Artificial Eye / Curzon Film World

[Person]

I watched A Man Escaped yesterday. A fine film, beautifully made, but I'll dust off my old grumbling regarding Bresson - no real humour. I prefer Becker's Le Trou and Jean-Pierre Melville, in general over Bresson, though he was great, a true master of Cinema. My favourite of his, is L'Argent, though I have still to see Une femme douce and Quatre nuits d'un rêveur.

[Barmy]

Four Nights is Bresson's sole comedy.

[miless]

I generally find moments in nearly all Bresson films to be slightly humorous (although I'm generally laughing on the inside... and pained at the unfolding events).
A Russian professor I once took a class from (on film and lit) once told me that she didn't like Tarkovsky's films because they had no humor, and then she told me of an interview where he responded to a question about his lack of humor by saying that he wasn't capable of laughing... she then said, with a straight face, that she thought there was something wrong with the man. (despite several stories that paint him, in his private life, as a funny guy)

I actually like Bresson and Tarkovsky's 'lack of humor'... It makes the subject matter that much more hard-hitting and uncomfortable.

[Awesome Welles]

If I remember correctly Kurosawa described Tarkovsky as a very funny man, describing him as something like his little brother because of the fun and games they had together. With regards to Bresson, I don't find any humour in his films that I have seen, except perhaps in Pickpocket. That said I enjoyed A Man Escaped very much, Le Trou crossed my mind more than once, though I find them to be very different films, Becker being much more sensational and Bresson much more... Bressonian! Each great.

[Person]

Don't get me wrong - I am not someone who needs laughs in every film I see, it's just that many of the situations and people in Bresson's films are absurd. Being a Résistance fighter in a German prison perhaps isn't amusing, but the whole manner of the escape is outlandish yet is presented in such a serious manner that I found it ininvolving at times - something I absolutely didn't expect. And the final escape, I did not find "uplighting" as it is often described. A young man and what looks like a boy have merely escaped from a not-that-bad prison to a Nazi-occupied country, not to some glorious Rousseau-esque 'free France'. But then again, I am no longer sucked in by 'prison-escape' movies! Okay, you escaped from your hell hole - now join the open hell hole we call quaintly call "Society".

I actually like Bresson and Tarkovsky's 'lack of humor'... It makes the subject matter that much more hard-hitting and uncomfortable.

With them, I think that this was a conscious decision, ie. to have no humour and that's a mistake, I feel that the more you avoid the hilarity of a situation, the more strained the scene feels. Comedy can be deadly serious, too, remember - a dark comedy could have been found in the themes and situations Bresson deals with, but he chose not to and I am fine with that, but it renders many of his films static for me, a little lifeless. One has to acknowledge the incongruities of life, the absurdities. We find it all through the Greeks to Shakespeare in Doestoevsky and so on.Being a pickpocket is silly business! Claiming to be the the Archangel Gabriel's messenger is absurd! Rightly trying to escape from a German POW prison under such circumstances is insane!

So, though I find no faults with Bresson's filmmaking, never feeling that he is incompetent in any way and that he chose great themes for his work, I do feel that lack something. He seemed to strive for a sense of humanity in his films, but that is undone at times for me with his resistence to humour. Tarkovsky is different - a Russian for one thing and making films at a decidedly unfunny period in Russian history and tackling themes of unparalled depth. Having said that, I do find a curiously wistful tone in Stalker. I don't think that it is as serious as many think it was intended to be. A very sly film, I feel.

[Steven H]

I find some of Bresson's late films darkly humorous, and can't help but imagine he intended them to be so. Some of the awkwardness in The Devil, Probably (the title itself is laced with sarcasm, isn't it?) and the grotesquely raw armor the Knights in Lancelot of the Lake scream satire. I can also imagine Bresson writing funny material and then going out of his way to "sell the joke."

[Via_Chicago]

I find some of Bresson's late films darkly humorous, and can't help but imagine he intended them to be so. Some of the awkwardness in The Devil, Probably (the title itself is laced with sarcasm, isn't it?) and the grotesquely raw armor the Knights in Lancelot of the Lake scream satire. I can also imagine Bresson writing funny material and then going out of his way to "sell the joke."

The ending of Lancelot du Lac, which contains perhaps the most absurd stasis in all of Bresson's films, is meant to be darkly comic, at least within the context of the rest of the film.

[zedz]

Having said that, I do find a curiously wistful tone in Stalker. I don't think that it is as serious as many think it was intended to be. A very sly film, I feel.

