french media pre*paris blog v
guys and gals! can you believe i leave for paris in less than two weeks?! i sure can’t, and yet the surreal excitement is MOUNTing!!
depending on how packing and logistics go this week, i maaaay get to one or a few more truffaut films, so like last time, this might (or might not) be our penultimate “french media” blog post.
so thank you for indulging my “i love movies!” heart and exploring what is or isn’t parisienne about these films… :)
until soon, mes amies, *hallie :D
play time (1967)
a film by: jacques tatis
it took tatis ten years not just to find funding for this film, but to plan and build the city set. (hey, sounds like a novel! ha!)
it’s tall film, so there are no close-ups, just wide, long shots that further emphasize the all-encompassing loss of personalization, unique interaction, and community. (one such gag is a smoker outside doesn’t even realize the man he’s asking for a light is on the other side of a glass wall separating them and they have to walk around the building to meet at the door.)
i loooooved this movie. there’s not a ton of dialogue, but the first half is this grey, industrialized version of modern isolation. old paris is only ever seen in reflection (ex: a tourist opens a door and you see the eiffel tower or sacre coeur in the glass.) the whole thing is just delightful—subtle, visual gags abound.
nonsensical directional signage means a man accidentally walks into an elevator and misses the meeting he’s been waiting around all day for; a broken greek column is a foot-pedal trash can; the travel posters at the airport all feature the same block grey building with a different destination advertized….
it’s a complete comedy of errors. there are missed connections (always so close, yet always so impossibly separated), language and identity confusion… the apartments look like department store window displays and you get that wide shot of each family or individual living their lives like you’re watching six different tv sets; and while it looks like they could be interacting, their existences remain separated, each watching the TVs on their walls and not heir neighbors on the other side… viewing from the outside, we only hear the traffic, not their mimed conversations.
what’s even more french about it: when the work day is over and the sun has set, we head to an exclusive restaurant… the builders and contractors and architect hiding as the first guests arrive in their black tie attire.
we get our first doses of music and color (and not the harrowing electrical hum of “modern” office existence), even as architectural problems continue to be addressed and not-so-resolved during dinner service.
the band and the dancing get wilder as service devolves into even more chaos, and the club itself begins falling apart. the electricity short-circuits, a corner that’s in shambles is overtaken by a loud texan as the VIP area, drunks start coming in to the bar (the glass door has shattered, and the doorman has given up moving the doorknob to pretend he still has a job to do for guests), the beatniks and hippies taking over the band stage, and the funniest running gag perhaps? a waiter on the back porch giving away more and more of his torn waiter uniform (an iron chair corner got the best of his pants) as other waiters trade their torn pants, burnt shirts, or broken shoes for his…
but wait—even MORE french about it: besides the narcissist waiter fixing his hair for attention every time he passes a table, or the waiter who refuses to wait on a table because they’re not in his section (his is empty, of course)? the french repairmen using the pipes they’re “fixing” to siphon alcohol from the pharmacy bar. the traffic circle moving like a slow carousel. the tourist only seeing the landmarks on the scarf she received as a gift from an arduous frenchman…
the city becomes a circus by the light of new day. balloons and streamers, bouncing cars, bicyclists, window-washers working as if on a tilt-a-whirl. so let’s trust the clinical isolation of the modern era shall vanish, and we all return to the pure joie de vivre by the pure light of morning after a rambunctious night on the town making new friends and dancing partners.
daddy long legs (1955)
starring: leslie caron & fred astaire
a rich new yorker is called in service to france for an economics panel; when the car breaks down in the french countryside, fred astaire goes walking for help and stumbles upon a french orphanage where he sees leslie caron, the 18 year-old teacher who was raised there and is now teaching the children. he decides to become her anonymous patron and she’s sent to college in america.
things i noticed: leslie caron is a remarkably better (er, confident?) pointe dancer than she was in an american in paris (1951; see french blog iii.) the movie is an one-sided epistolatory romance and an ode to letter writing. (while she’s not allowed to know who her patron is, she writes him once a month; the letters are filed and never read until years into her education…)
there were a number of great interactions and quotes, too:
“a person is not a corporation. a person is flesh and blood and feeling!”
