As part of the film series True and False: Jeff Wall on Cinematography, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art will be screening twice Jean Eustache’s epic masterpiece, The Mother and the Whore (France, 1973). In a manner similar to the way Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil simultaneously capped a film movement (film noir) and took it to new heights, Eustache’s over three hour chamber drama featuring Jean-Pierre Léaud occilating between two women in a love triangle (played by Bernadette Lafont and Françoise Lebrun) climaxed and finished off the French New Wave in a gesture of supreme poetic and revolutionary sublimity. Unavailable to see in the U.S. except on tape, this is an unmissable opportunity to see on film in stark, luminous black and white one of the definitive films of an era.
The Mother and the Whore will be screening Dec. 27 at 6:30pm and Dec, 29 at 3:00pm.