Stalker is the closest Tarkovsky came to comedy. Most of it's somewhat Beckettian (as when two of the pilgrims undergo a punishing ordeal only to end up where they started, with the 'lost' third one relaxing on the grass), but the moment when the phone rings and it's a wrong number is pure Monty Python.

[MichaelB]

Four Nights is Bresson's sole comedy.

Actually, Affairs publiques is his only out-and-out comedy: Four Nights is merely unusually upbeat. (Though it does have quite a few laugh-out-loud moments).

I caught a double-bill of both films at the NFT in late 1999, and I'm so glad I made the effort as God knows when they're going to come around again!

If I remember correctly Kurosawa described Tarkovsky as a very funny man, describing him as something like his little brother because of the fun and games they had together.

Susan Fleetwood said something similar about working with him on The Sacrifice - despite his reputation and the weighty subject-matter he was always clowning around on set. You can even see glimpses of this in the documentaries on Artificial Eye's compilation.

Ingmar Bergman, though, was the real comedy ringmaster - apparently his sets were hilarious and the outtakes from Cries and Whispers particularly funny. (For instance, I heard that Harriet Andersson, just after dying in particularly convincing agony, went "Boo!" and pulled a face at the camera immediately after Bergman shouted "cut!").

[tubal]

Beaver on A Man Escaped

[What A Disgrace]

Histoires du cinema is coming June 23, according to Amazon. No specs yet; retail priced at £34.99.

[Ovader]

Histoires du cinema is coming June 23, according to Amazon. No specs yet; retail priced at £34.99.

It states only one disc which doesn't seem right but I pre-ordered mine at £22.33 minus VAT.

[miless]

Anyone know when Tarr's The Man From London and Zvyaginstev's The Banishment are due out in theaters or DVD?

[foggy eyes]

Anyone know when Tarr's The Man From London and Zvyaginstev's The Banishment are due out in theaters or DVD?

Theatrical: The Banishment in August and London in December (provided there are no further delays).

[Cobz]

Histoires du cinema is coming June 23, according to Amazon. No specs yet; retail priced at £34.99.

FINALLY! It's happening to me! Right in front! of my face! And i just cannot hide it!

Sorry, Very excited! =D>

[colinr0380]

DVD Beaver review of 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days.

Histoires du cinema is coming June 23, according to Amazon. No specs yet; retail priced at £34.99.

FINALLY! It's happening to me! Right in front! of my face! And i just cannot hide it!

Sorry, Very excited! =D>

What the...? Fantastic news!

[domino harvey]

DVD Beaver review of 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days.

Wow, there's a lot of bonus material on the AE release. I was planning on just picking up the IFC but now I'll have to see what they offer

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

Variety says that AE has picked up Fortissimo Films' catalogs of Wong Kar-wai (all of the features from Chungking Express through Ashes of Time Redux, some of which AE already had) and Hal Hartley (Trust, Flirt, Henry Fool, The Girl From Monday and two shorts). Not sure what this means for the Tartan DVDs of In the Mood for Love and 2046.

[colinr0380]

I wasn't sure whether to create a whole thread just for this but since Artificial Eye have put out 12:08 East Of Bucharest and now 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days I thought this might be a good place to draw attention to this extremely interesting article by A.O. Scott tracing the Romanian 'new wave'.

[Hopscotch]

Will someone kindly post specs here for the Histoire(s) set when they're announced?

[colinr0380]

DVD Beaver on The Edge Of Heaven.

[bigP]

Two new additions to the Artificial Eye catalogue (both scheduled for August 25th):

Catherine Breillat's 'The Last Mistress' and Barbet Schroeder's 'Terror's Advocate'

Both are listed on Amazon for £14.99 pre-order, neither have specs up yet.

[Awesome Welles]

I just spoke to someone at Artificial Eye who thinks that Histoire(s) is now likely to be around September, I asked about supplements and the guy was reluctant to discuss it but said that he thought there wouldn't be much, maybe a booklet.

[Ovader]

I just spoke to someone at Artificial Eye who thinks that Histoire(s) is now likely to be around September, I asked about supplements and the guy was reluctant to discuss it but said that he thought there wouldn't be much, maybe a booklet.

Must be the same guy I received an e-mail from: "We are releasing Histoire(s) du Cinema on DVD in September this year, and it will be over 3 discs running at 4 hours and 24 mins."

[Oedipax]

It would be nice if they included a subtitled version of 2 x 50 Years of French Cinema and the Cannes press conferences, but I'm not holding my breath if it's going to be on 3 discs...