Bassae

France

1964

8 Min

Color

French

Currently 3.8/5 Stars.
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SCR Philippe Sollers, Alexandre Astruc

DP Jean-Daniel Pollet, C. Recors

MUSIC Charlet Recors

Synopsis

” I was interested by the fact that some old guy, after the Parthenon’s glamour, devoted himself in a much smaller temple, where there was no white marble, no nothing.

All greek temples are dedicated to Apollo etc, and this particular one was not dedicated to anyone and is in a place where there never was a city nearby, in a kind of wasteland, in a ditch.

But, just by going up a bit –you are in the centre of Peloponissos- on a clear day, you can see the sea on both your left and right.
I went back there, at least six, seven or eight times, as if I wanted to think or find myself.

So, at the temple in Bassae, I made a short 10 minute film and I was lucky enough to encounter two days of clouds and mist between the columns."

—ecofilms.gr (Jean-Daniel Pollet, Tours d’horizons, Editions de l’?il 2005)

Director

Jean-Daniel Pollet

Jean-Daniel Pollet (1936-2004) is a French film director and screenwriter who was most active in the 1960s and 1970s. He was associated with two approaches to filmmaking: comedies which blended burlesque and melancholic elements, and poetic films based on texts by writers such as the French poet Francis Ponge.

Pollet was born on 20 June 1936 in La Madeleine, Nord, in France. His film career started in 1958, when he did a short film set in Paris called Pourvu qu’on ait l’ivresse…, in which Pollet filmed the movements of dancers’ silhouettes. Pollet built on the images and themes from this first film in many of his later works, by incorporating elements of popular comedies imbued with both burlesque and melancholic elements. In the early 1960s, Pollet began exploring another approach to filmmaking with the film Méditerranée, which he made over two years with Volker Schlöndorff. Pollet tried to create a form of poetic film, using texts and commentaries by writers such as Philippe… read more