Maurice Pialat, Masters of Cinema DVD's
La Gueule ouverte because it makes Cries and Whispers look like silly hocus pocus and the dvd contains his brilliant documentary shorts on Turkey.
L’Enfance-nue because it picked up on childhood where 400 Blows left off and the dvd contains his short Love Exists, which is the best documentary on Paris I’ve ever seen.
You absolutely must see The Mouth Agape. It’s Pialat at his most unyielding and toughest. This film is shot through with such palpable pain and cruelty, even to one’s deathbed. Someone said nobody leaves a Pialat shot the same as when they entered it – the harm is done, even if no one yet realizes it.
La Gueule ouverte because it makes Cries and Whispers look like silly hocus pocus.
I like that.
Someone said nobody leaves a Pialat shot the same as when they entered it – the harm is done, even if no one yet realizes it
And I like that.
How is Nous ne vieillirons pas ensemble/We Won’t Grow Old Together? I love the title.
That would be my third title to recommend. It’s a harrowing, nasty dissection of a codependent relationship. It turns a lot of people off, though.
Nastier than scenes in A nos amous?
The nastiest physical scenes in We Won’t Grow Old Together were shown in the trailer, but it’s dialogue is way more nasty, and hurtful than anything that happend in A Nos Amours.
I’d reccomend The Mouth Agape, as well, if just to get it out of your system. It’s definitely not his best, but it’s his most uncompromising, and unsentimental movie, ever.
Police, however, is cool. There’s lots of smacking and yelling, and genre shit that goes out the window after the first hour. It’s one of his strangest films, I think.
I still haven’t seen Under the Sun of Satan, or Graduate First, but I’d mainly reccomend looking for Under the Sun of Satan because it’s his Palme D’or winner.
@Aoaijea- then We Won’t Grow Old Together must be really hardcore. A nos amours was my first Pialat and I felt like someone kicked my face in by the end of it…there’s nobody else like Pialat for that.
Thanks all.
The difference between A nous amours and Nous ne vieillirons pas ensemble is that the former gives you a hero to root for.
Having just watched one of the supplements on the MOC release of We Won’t Grow Old Together, most specifically the one featuring Pialat as he discusses his film with some unnamed people over dinner, I just wanted to say one could tell he was getting pissed off when the individuals he was conversing with were pointing out the man was abusive and horrible person and that the woman had had enough. The point being Pialat based the character on himself, so it was as though the people he was with were criticizing him and his behavior directly just as he attempted to wear his heart on his sleeve and atone for his actions with the film.
…just as he attempted to wear his heart on his sleeve and atone for his actions with the film.
I don’t think the film has anything to do with atonement, and I don’t think Pialat sees the woman as the victim. The relationship is the victim.
“I don’t think Pialat sees the woman as the victim. The relationship is the victim.”
That’s part of my point. Sorry if I didn’t make myself clear. Everyone else who’s interviewed concerning the film or who discusses the film with him sees the woman as the victim. As for me, knowing the male protagonist is based on Pialat himself, I find it hard not to sympathize with him to an extent even if I also sympathize with the woman.
Yes, Pialat seems to have been genuinely shocked that everybody saw the man as the guilty party and the woman as the the innocent victim.
Anybody know why MOC never released Loulou or Van Gogh, considering they’re also owned by Gaumont as are the rest of the Pialat films they’ve released?
Really want to see We Won’t Grow Oldd Together now. I loved Van Gogh and A Nos Amors. Loulou, maybe a tiny bit less.
Police, just didn’t do it for me. Not sure if it was Depardieu or something else.
Artificial Eye released Loulou and Van Gogh. Both out of print. The MoCs are cheap, £7.50 each or so on Amazon UK. Loaded with extras.
Just got Police yesterday, watched it today, was left utterly marmalised, and am looking forward to a rewatch. Depardieu and Marceau are incredible. Credible, I mean.
Sous le soleil de Satan on monday.
I’m glad Eureka took a step to represent such a forgotten master. Everything I’ve seen from him has been excellent.
I’ve seen six Pialat films: L’Enfance Nue, Nous ne nous Vieillirons Pas Ensemble, La Gueule Ouverte, Loulou, A Nos Amours, and Under the Sun of Satant. And the last is the only that wasn’t a masterpiece as I felt it veering towards a more French middlebrow, literary style of filmmaking, somewhat reminiscent if someone like Claude Berri.
It’s unsurprising the film received a mixed reception on its original release but neither is it surprising Sous Le Soleil De Satan won the Palme d’Or at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival. The decision was met with controversy, as was the director’s ungracious attitude (the infamous raise of his finger to a whistling audience as he went to collect his prize).
Middlebrow?
I had a hard time with this film. I didn’t like the way each (?) scene was: two people meet, talk, part. And I didn’t care for the acting styles. There were hardly any objects in this movie.
Olive Films had recently released POLICE on American DVD last year, just to let you Pialat fans (who own reigon-2 copies on DVD) know.
@Matthew (sic)
That’s how POLICE was.
It’s also going to be available on Region Free blu from Gaumont with English subs at some point later in the winter.
I preferred Police because of the looser acting, Sophie Marceau, and the interesting ‘phonyness’. Everybody has a persona and ‘real self’. Sous le soleil… was stifling, and I don’t understand any of it.
Gaumont’s releasing a bunch (all?) of his films on Blu, really interested in Van Gogh.
He made ten features, and six of them are getting blued by Gaumont, for the time being.
Jesse Richards
Ok so I’m a huge fan of the Pialat films I’ve seen so far, A Nos Amours, Loulou and Van Gogh….
Have any of you, particularly Pialat fans, seen the films of his released by MoC, and which ones would you recommend most and why? I can’t justify getting them all at once at the moment, so which one or ones are the ones to start with?