#alexandre astruc

[salvadorbonaparte]

"But with the development of 16mm and television, the day is not far off when everyone will possess a projector, will go to the local bookstore and hire films written on any subject, of any form, from literary criticism and novels to mathematics, history, and general science"

RIP Alexandre Astruc you would have loved the age of streaming

[gatutor]

Anouk Aimée "Les mauvaises rencontres) 1955, de Alexandre Astruc.

[edwordsmyth]

Luchino Visconti

[schizografia]

L’espressione del pensiero è il problema fondamentale del cinema.

Alexandre Astruc

[chiropteracupola]

got my top surgery done at the spanish inquisition

[o-druida-ebrio]

“Sartre par lui même” (1976)

Dir. Alexandre Astruc e Michel Contat.

[justforbooks]

Anouk Aimée

Elegant French film actor best known for her roles in the classic films A Man and a Woman, Lola, and La Dolce Vita

Show-business history records how the young Françoise Sorya was walking with her parents in Paris when they were approached by the director Henri Calef, who asked whether the teenager could play a part in his forthcoming production La Maison Sous la Mer (1947). The answer was yes and Françoise took the professional name Anouk after the character she was to play.

A short while later, she accepted a part in La Fleur de l’Age and its director, Marcel Carné, added Aimée to her chosen name. In the event the film was not completed, but its writer, Jacques Prévert, had been captivated by the beauty and natural talent of the young actor and wrote a screenplay indebted to Romeo and Juliet for her. As a result, Anouk Aimée, who has died aged 92, took the role of Juliette in The Lovers of Verona (1949).

The success of the movie launched her career, which included some 70 feature films, stage work and a handful of TV movies and miniseries. Her greatest successes were La Dolce Vita (1960), Lola (1961) and A Man and a Woman (1966), for which she won a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination, but she chose work erratically and happily sacrificed her career for a private life that included an absence from the screen during the first six years of her marriage to the actor Albert Finney.

Daughter of Geneviève (nee Durand), who acted under the name Geneviève Sorya, and Henri Dreyfus, also an actor, she was born in Paris. During the occupation, her parents moved her to the country for safety and she used her mother’s name rather than that of her Jewish father. He later changed his name to Henry Murray.

Aimée studied both drama and dance before her first starring role in The Lovers of Verona, as the would-be actor Juliette, who, while working as an understudy, meets and falls tragically in love with a set carpenter (Serge Reggiani). That success took her to Britain for a part opposite Trevor Howard in The Golden Salamander (1950). Although she was well received in the rather dull film, she subsequently married the Greek director Nico Papatakis and had a daughter, and did not appear on screen again until The Crimson Curtain (1953).

This was a stylishly made period romance, adapted by the writer Alexandre Astruc from a short story as his directorial debut. Despite a duration of 43 minutes and narration rather than dialogue, it proved a critical success. Aimée, cast as a young woman with heart problems who sacrifices herself for her lover, embarked on a busy international career.

She played a prostitute, Jeanne, in an adaptation of a Georges Simenon story, The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By (aka The Paris Express, 1952); co-starred in a somewhat pretentious thriller, Bad Liaisons (1955), directed by Astruc; and played a small role in Lovers of Paris (1957), which starred Gérard Philipe, France’s leading romantic actor.

She was invited to play opposite him in Jacques Becker’s Montparnasse 19 (1958), a biopic of Modigliani in which she took the role of the woman who eventually married the artist. She moved straight to another prestige production for Georges Franju, The Keepers (1959), playing a woman who tries to help a young man wrongly committed to a psychiatric hospital by his father. In Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, starring Marcello Mastroianni, she had the powerful role of a jaded socialite and found in the director a new freedom and vitality that kept her working in Italy for much of the next six years.

However, her best role was in Lola, Jacques Demy’s enchanting debut, dedicated to Max Ophuls and romantic cinema, which it affectionately satirised. Aimée as the not very talented singer waiting for her sailor lover to return made the character, in top hat and feather boa, vivacious yet vulnerable. Sadly, most of the other films in this period were less distinguished, and only Fellini’s 8½ (1963) placed her in a quality movie, as Mastroianni’s girlfriend.

She received the greatest popular acclaim of her long career in Claude Lelouch’s A Man and a Woman. It took the Oscar as best foreign film, and the Cannes festival award as best film, with an Oscar nomination for Aimée as best actress. She did not win, but there was compensation in receiving the equivalent award from Bafta, a Golden Globe and starring in a huge box office hit. Its success led to a sequel, A Man and a Woman – Twenty Years Later (1986).

After starring in the elegant and mysterious Un Soir, Un Train (1968) for the Belgian director André Delvaux, she again played Lola, in Model Shop (1969), which marked Demy’s American debut. The film flopped, not least because Aimée seemed uninterested and unengaged by her role.

The same could be said of The Appointment and Justine (both 1969). The former was a misguided project by the New Yorker Sidney Lumet and suffered from an arty pseudo-European “sophistication” that alienated audiences. Justine was taken over by George Cukor early in the shooting. The director, famous for his rapport with female actors, later remarked that it was his only experience working with “somebody who didn’t try”. It was a commercial failure.

