It is often considered the first product of the “Nouvelle Vague” movement. It is about a young man Francois (Brialy) who returns to his native village and finds that his childhood friend (Blain) has become a hopeless drunk. It is Brialy’s efforts to rekindle the youthful promise once shown by his pal that form the bulk of the stark goings-on. While much of the first half focuses on Francois’s attempts to solve the mystery of Le Beau Serge, the second half of the film increasingly comes to focus upon why it is that Francois is so obsessed with saving first Serge and then the entire village. Though Chabrol offers us no easy answers, the depth of Francois’s guilt is such that his attempt to protect Serge and his family eventually comes to seem insane. The remarkable and stark Le Beau Serge announced the arrival of a great who would go on to craft provocative, entertaining films for five decades.
Month: December 2013
Nazarin
Nazarin is very straightforward film for Bunuel . We don’t see a lot of his surrealist tricks here. Nazarin (the priest) lives among whores , thieves and beggars in a Mexican town during the early 1900s. Though his neighbors steal from him , Nazarin refuses to lock his door. He is an Apostolic and Roman Catholic so he believes that ” everything belongs to the one who needs it most “. “Nazarín is motivated by his beliefs, his ideology. What moves me is what happens when his ideology fails, because whenever Nazarín gets involved, even in the best of faith, he only begets conflicts and disasters,” says Buñuel of his protagonist.
Bunuel seems to ask a very obvious question here : is there a place for pure Christianity in a modern world? Nazarin would say that his ideology is more important than ever yet his continued rejection suggests that the world is as unready for him now as they were for Jesus in his time. Interestingly Nazarin neither preaches his gospel nor does he wish to convert anyone in particular. Bunuel tells the story in a manner of a Christian parable masterfully and uniquely combining admiration and irony for the main character and strong criticism of formal religion and hypocrisy. The film is simple and profound as well as beautiful and ironic.
Night and The City
Jules Dassin’s 1950 masterpiece was his first movie after being exiled from America for alleged communist politics , and the unpleasant ordeal seems to have infused his work with a newfound bitterness and pessimism . The film begins with Harry Fabian , a cheap American born scam artist running through the desolate streets of London. Fabian is a nobody who wants to be somebody out for his own big score and unconcerned about the bodies left behind. Widmark once said in an interview , what he remembers most about this film is that he did a lot of running. Richard Widmark as Harry Fabian gives us his most definitive role. Night and the city is one of the strongest examples of film noir expressionism and it presents London as an urban hell-a world of dark shadows, desperate individuals etc. This is one of the toughest ,bleakest films ever produced by a major Hollywood studio. When Dassin returned to the United status for post-production work on Night And The city, he was prevented from entering into the studio due to his left-wing past.
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