French Film News
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20th August 2011
Chilean filmmaker Raoul Ruiz dies, aged 70 
Not long after the international release of his epic final film, Mysteries of Lisbon, the acclaimed film director Raoul Ruiz has died at the age of 70 whilst being treated for a pulmonary infection at a hospital in Paris. Although Ruiz’s prolific filmmaking career stretches back to the early 1960s, it is only within the last decade and a half that he has come to international prominence, arousing the interest of art house audiences across the world through a series of innovative and stylish films that he made in France, his adopted home after leaving Chile in the mid-1970s. These films include surreal oddities such as Trois vies et une seule mort (1996) and Ce jour-là (2003), an inspired celebration of the life and work of the artist Gustav Klimt and what is possibly cinema’s most successful adaptation to date of Marcel Proust’s Le Temps retrouvé. Ruiz’s films are as enigmatic and elusive as the filmmaker himself, distinguished as much by their cerebral content as by their distinctive stylisation and unique character, although most are accessible and engaging works of cinema, often lightened by a distinctly warped sense of humour. The director’s final film, Mysteries of Lisbon, is perhaps his greatest achievement, a commercial and critical success that has won him not only three Golden Globes but also the prestigious Louis-Delluc awards for Best Film and Best Director. Showing little concern for the politics and economics of cinema, Raoul Ruiz was guided only by his personal tastes and his creative instincts, and in doing so exemplifies the film auteur. His legacy includes some of the most idiosyncratic and enjoyably off-the-wall films of the last few decades, which range from the exotic and whimsical to the truly bizarre. |
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25th April 2011
Marie-France Pisier dies, aged 66 
In the early hours of Sunday 24th April 2011, the renowned French actress Marie-France Pisier was found dead in the swimming pool at her home in Saint-Cyr-sur-Mer, southeast France. She is believed to have drowned and the investigating magistrate has issued a statement to the effect that foul play is not suspected. Madame Pisier’s death comes on the eve of the Cannes Film Festival, at which she was to have played an important part in a homage to the actor Jean-Paul Belmondo. Marie-France Pisier was born in 1944 in Daclat, Indochina, where her father was serving as a colonial governor. It was Mario Brun, a journalist on the newspaper Nice-Matin, who brought the 17-year-old Marie-France Pisier to the attention of the film director François Truffaut, who was looking for a young actress to play the female lead in Antoine et Colette (1962), a 30-minute segment of the portmanteau film L’Amour à 20 ans (1962). Brun had only just spotted Pisier in an amateur dramatics production in Nice. Over the following decade, Pisier took supporting roles in a dozen films and had become an established screen actress by the mid-1970s. In the course of her 50-year long career, Marie-France Pisier appeared in around 70 films and worked with some of France’s great auteur filmmakers, including many leading lights of the French New Wave (François Truffaut, Jacques Rivette and Jacques Demy). She both co-scripted and co-starred in Rivette’s Céline et Julie vont en bateau (1974) and featured in several of André Techiné’s early films, including Souvenirs d’en France (1975) and Barocco (1976), both of which won her a César. Pisier’s international breakthrough came with Jean Charles Tacchella’s Cousin, cousine (1975), which was a major success on both sides of the Atlantic. The actress attempted to make a name for herself in America, with Charles Jarrott’s The Other Side of Midnight (1977) and the TV series The French Atlantic Affair (1979), but with little success, Returning to France, her acting career went from strength to strength in the late 70s and 1980s, and she was sought after by both auteur and mainstream filmmakers. In the latter part of her career, Marie-France Pisier was a passionate advocate of the seventh art and was willing to lend her talents to inexperienced filmmakers, including: Stéphane Giusti (Pourquoi pas moi?, 1999), Thierry Boscheron (Sur un air d’autoroute, 2000), and Yamina Benguigui (Inch’Allah Dimanche, 2001). She also directed two films: Le Bal du gouverneur (1990) and Comme un avion (2002). Her last film appearance was in the popular comedy Il reste du jambon? (2010). Read biography... |
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1 March 2011
Annie Girardot takes her last bow 
On 28th Februrary 2011, the distinguished French film actress Annie Girardot passed away peacefully, aged 79. In a career that spanned more than half a century, Girardot appeared in over a hundred films and became one of France’s best-loved and most highly regarded actresses. She not only had a striking screen presence but also a remarkable versatility, and was just as adept at playing comedy harridans, such as Louis de Funès’ other half in La Zizanie (1978), as more serious dramatic roles. Yet despite being an actress of immense talent, Annie Girardot has not always found it easy to retain the affection of her public, and her life has been marked by personal tragedy which renders her achievements, particularly in her later career, all the more remarkable. Graduating from the Paris conservatoire with honours, Annie Girardot soon found herself in the prestigious Comédie Française