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Daniel Pommereulle Movies

1972  
 
This is a highly experimental French film consisting of no more than 23 camera shots, total. It resembles nothing so much as one of Warhol's earlier films, except that it is more episodic. Nico of the Velvet Underground portrays a different woman in each of the episodes. The first three concern her "rescues" from Death Valley, Egypt and Iceland by a young man to whom she eventually says "stay away from me." Following that, she recites from various texts in German, French and English, makes various gnomic observations and encounters various men in various guises. All the men are played either by director Philippe Garrel or Pierre Clementi. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

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Starring:
NicoPierre ClĂ©menti, (more)
 
1971  
 
This highly symbolic and enigmatic political drama by Hungarian director Miklos Jancso was produced by a consortium from Italy, France and West Germany. This film is considered to be an homage to Antonioni as it uses his favorite leading actress (Monica Vitti) and his cameraman Carlo di Palma. This film was made during a time when Jancso was not allowed to make films in his native Hungary. In the middle of the crowd, while covering an Italian political protest by leftists, The Journalist (Monica Vitti), a pacifist, finds herself surrounded by a quite different group of people who jostle her, remove her recording equipment from her and set her car on fire. She complains to the police about this. However, when the police bring one of the young men before her for her to identify him, she says he is not one of her attackers. This leads to her having a romantic relationship with the young man. The group, and the young man, are young Italian neo-fascists, and the young man has been given the job of assassinating a leftist. He is too gentle to do this, and his group kills him right before The Journalist's eyes. She goes to the police again, but they begin to believe that she is insane, even when she is forced to kill her boyfriend's assailants right there in the police station. She is formally declared mad, and is taken off. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

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1968  
 
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This Francois Truffaut thriller is based ona novel by William Irish (aka Cornell Woolrich), whose books had been adapted by Alfred Hitchcock on many previous occasions. Jeanne Moreau stars as a woman whose fiancé is nastily murdered by five men. Utilizing a series of disguises, the cool-customer Moreau tracks down all five culprits, sexually enslaves them, and then engineers their deaths. The ominous musical score was written by Bernard Herrmann, another frequent Hitchcock collaborator. The Bride Wore Black was initially released in France as La Mariee etait en Noir. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

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Starring:
Jeanne MoreauClaude Rich, (more)
 
1967  
 
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La Collectionneuse is the third of director Eric Rohmer's "Six contes moraux" (six moral tales), and also the first of the series to attain full feature-length status (each of the first two entries, La Boulangere de Monceau and La Carriere de la Suzanne, ran less than one hour). Patrick Bauchau plays a self-centered young man on summer holiday in the Mediterranean. He finds himself irresistibly attracted to Haydee (Haydee Politoff,) the aloof young woman who shares his St. Tropez villa. Haydee is a sexual libertine, a "collector of men" (hence the film's title), but she appears disinterested in Patrick. For his part, the hero assumes that the girl's promiscuity is deliberately calculated to prompt him to seduce her. Filmed in 1967, La Collectioneuse was released in the US in 1971, by which time the fourth of Rohmer's Six Moral Tales, My Night at Maud's (69), had already debuted in America. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

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Starring:
Haydee PolitoffPatrick Bauchau, (more)
 
1967  
 
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French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard's Le Weekend remains his most consistently relentless attack on the bourgeois values of his own country and the perceived imperialism of the United States. Mireille Darc plays the central character, an "average" woman who is systematically radicalized during a weekend motor trip. No sooner have the woman and her husband (Jean Yanne) embarked on their journey than they become enmeshed in the mother of all traffic jams. The motorists rave, rant, burn, rape, murder, pillage and even descend into cannibalism -- all of which is treated by Godard as a natural progression of events. The prevalent theory that Jean-Luc Godard had intended Weekend as the apotheosis of his career is bolstered by the film's last two titles: "End of Film." "End of Cinema." ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

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Starring:
Mireille DarcJean Yanne, (more)