Monday, Mar 15th 2010
When Jean-Marie Le Clézio gave a press conference in Paris last week upon his being named the 2008 Nobel Literature laureate, he answered one question – that was submitted by both French and British journalists: does this award disprove the idea of a decline in French culture? His reply, though good-natured, was dismissive, saying that [...]
I’ve always found dubious the notion that certain times in the past were ‘a more innocent age’; it is bandied about a lot when referring to the more demure sexual mores of times gone, the 1950s being the prime example. Of course the ‘innocence’ of comely young ladies (and it is nearly always ladies who [...]
A surprise from Cannes, the host country got its first Palme d’Or since Maurice Pialat’s Sous le soleil de Satan in 1987. The winner was Laurent Cantet for Entre les murs (known in English as The Class) an adaptation of Parisian teacher and Cahiers du Cinéma critic François Bégaudeau’s novel of two years ago. The [...]
There’s a famous story about the technical problems encountered by Soviet director Aleksandr Dovzhenko while shooting his 1930 film Earth, an admiring account of the effect of collectivization on the Russian peasantry. Working with non-professional actors, he was shooting a scene one day that showed the arrival of a tractor on a farm on [...]