No Wave: The Cinema of Jean Eustache
October 4, 2008 - October 22, 2008
“You have to record things; whether they’re pretty or not, they’re important.”—Jean Eustache
The rigorous and pitilessly personal work of Jean Eustache (1938–1981) investigates and illustrates the mutual influence between cinema and life. “An ethnologist of his own reality” (Serge Daney), Eustache documented the archaic rituals of the French provinces and the mating habits of post-1968 Parisians with the same detached fascination. His experience was the raw material for narratives that are both unvarnished and tightly scripted, including the centerpiece of his career, The Mother and the Whore (1973), a scathing record of sexual misbehavior filmed in his own apartment. His approach explores and finally disregards the distinction between documentary and fiction; reality is just another genre. “I have no point of view; I am my point of view,” he said. And: “The films I made are as autobiographical as fiction can be.”
Born in Pessac, near Bordeaux, and reared by his grandmother until being sent to live with his mother in coastal Narbonne—a shift depicted in My Little Loves (1975)—Eustache eventually made his way to Paris. There he began frequenting the offices of Cahiers du cinéma, where his wife was a secretary; the films of Cahiers editor Eric Rohmer were among Eustache’s early inspirations. Working alongside the New Wave, Eustache was never exactly a part of it; his status as a working-class provincial autodidact and his relentless skepticism about all faiths, including the creeds of bohemianism and progressive politics, marked him as a perennial outsider. Concluding a life of restless creativity and notorious dissipation, he shot himself at age forty-three.
While Eustache is a cult name among cinephiles, few in the United States have seen his films other than The Mother and the Whore. This series is a rare chance to discover Eustache the archivist, narrative trickster, and relentless experimenter for whom film was not just a matter of aesthetics or morals, but “a question of the human condition.”
Juliet Clark
Editor
Saturday, October 4, 2008
7:00 p.m. The Mother and the Whore
Jean-Pierre Léaud as a castaway from the sixties and the sexual revolution, waffling between two women. “The greatest French film of the ’70s.”—Cahiers du cinéma. “A searing masterpiece.”—Chicago Reader
Thursday, October 9, 2008
6:30 p.m. The Lost Sorrows of Jean Eustache
Angel Diez’s documentary is “both inquiry and requiem . . . a complex portrait of a mysterious and mercurial artist.”—Cinematheque Ontario
Thursday, October 9, 2008
8:00 p.m. My Little Loves
Eustache’s coming-of-age film is a masterpiece of disillusionment. “Under a beguiling surface . . . a distinctly cool, delicately nuanced study of a human being.”—Sight & Sound
Saturday, October 11, 2008
8:50 p.m. Bad Company
Young men on the make in Eustache’s debut and in Santa Claus Has Blue Eyes, with Jean-Pierre Léaud: “constantly amusing and revealing.”—Variety
Sunday, October 12, 2008
5:00 p.m. The Pig
A dispassionate document of the slaughter of a hog, “an extraordinarily concentrated study in artisanal process.”—Moving Image Source. With Bosch’s Garden of Delights.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
7:00 p.m. Number Zero
Eustache’s interview with his grandmother is a return to origins and an experiment in narration.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
5:45 p.m. The Virgin of Pessac: Two Versions
Documents of a provincial festival, made a decade apart. “A triumph of unprompted deadpan humor.”—Film Comment
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
8:40 p.m. A Dirty Story
Doubling the telling of a sordid tale, Eustache produces a slyly funny study of performance and the limits of credibility. “Not to be missed.”—Village Voice. With Alix’s Pictures.
Series organized at PFA by Susan Oxtoby. PFA wishes to thank the following individuals and institutions for their assistance with this series: Antoine Sebire, Embassy of France; Christophe Musitelli, French Consulate San Francisco; Boris Eustache and Philippe Chevassu, Connaissance du Cinema/Tamasa Distribution; and Jim Healy, George Eastman House.