theatre troupe. She made her screen debut in André Hunebelle’s comedy Treize à table (1956) and appeared in a handful of other films before she had her big break, in Luchino Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers (1960). Over the next decade, Girardot became one of the most popular French actresses of her generation, starring in a wide range of films, from frivolous comedies to serious modern dramas. She won the Best Actress Award at the 1965 Venice Film Festival for her performance in Marcel Carné’s Trois chambres à Manhattan. In the 1970s, Girardot came to be associated with France’s feminist movement and, for many, she symbolised the modern hardworking woman battling against male prejudice. One of her defining roles of this period was the one she played in Docteur Françoise Gailland (1976), for which she won her Best Actress César in 1977. Girardot’s career floundered in the 1980s and she had difficulty finding work. It was Claude Lelouch, the director who had given her some of her best roles early in her career, who gave her the chance to make her big comeback, in Les Misérables (1995). The role not only won Girardot another César (for Best Supporting Actress) but revitalised her acting career. She won her third César for her supporting role in Michael Haneke’s La Pianiste (2001). But, just when Annie Girardot had found a new lease of life, tragedy struck. In 2003, she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Determined not to give in to her illness, Girardot kept it to herself and those closest to her, and continued working. It was not until September 2006 that she came out and revealed that she had Alzheimer’s (in a famous interview in Paris Match). By 2007, Annie Girardot’s illness had taken its toll and she was admitted to a private nursing home. Three years later, her family revealed that she had lost all trace of her memory. The warmth of the tributes that have been paid to her on her passing bear testimony to the affection with which she is still regarded in France. Read biography... |
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26 February 2011
Roman Polanski honoured at the 36th Césars Ceremony 
The two films to triumph at the 36th Césars Ceremony (25th February 2011) were, predictably, Xavier Beauvois’s Des hommes et des dieux (recipient of the Cannes Grand Prize in 2010) and Roman Polanski’s The Ghost Writer. Although Beauvois’s film won the top award, for Best Film, Polanki’s political thriller took the most awards, four, including the director’s third Best Director César (after Tess and The Pianist). Polanski’s adaptation of Robert Harris’s bestselling novel (whose central character is an obvious caricature of the former UK Premier Tony Blair) was critically well-received in France and a moderate box office success, but even so it is hard not to detect a whiff of political posturing behind Polanski’s four-César win this year, at the expense of Beauvois’s superior film, which was nominated in ten categories. Joann Sfar’s stylish biopic Gainsbourg, vie héroïque also fared well, winning three awards, including the Césars for the Best Actor (Eric Elmosnino) and Best First Film. The other awards were divided amongst a diverse collection of films, including Michel Leclerc’s comedy Le Nom des gens, which won Sara Forestier the Best Actress award, and Bertrand Tavernier’s historical romp La Princesse de Montpensier, which won the award for Best Costumes. Sylvain Chomet’s L’Illusionniste was a worthy winner of the best animated feature César. Michael Lonsdale, a veteran of French and international cinema, was finally rewarded with the César for Best Supporting Actor. Here are the awards in full: Best film: Des hommes et des dieux (Xavier Beauvois) Best director: Roman Polanski (The Ghost Writer) Best actor: Eric Elmosnino (Gainsbourg, vie héroïque) Best actress: Sara Forestier (Le Nom des gens) Best supporting actor: Michael Lonsdale (Des hommes et des dieux) Best supporting actress: Anne Alvaro (Le Bruit des glaçons) Most promising young actor: Édgar Ramírez (Carlos) Most promising young actress: Leïla Bekhti (Tout ce qui brille) Best original screenplay: Le Nom des gens (Baya Kasmi, Michel Leclerc) Best adapted screenplay: The Ghost Writer (Robert Harris, Roman Polanski) Best first film: Gainsbourg, vie héroïque (Joann Sfar) Best music: The Ghost Writer (Alexandre Desplat) Best cinematography: Des hommes et des dieux (Caroline Champetier) Best set design: Les Aventures Extraordinaires d’Adele Blanc-sec Best costume design: La Princesse de Montpensier Best sound: Gainsbourg, vie héroïque Best editing: The Ghost Writer Best animated feature: L’Illusionniste (Sylvain Chomet) Best documentary: Océans (Jacques Perrin, Jacques Cluzaud) Best short film: Logorama (François Alaux, Hervé de Crécy, Ludovic Houplain) Best foreign film: The Social Network Honorary César: Quentin Tarantino |
