Le lit de la vierge

France

1969

114 Min

Black and White

2.35:1

French

Currently 4.2/5 Stars.
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PROD Sylvina Boissonnas, Philippe Garrel

CAST Zouzou, Pierre Clémenti, Tina Aumont, Philippe Garrel, Jean-Pierre Kalfon, Valérie Lagrange, Margareth Clémenti, Pierre-Richard Bré, Nicole Laguigner, Babette Lamy, Didier Léon, Jaime Semprun

SOUND Claude Jauvert, Jean-Pierre Ruh

Cannes (Quinzaine des Réalisateurs), Berlinale (Forum)

Director

Philippe Garrel is a French director, cinematographer, screenwriter, editor and producer. His movies have won him awards at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival and Venice Film Festival. He was born in Paris in 1948, the son of actor Maurice Garrel. He started his film career early directing and writing his first film Lés Enfants Désaccordés in 1964. Garrel met Nico in 1969 when she performed the song “The Falconer” for his film Le Lit de la Vierge and the couple were soon living together. Nico first appeared in the 1972 film La Cicatrice Intériure (aka the Inner Scar). Songs included in the film appear on Nico’s album Desertshore, which features stills from the film on the front and back covers. Nico appeared in a number of Garrel’s films after this. Their ten year relationship ended in 1979.

Prix Jean Vigo for the film L’Enfant Secret. He won Perspectives du Cinéma Award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1984 for his 1983 film la Nuit Liberté. Over a ten year period, Garrel enjoyed… read more

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actingoutpolitics

10Oct10

“Le lit de la vierge” (“In the Bed with Virgin” - 1969) by Philip Garrel doesn’t try to depict a historical or existential Christ, but instead to research the possibilities of representing Christ as a psychological archetype, as an internal image inside the human psyche, and Christianity as a Christian sensibility. To incarnate, cinematographically, this psychological Christ - Garrel uses an exceptional actor and a rare human being, Pierre Clementi to personify the Christian energies inside human soul. Garrel models Christian sensibility on idealistic aspirations of French students who in 1968 rebelled against the norms of formal democracy (enveloping colonial reflexes and philistine consumerism) and refused to identify with the predatory and burger values. We see Christ/Clementi carrying throughout his life time ordeal – a heavy box loaded with human evil desires and deeds which the young French rebels dreamed to dump out of human history as a kind of nuclear waste. Christ as a human potential for good suffers his destiny of being abandoned by the heavenly father and not understood by his childish and illiterate mother (if traditional males prefer virgins, children need mothers – the point Godard developed in his “Hail Mary – 1985). For French students money and mercantile values in general are like pebbles with which the clients of Mary Magdalene in the film reward her for her services (Garrel’s striking and a courageously chosen metaphor of money). These pebbles which Christ withdraws are like marks on the road which point to the future of civilization – symbolizing the wrong direction of historical development. The representation of torture of the innocent people in the film is, for us, Americans, prophetic – we see the use of dogs as a torture prop as we saw it in endless photographs of torture during Iraq war to force confessions about the non-existing ties between Saddam and 9/11. The film made us witness that the Christian impulses of our soul are like a child who is abused by the very norms of society which uses Christ as a dogma that is written on its pagan banners as a call for arms. The Christ of our psychology (our proclivity for the good) is, according to the film, officially venerated by the same people who sacrificed him and who destroyed the student movement of the 60s. Please, visit: www.actingoutpolitics.com to read about Luis Bunuel’s film “Nazarin” – 1957, depicting the meaning of Christian belief (with analysis of shots from the film) and also articles about psychology of religious belief including the analysis of Emil Nolde’s painting “Christ with Children”. With gratitude to Shahed for offering in this web side this unique film by Philip Garrel for downloading Victor Enyutin