Jeanne du Barry 2023

C'est un moment privilégié, intime, qui donne "libre cours" à Jeanne Moreau. La comédienne parle de la vie, de la mort, de l'amour, de l'amitié, du temps qui passe, sans aucune nostalgie, sans passéisme mais toujours avec cette soif de découvrir le monde et les particularités de l'âme humaine.

Madame Adele, once a great star of the Paris theatre, has fallen upon hard times. But she allows a young American performer, Marie Duval, to perform as the Madame Adele of old, and both become the darlings of Paris, one again and the other newly-crowned.

In the Crimea, the Reds and the Whites aren't done fighting, and Jeanne discovers that the man she loves is a Bolshevik (when he kills her father). Penniless, she returns to Paris where she works for her uncle. Soon after, her lover Andreas is in France to organize the sailors in Toulon. So also is a thief, traitor, and libertine, Khalibiev, who wants to seduce Jeanne. His schemes, Jeanne and Andreas's naivete, and a lost diamond bring the lovers to the brink of tragedy.

Le TECHNICOLOR n’est pas apparu ex-nihilo en 1935 sur la pellicule de BECKY SHARP, le premier long métrage en vues réelles à utiliser le célèbre procédé. "Un Rêve en Couleur" passe en revue les innombrables expériences menées par chercheurs et producteurs pour reproduire les couleurs de la vie. Qu’ils soient loufoques ou incroyablement compliqués, de nombreux procédés et brevets vont ainsi se succéder : coloriage à la main directement sur la pellicule, utilisation de filtres devant la caméra, fixation de la couleur sur la pellicule avec de la fécule de pomme de terre ou de l’uranium, jusqu’au Kodachrome et aux superproductions en Technicolor.

At the time of the 100 years’ war between England and France, a young country girl, Jeanne, believes she has a mission from God to rid France of the English. She arrives in the court of the Dauphin, Charles, and manages to convince him of her divine purpose. She is given an army and miraculously manages to liberate the towns of Orléans and Reims. However, once the Dauphin has been crowned King of France, he finds that he has no further use for Jeanne. He betrays her to the English and she is tried as a heretic at Rouen. Aged just 19, Jeanne is burnt alive for witchcraft.

A classic of both feminist and experimental filmmaking, Chantal Akerman's marathon dissection of the life of Belgian housewife/mother/prostitute Jeanne Dielman (Delphine Seyrig) stays on the surface of the details of Jeanne's humdrum daily life, as if it were a real-life, real-time documentary of an ordinary life, in the tradition of Agnès Varda's earlier New Wave landmark, Cleo From 5 to 7 (1961). Jeanne feeds her son, fixes potatoes, does the marketing, entertains gentlemen – but things slowly, almost imperceptibly start to go wrong, first those potatoes, and then, finally, something more shocking. Akerman sets out to capture the rhythm of daily life, even as that pace sets us up, after several hours, for the almost tossed-off, blink-and-you'll-miss-it climax.

French cinema master Robert Bresson brings his trademark cinematic minimalism to this powerful re-telling of the story of Joan of Arc. Adapted from historical records of the trial and featuring a remarkable cast of non-professional actors, led by Florence Carrez in the title role, the film relays Joan's relentless interrogation and persecution by her captors in a direct, almost documentary-like manner. Bresson transforms Joan's oppression and human suffering into an unforgettabe testament to her purity and spiritual liberation. The final images of the charred remains of the stake are among the most horrifying and moving in all cinema.