Alain Resnais
Series
Description
French director Henri-Georges Clouzot created a film showing the process in which Pablo Picasso created his work. Captured is the moment and mystery of creativity as the master completed twenty artworks, ranging from playful black-and-white sketches to widescreen color paintings. Almost every painting created in this film was destroyed after it was finished. In 1984 the French government declared the film a national treasure.
Description
Like many artists of the post-WWI era, Pablo Picasso fell under the spell of the French Riviera. The blue intensity of the Mediterranean, its rugged coasts, balmy weather, and sun-filled days inspired some of his most important artistic breakthroughs. Icarus Films is proud to present a pair of unique documentaries on two colorful periods of Picasso's Riviera life. François Lévy-Kuentz's On The French Riviera with Man Ray and Picasso details Picasso's...
Series
Criterion collection volume 419
Description
The great Agnes Varda's film career began with this graceful, penetrating study of a marriage on the rocks, set against the backdrop of a small Mediterranean fishing village. Both a stylized depiction of the complicated relationship between a married couple and a documentary-like look at the daily struggles of the locals, Varda's discursive, gorgeously filmed debut was radical enough to later be considered one of the progenitors of the coming French...
Series
Criterion collection volume 197
Description
Ten years after the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps, this piece documents the abandoned grounds of Auschwitz and Majdanek. One of the first cinematic reflections on the horrors of the Holocaust and contrasts the stillness of the abandoned camps' quiet, empty buildings with haunting wartime footage.
Description
George Riley has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Three couples react to the news with various degrees of emotion. The women are each separately invited to a seaside resort by Riley, and hidden resentments and insecurities in each relationship bubble to the surface, causing a re-evaluation of each couple's love.
Series
Description
A lost wallet opens the door to Georges and Marguerite's romantic adventure. After examining the ID of its owner, it is not a simple matter for Georges to turn the wallet he has found into the police. Nor can Marguerite retrieve her wallet without being piqued with curiosity about the person who found it. As George and Marguerite navigate the social protocols of giving and acknowledging thanks, turbulence enters their everyday lives.
Series
Foreign film collection volume France
Description
Interweaves multiple stories set in a magically snowbound Paris where six lonely souls converge and commingle in their search for lasting connections.
Description
Gilberte is happily married to Georges, a wealthy businessman who is unaware of his wife's previous marriage. Only Gilberte's unmarried sister, Arlette knows the truth. Then one day, Georges comes home and announces he's about to strike a deal with a fabulously wealthy American named Eric Thompson, who's on his way to Paris, and just happens to be Gilberte's ex-husband. Further complicating matters are family friend Huguette, who has a crush on Charley,...
Description
"In the seacoast town of Boulogne, Hélène sells antique furniture, living with her step-son, Bernard, who's back from military duty in Algiers. An old lover of Hélènes comes to visit - Alphonse - with his niece Françoise; he too is back from Algiers, where he ran a café. Bernard speaks of his fiancée, Muriel, whom Hélène has not met. The narrative, like memory and intention, is jumpy, the past obscured by guilt, misperceptions, and...
Description
Based on two works by the playwright Jean Anouilh, this film opens with a who's-who of French acting royalty being summoned to the reading of a late playwright's last will and testament. This is an alternately wry and wistful valentine to actors and the art of performance from a director long fascinated by the intersection of life, theater and cinema.
Series
Criterion collection volume 196
Description
Set in 1959, a French actress and a Japanese architect engage in a brief, intense affair in postwar Hiroshima, their consuming mutual fascination impelling them to exorcise their own scarred memories of love and suffering.