New Wave director Claude Chabrol dies, aged 80 Claude Chabrol, one of the most prolific and best-known of French filmmakers has died, aged 80. A leading figure in the French New Wave, his career spanned more than fifty years and around seventy films for cinema and television, including several that have become world-renowned classics. Although he has tackled a wide variety of subjects, including literary adaptations, character studies, crime dramas and spy thrillers, he is best known for his psychological thrillers, exemplified by Que la bête meure (1969) and Le Boucher (1970). It is Chabrol’s slick and often deliciously creepy thrillers that have earned him the epithet of France’s answer to Alfred Hitchcock. Certainly, Chabrol was greatly influenced by the Master of Suspense and employed many of his visual and thematic motifs in his films. One of the central themes of Chabrol’s oeuvre is the duplicity of the French middleclasses, the hidden venality that lurks beneath the ordered calm of apparent bourgeois respectability. This is ironic when you consider that Chabrol’s early filmmaking endeavours were bankrolled by his wife, a wealthy heiress. Towards the end of his career, Chabrol showed a late flourishing, returning to themes that are most typical of his work, the failings of the bourgeois milieu and the perversity of human nature. His best films from this era include the trilogy that comprised La Cérémonie (1995), Merci pour le chocolat (2000) and La Fleur du mal (2003). During this period, he continued working for French television, his last work being episodes in the anthology series Au siècle de Maupassant. Chabrol’s legacy is an impressive body of work that has justly earned him a worldwide following. Read biography... |
Auteur film director Alain Corneau dies, aged 67 Alain Corneau, one of France’s most respected filmmakers, died in Paris during the night of the 29th-30th August. His death came just over a week after the French release of his latest film, Crime d’amour, and followed a fight against lung cancer. He was 67. In a career that spanned 35 years, Corneau directed sixteen films, including several major classic works of French cinema (Police Python 357, Série noire, Tous les matins du monde) and contributed to three anthology films. He is considered to be one of the most important French filmmakers of the last fifty years and has worked with some of the biggest names in France, including Gérard Depardieu, Catherine Deneuve and Daniel Auteuil. Although Corneau is best known for his policiers (three of which starred Yves Montand in his toughest roles), his cinema embraced a wide range of themes, including epic romance (Fort Saganne), adolescence (Le Nouveau monde) and the clash of cultures (Stupeur et tremblements). His most acclaimed success was the historical biopic (Tous les matins du monde), which garnered seven Césars in 1992 and was the highpoint of his career. Read biography... |
Bruno Cremer, TV’s finest Maigret, takes his last bow After suffering from cancer for several years, the well-known French actor Bruno Cremer died on 7th August 2010 in a Paris hospital. He was best known for playing Inspector Maigret in a French television series that ran for 54 episodes from 1991 to 2005. Prior to this, he had pursued a distinguished career on stage and film, working alongside such stars as Jean-Louis Trintignant, Romy Schneider, Gérard Depardieu, Anthony Quinn and Claudia Cardinale. Bruno Cremer was born on 6th October 1929, at Saint-Mandé, Val-de-Marne, France. At the age of 12, he had made up his mind to become an actor and as soon as he could he enrolled at Paris’s elite drama school, le Conservatoire. Here, he rubbed shoulders with such promising young talent as Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Rochefort. Cremer made his stage debut in 1953 at the Théâtre de l’Ouvre in Jules Supervielle’s Robinson. For much of the following decade, he would devote himself to his theatre work, appearing in such diverse plays as Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband, William Shakespeare’s Pericles and Jean Anouilh’s Becket ou l’Honneur de Dieu, earning himself a reputation as one of France’s most promising young actors. Cremer’s film career began in earnest when Pierre Schoendoerffer gave him his first leading role in La 317e Section (1965). He had already appeared in a handful of films in small roles but this is where his screen career took off. Other film directors were not slow to see Cremer’s talent for playing complex and ambiguous characters with depth, introspection and authenticity. He would work with some of the finest filmmakers in the industry, including: Costa-Gavras (Section spéciale, 1975), Claude Lelouch (Le Bon et les méchants, 1976), Bertrand Blier (Tenue de soirée, 1986) and François Ozon (Sous le sable, 2000). In 2003, Bruno Cremer published his autobiography, Un certain jeune homme. He is survived by his wife Chantal (whom he married in 1984), his two daughters and his son Stéphane (a successful writer). For many, he will be remembered as the definitive screen incarnation of Simenon’s pipe-smoking sleuth Maigret. |
Actress-writer Cécile Aubry dies Cécile Aubry passed away at her home in Dourdan, near Paris, on Monday 19th July. She was 81 and had been suffering from lung cancer. Born Anne-Marie Benard on 3 August 1928, she had trained to become a dancer when she was offered her first screen role, the part of Manon Lescaut in Henri-Georges Clouzot’s 1949 film Manon. Her performance in this film earned her the Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival. This led 20th Century Fox to sign her up to play the female lead in Henry Hathaway’s The Black Rose (1950), opposite Tyrone Power and Orson Welles. Aubry gave up her promising acting career after just eight films to marry a Moroccan prince, Si Brahim El Glaoui. The marriage was only to last six years. She penned several children’s books and scripted some popular series for French television. The latter included the serial Belle et Sébastien, which ran to three seasons and was aired in France between 1965 and 1968. This serial has been seen the world over and recounts the alpine adventures of an orphan boy (played by Aubry’s six-year-old son Mehdi El Glaoui) and his faithful dog. |