French Cinema and the Occupation
by Andre Soares
On June 3-4, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) will conclude its excellent series "French Cinema and the Occupation."
The June 3 double-bill will be Le Dernier Métro / The Last Metro (1980) and Une affaire de femmes / Story of Women (1988). Nominated for a Best-Foreign Language Film Academy Award, Le Dernier Métro is a first-rate drama about the French theater world during the Nazi occupation. Directed by François Truffaut, the film stars Catherine Deneuve and Gérard Depardieu.
Claude Chabrol’s grim drama Une affaire de femmes stars Isabelle Huppert as the last woman to be sentenced to death in France. Her crime? She was an abortionist. Unlike the recent Vera Drake, Une affaire de femmes, is unsentimental and unsparing — and so is Huppert’s mesmerizing portrayal of the housewife and mother turned abortionist during the Vichy regime.
On June 4, LACMA will screen Bertrand Tavernier’s 170-minute Laissez-passer / Safe Conduct, a drama about Continental Films, a French movie-producing company launched by the Germans during the occupation. The film stars Jacques Gamblin and Denis Podalydès.
Paramount Before the Code at New York City’s Film Forum
SORRELL AND SON (1927) Screening in Los Angeles
PEINDRE OU FAIRE L’AMOUR at Cannes
Ingmar Bergman Documentary Trilogy at Cannes
MERRY CHRISTMAS to Open in Europe
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Isabelle is the greatst actress ever. EVER.