Maine-Ocean Express

Maine-Océan

France

1986

131 Min

Black and White

1.66:1

French

Currently 4.0/5 Stars.
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SCR Lydia Feld, Jacques Rozier

CAST Rosa-Maria Gomes, Abdel Kedadouche, Luis Rego, Bernard Menez, Yves Afonso, Bernard Dumaine, Lydia Feld, Michel Le Gouill, Christian Bouillette, Jean-Paul Bonnaire, Pedro Armendáriz Jr.

ED Martine Brun, Jacques Rozier

MUSIC Chico Buarque de Hollanda, Hubert Degex, Anne Frédérick, Francis Hime

Beginning with a beautiful black samba dancer’s breathless dash through a Paris train station, the film introduces us in very short order to a couple of train conductors who discover you can’t always live by the rules, a feisty woman attorney with a passion for semiotics, an unforgettable sailor (Yves Afonso playing Michel Simon playing Popeye) with an hilariously impenetrable Breton accent, and an incredibly tempermental Mexican impresario (Pedro Armendariz). Displaying the improvisatory brio of the early New Wave, Maine-Ocean Express shows an insatiable curiosity about what happens when people of different languages and cultures are thrown together. Admirers of the ‘democratic’ comedy of Jacques Tati’s late films will also find much to admire in this unique work, which resembles an express train ripping through the Tower of Babel. Jacques Rozier’s Adieu Philippine was a 1960 classic, and he’s made only two features since then. Maine-Ocean Express was a deserved winner of the Prix Jean Vigo in 1986. —Peter Scarlet, BAM/PFA

Director

Jacques Rozier

Jacques Rozier was born in Paris in 1926. After he attended the IDHEC, he directed various short films and worked as assistant director to lean Renoir for French Cancan (1955). His first feature film, Adieu Philippine (1960) was completed thanks to the aid of Jean-Luc Godard, who made an effort to find him the necessary financial backing. Because this film was a commercial failure, Rozier was forced to work in television. He was not to return to feature films until 1969, when he made Du côté d’Orouët, another commercial failure. Rozier continued to work for national television and returned to the limelight in 1985 with his Maine-Océan, which critics have considered his most significant work. —Torino FIlm Festival