Cyrano de Bergerac
David:
I’ll concede that Bye Bye Monkey and Nathalie Granger are good calls, but sometimes I find his presence distracting as if he were overpowering the film as a whole. An example would be Loulou, but perhaps that’s simply a result of his becoming more well known over the years even if Pialat had selected him at the time, due to his contemporaneous obscurity relative to the fame he has today.
Truffaut’s The Woman Next Door
That clip David posted is an early scene from Blier’s “Menage”. I think it’s Depardieu’s character’s first appearance in the film. There are so many great scenes between the three of them. Michel Blanc won the “Best Actor” award at Cannes that year but I think it should have been shared with Depardieu.
I kind of feel like my argument sort of goes back to what Peter Greenaway was saying about the ‘tyranny of the actor’ in which his argument was that cinema is not meant to be a showcase for acting talent and that the most important attributes of the medium shouldn’t be overpowered by the presence and talent of individual actors.
Haavrd wrote “Depardieu starred in a forgotten movie called “Una pura formalita” with Roman Polanski (acting). Upf is a clever thriller, two men of cinema acting brilliantly together.”
Is it forgotten? I guess I never really hear it discussed, and I don’t think it was ever given a North American DVD release. I did enjoy the old busted up VHS copy I found at the school library though!!!
I’ll score another vote for Danton (Wajda), a key film from the 80s and one of the great film biographies.
David Ehrenstein