She returned to the screen in 1976 with Second Chance. There was an upturn when she received the best actress award at the 1980 Cannes festival for A Leap in the Dark, an atmospheric work by Marco Bellochio. Aimée took the character role of a spinster sister of a judge (Michel Piccoli), also unmarried, each enduring lives of quiet desperation. This was one of eight films she made with Piccoli, a friend since their days as drama students.

She worked for another distinguished director, Bernardo Bertolucci, in Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man (1981), but her cool talent was swamped by the ebullience of her co-star, Ugo Tognazzi. The political thriller enjoyed little success either critically or commercially. Aimée subsequently worked mainly in France, with occasional sorties into international movies, including a small role in Jerzy Skolimowski’s Success Is the Best Revenge (1984), and a larger one in Bethune: The Making of a Hero (1990), a co-production celebrating the Canadian doctor Norman Bethune, portrayed by Donald Sutherland.

She was among the prestige cast in Robert Altman’s stargazer’s delight, Prêt-à-Porter (1994), which had fun at the expense of the fashion trade. In 2002 she received a lifetime achievement Golden Bear award at the Berlin International film festival.

She continued to work during the following decade, and defended criticisms of her occasional misfires, saying that while some of her choices had been poor, she was still proud of her “not unimpressive” career. She added that actors, too, need to work for money.

She had a pivotal role in The Birch-Tree Meadow (2003), co-written by Jeanne Moreau and directed by Marceline Loridon-Ivens. This sturdy work cast her as a Holocaust survivor returning to the scenes of the atrocities and encountering the photographer grandson of an SS officer.

In lighter mood in the comedy Happily Ever After (2004), she played the mother to the central character Vincent, a role taken by the director Yvan Attal. In 2006, she was attracted to another supporting role as the mother to the lead actor in the intriguing Hotel Harabati.

The amiable The One I Love (2009) was followed by a return to the director who had given her international fame in 1966. Lelouch’s Ces Amours-là was a sad disappointment, however, and Aimée’s following film, Paris Connections (financed by Tesco and sold through their retail outlets), based on a Jackie Collins novel, seems to have fared little better.

She then worked with the novelist and film-maker Philippe Claudel in his second feature, Tous les Soleils (2011), in which she took the role of a dying woman. After Mince Alors! (2012), her 90th screen credit, in which she had a small role, as Maman, she effectively retired, living in Montparnasse, Paris, with her daughter, Manuela.

However, in 2019 she was tempted to return for a final film with Lelouch and the chance to work again with Jean-Louis Trintignant, her co-star from A Man and a Woman. The film The Best Years of a Life was the second follow-up to that famous original and dealt with love and memory in old age. It was celebrated for showing the enduring magnetism of its stars.

Aimée was married and divorced four times. She is survived by Manuela.

🔔 Anouk Aimée (Nicole Françoise Florence Dreyfus), actor, born 27 April 1932; died 18 June 2024

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[howhow326]

Miraculous Ladybug Persona AU because why not!

Marinette

Associated Arcana: Fool (cuz duh), Justice (her main arcana when it's not fool), Magician? (she's good at arts and crafts, I guess)

Initial Persona: Joan of Arc (hands down, her persona, no argument)

Adrien

Associated Arcana: Emperor? (like reversed Emperor where he has no control over his life), Empress? (like reversed empress where he stopped enjoying life kind of and also cuz he's girl coded), Moon (me on my "Adrien's true self is himself and Chat Noir" bs), Magician? (he's good at stuff???)

Initial Persona: Petit Prince (apparently Adrien's story is based on this one)

Alya

Associated Arcana: High Pristess (cuz High Pristess is all about listening to your inner voice and Alya's biggest character moments are listening to her conscious and acting on that), Justice (the whole reason she's a journalist)

Initial Persona: Josephine Baker (I kinda struggled with this one cuz Google dosen't make it easy to research Martinique and I didn't want to do something lame like "Renard the fox lol". I typed up "black woman spy" into Google [because Alya's other story is being Marinette's best friend which is lame] and Josephine was the first French result I got. She was the first black woman movie star and she also spied on the Axis powers for France during WW2. France also gave her the title "Creole Goddess" which scares me)

Chloe

Associated Arcana: Devil (this is what Astruc would give her lol. It also fits cuz Devil is giving in to your vices and Chloe can't stop doing that), Lovers (cuz it'sabout making a choice between two options and aticking with that and Chloe does that both times she's the big bad of the episode), Empress (cuz Chloe is rich and enjoys her life I guess)

Initial Persona: Marie Antoinette (cuz I am 99% Chloe is based on her and it kinda for a meta perspective on Chloes story where she is the scape goat for even worse villains)

Nino

Associated Arcana: Emperor (he's the leader of the resistance i guess), Heriophant? (he gives good advice like 3 times in the series?) , Chariot (the lame answer: he shares character traits with Chie and Ryuji)

Initial Persona: Alexandre Dumas (I was drawing blanks again cuz Nino's only story [outside of being Adrien's best friend] is the resistance stuff so I looked up black people in the French revolution and this the guy I got. Fun fact, he's the father of the guy who wrote three musketeers apparently, I was really not expecting that)

Luka

Associated Arcana: Heriophant (fits it better than Nino), High Pristress (I still think Alya fits this arcana but Luka is rolling in this cards symbolisim with listening to people's inner music and having the miraculous of Intuition)

Initial Persona: Orpheus (cuz Im lame. Marinette is his Eurydice cuz she left him)

Kagami

Associated Arcana: I have no freaking clue this time Magician?????