“oh, alec. you’ve got it all wrong. i’m in love with the girl.”
“is she in love with you?”
“i don’t know. i was just about to ask her when the darn phone rang and it was you.”
“you don’t believe my story, i have several others which are much more interesting.”
“i only tell the stories becasue nobody believes the truth.”
“security? i have security and believe me, it’s nothing. you have security and a duller life nobody ever led.”
besides leslie’s twirly skirts, the highlight was the banter tossed between actors fred clark and thelma ritter (fred’s assistant and secretary.) and the song “dream” (written by johnny mercer) was featured about 5x. i know it well from “you’ve got mail.” so it always make me smile when i hear it!
what’s french about it: um, besides the age difference (lelie’s 24 to fred’s 56, approximately—which i don’t have a problem with because it’s casting & i’m just gonna chalk it up to fred astaire being the best actor/dancer/star power in hollywood at the time at fox studios and i will watch him dance in anything)… the psychadelic dream ballet sequence!
leslie’s color*tastic “nightmare” goes from backstage at the paris l’opera (a performance of la papillon) with fred in the lone box seat (yay blacklight and theatre props) to hong kong to rio (she’s dressed as the sad opera clown i only know from seinfeld) … leslie is finally capable of a more sensual dance (like green dress lady in singing in the rain), but in orange… and the pigment dust flies like in my favorite regina spektor music video. it’s lovely.
excited because: i found a used copy of leslie caron’s memoir and i’m excited to read it. you know, in an airport or something. :)
paris can wait (2016)
written & directed by: eleanor coppola
starring: diane lane & arnaud viard (with smug b*$%& appearances by alec baldwin)
our film opens in cannes, where diane and alec are supposed to be on vacation; he’s called away to set (he’s a screenwriter) in morocco or albania or somewhere, and because she’s got an ear infection, arnaud offers to drive her to paris where she and alec planned on going after belgium or wherever anyway.
what’s french about it: EVERYTHING after that! the looooong road trip (she’s supposed to be in paris that night; it’s only a six hour drive)… but he keeps stopping for fresh flowers, fresh butter, at his favorite restaurant, wine with lunch… so they stay the night at his favorite inn and start again tomorrow… then stop for a textile museum and another restaurant in lyon… the car breaks down and he has a picnic by the lake before he looks to see what’s wrong with the car… he eats edible wildflowers… they stop to see the roman aquaducts and the lavender in bloom…
one funny, thinking he only booked one room at the inn for them, she says: “i’m not french.” hahaha.
thing i liked: while he takes care of ordering for her at restaurants, reading the wine menu (oh gosh, you should have seen the CHEESE BASKET course at the fancy inn!!!!!), running into acquaintances, etc… there aren’t any subtitles. so we feel as “lost” (&/or “taken care of”) as she diane does.
this movie was before “instagram eats first,” and yet she photographs all the little details (on a digital camera!!) along the way and at every meal. it’s also set when sodoku was a craze. (one i never got into, btw. i’ve always had enough hobbies.)
“why do flowers smell so much better in france?”
“because we’re in france…. and american flowers smell like refrigerators.”
the joy of it: having a true local for a tour guide. and to have the pleasure and the leisure of seeing a place (country, city, etc.) by driving. (or walking!)
nathan came through the room a few times while i was watching this one and he asked if it was a hallmark movie. it wasn’t, but it did have a slow, leisurely pace to it that i really enjoyed. it was actually filmed in france.
and the only thing PARIS about it that we got was late-night traffic (at the end of day two? day three of their road trip?) when he drops her off at her friend’s apartment she’s staying at.
it was romantic and sweet, with an open ending. as in, when she breaks the fourth wall and winks to the camera as she’s eating her rose-shaped chocolates in the paris apartment, well, perhaps she shall become french after all.