

All the President’s Men

Home Programme Redford Remembered All the President’s Men

Credits

Country :
USA
Year :
1976
Director :
Alan J. Pakula
Version :
vostFR
Duration :
138 minutes
Format :
digital
Actors :
Dustin Hoffman, Robert Redford, Jack Warden, Jason Robards
Awards :
4 wins including Best Screenplay, Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Robards), Oscars 1977
📖 Based on the book by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward

synopsis

In 1972, two Washington Post journalists conduct a gripping investigation that ultimately uncovers the Watergate scandal…

Nec plus ultra du film de journalisme d’investigation, le scoop du siècle séduit constamment par l’intelligence qu’on y voit a l’oeuvre. Il figure parmi les thrillers les plus captivants bien qu’il repose sur des faits connus dont la conclusion ne fait jamais aucun doute.

1001 films, Éd. Omnibus

Visuel : All the President’s Men

It provides the most observant study of working journalists we’re ever likely to see in a feature film. And it succeeds brilliantly in suggesting the mixture of exhilaration, paranoia, self-doubt, and courage that permeated the Washington Post as its two young reporters went after a presidency.

Chicago Sun-Times

Also in this retrospective

Also see

See the programme

Redford Remembered

Out of Africa

Home Programme Redford Remembered Out of Africa

Credits

Country :
USA
Year :
1985
Director :
Sydney Pollack
Version :
vostFR
Duration :
161 minutes
Format :
digital
Actors :
Robert Redford, Meryl Streep, Klaus Maria Brandauer, Michael Kitchen
Awards :
7 wins including Best Picture, Oscars 1986

synopsis

In early 20th-century Kenya, Danish woman Karen Blixen runs a coffee plantation and meets the adventurous Denys Finch Hatton. Amid stunning landscapes, their passionate and complicated love unfolds against the wild beauty of Africa…

Visuel : Out of Africa

Ce qui est remarquable dans cette belle adaptation de grande ampleur, c’est la façon dont Sydney Pollack a su traiter avec délicatesse et retenue les émotions et donner au récit une dimension philosophique. Il s’inscrit ainsi en marge du cinéma hollywoodien classique qui a toujours une fâcheuse tendance a nous fabriquer de l’épique au kilomètre. Out of Africa est non seulement un émerveillement pour les yeux mais aussi une ode à la Nature, une réflexion sur les rapports humains et touche à la définition de l’humanité. L’un des films les plus parfaits dans son dosage.

L’OEil sur l’écran

It is a movie with the courage to be about complex, sweeping emotions, and to use the star power of its actors without apology.

Chicago Sun-Times

Also in this retrospective

Also see

See the programme

#CinémathèqueUnreleased

TWST : Things We Said Today

Home Programme #CinémathèqueUnreleased TWST : Things We Said Today

Credits

Country :
Roumanie-France
Year :
2024
Director :
Andrei Ujica
Version :
vostFR
Duration :
86 minutes
Format :
digital | documentaire
Awards :
Venice & New York film festivals, 2024

synopsis

A chronicle of New York between August 13 and 15, 1965 — the days marking the Beatles’ arrival in the city and their concert at Shea Stadium. The film blends archival footage and concert images with fictional characters added through animation.

TWST : Things We Said Today

Le cinéaste crée, sans le verbaliser, un dialogue pertinent avec ce qu’étaient les Beatles – le groupe refusait de jouer dans des salles où avait cours la ségrégation, par exemple – et, avec poésie et une douceur touchante, donne à ressentir une époque qui vibrait d’un espoir furieusement transformateur.

CinemaTeaser

Les personnages, inspirés par des vies bien réelles, servent un projet littéraire qui court souterrainement à travers l’oeuvre du cinéaste. Les existences minuscules et les gestes anonymes qui animent la grande symphonie urbaine se lient aux rêveries des flâneurs.

Cahiers du cinéma

Visuel : Things We Said Today

Also in this retrospective

Also see

See the programme