Initial Persona: Tomoe (cuz Im lame and it's her mom's name)

Lila

Associated Arcana: Moon (cuz what the heck else would she even have? Jester???)

Initial Persona: Coco Chanel (because eff that nazi spy. And it futhers the duality thing that Alya and Lila used to have before they retconed Lila)

Felix

Associated Arcana: Justice (he's a crazy justice boy you cant convince me otherwise)

Initial Persona: Loki (WHAT ELSE AM I SUPPOSED TO CHOOSE)

[kvetchlandia]

Robert Doisneau Anouk Aimée et Jean Claude Pascal Performing in Alexandre Astruc's "Le Rideau Cramoisi" (The Crimson Curtain) 1953

[mailmiocuoredipietratremaancora]

Volevo fare un film contro la polizia, ma a modo mio.

Elio Petri

Per una volta, un'analisi che risulta lucida, intelligente, tagliente come un bisturi, invece di essere pretenziosa, invece di essere strumentale, invece di deplorare l'insicurezza o di far uso di slogan come le solite analisi. [Quella di Petri] È un'analisi interna, un'analisi umana. Per me, i maestri di Petri sono Visconti, Renoir. C'è la testa e c'è il cuore. Senza cervello, non c'è cuore. Senza cuore, non c'è cervello.

Alexandre Astruc

[willnicholson-french-new-wave]

The topic that I have for the blog assignment is the French New Wave of Cinema. In the picture above are some popular films that influenced the film movement. So what exactly was the French New Wave? It was a film movement that rose to popularity in the late 1950s in Paris, France. The idea was to give directors full creative control over their work, allowing them to favor improvisational storytelling instead of strict narratives. In Alexandre Astruc's manifesto he writes "cinema was in the process of becoming a new means of expression on the same level as painting and the novel...This is why I would like to call this new age of cinema the age of the caméra-stylo." This essay inspired many French filmmakers to start experimenting with new ideas of how we should shoot and view cinema. These new filmmakers such as Jean-Luc Godard, Agnès Varda, Éric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette, and Claude Chabrol wanted to experiment with film form and style but didn't have the budgets to do it. Instead of trying to find the money to get high level gear and equipment they decided to use portable equipment to have a run-and-gun style. This led to a unique style of film that had fragmented, discontinuous editing, and long takes that allowed actors to explore a scene. The combination of realism and commentary allowed these movies to have unique characters, motives, and even endings that were not so clear-cut. When it comes to these French new wave films, some recognizable characteristics stick out and signify which movies fall into the New Wave category. The main one is the rejection of classical filmmaking, with a focus on experimental and/or avant-garde techniques. These films also featured existential themes that were in direct contrast to what film was doing previously with the Hollywood golden era. These films wanted to showcase the individual and the chaos of human existence. So what did these films mean for the rest of the world? Even after the movies stopped being made, it inspired many other international movements including the New Hollywood era. You can see these influences across Woody Allen, Spike Lee, and even in the mumblecore films of the 90s and 2000s. To summarize, at the movement's heart was the idea that anyone should be able to make a movie, and that sentiment has lived on today. Overall this new film design led to many interesting and artistic films that still hold up today.

Source used: https://nofilmschool.com/what-is-the-french-new-wave

[salvadorbonaparte]

"Our sensibilities have been in danger of getting blunted by those everyday films which, year in year out, show their tired and conventional faces to the world" a film criticism from 1948 that is still relevant

[gatutor]

Gerard Barray-Claudine Auger "Llamas sobre el Adriático" (Flammes sur l´Adriatique) 1968, de Alexandre Astruc, Stjepan Cikes.

[ruivieira1950]

Robert Hossein et Jean-Louis Trintignant dans ''La Longue Marche'' réalisé par Alexandre Astruc sorti en 1966.

[laurent-bigot]

LES ARTISANS DE LA NOUVELLE VAGUE

LES ARTISANS DE LA NOUVELLE VAGUE

Après des années d’effort, demeurés à peu près vains depuis 1945, de jeunes réalisateurs français réussirent enfin à se faire remarquer en faisant irruption dans le monde cinématographique avec une énergie sans précédent. L’apparition soudaine en 1959 de la nouvelle vague mit le monde cinématographique en émoi. Ce fut une extraordinaire explosion d’activité créatrice : en dix-huit mois, une…

[o-druida-ebrio]

"Sartre par lui même" (1976)

Dir. Alexandre Astruc e Michel Contat.