Lino the Linotype

Humble newspaper seller Pascal (Lino Ventura) saves a man who jumps into the Seine only to find himself embroiled in a complex crime of passion.

After being manipulated into taking the fall, his inner lion awakens, and a clock seems to be ticking as he tries to clear his name. Will he get out of this or is a miscarriage of justice on the cards? Are we right to believe him anyway? We are tossed from one unreliable character to another, not knowing who to believe.

As psychological thrillers go, the foundations of 125 rue Montmartre are remarkably well laid, but it is ultimately undermined by the odd circumstance that plumbs the limits of disbelief. There is also this niggling doubt about the casting. Robert Hirsch and Jean Desailly deliver sterling supporting performances, and our protagonist is a good fit for his role on paper… but there is no escaping the fact that he is Lino Ventura.

Still, this is an engaging nearly-noir that is well worthy of its recent remaster.

Sadism, Drugs and Rolling Stock

A film director, a producer and a script girl take a train to Antwerp and improvise a screenplay along the way.

Their unfolding vision of a drug runner making the same journey materialises as a separate film that runs in parallel. In other words, film one (about the production team) gives birth to film two (their drug runner story) and they are intersected into a single 105 minute film.

This is not so much a play within a play as two films within a film, and they occasionally collide and generate intrigue—particularly when characters and scenarios from both films occupy the same sequences; more so when the filmmakers select or sacrifice problematic ideas.

Of additional note is the relatively tame (by today’s standards) sexual sadism that resulted in a ban by the BBC.

A highly experimental film for 1966 to say the least, and one which is lent bags of gravity and credibility by the presence of Jean-Louis Trintignant.

Too Ch'ti for Me

Dany Boon’s celebrated directorial début is a comedy about a hopeless civil servant (played by Kad Merad) forced to exile himself to a notoriously backward part of France in order to keep his job.

The gags are generally self-deprecating—revolving around prejudicial stereotypes associated with Boon’s home region (Nord-Pas-de-Calais) and the people (the Ch’tis) who live there. Gradually, the slapstick gives way to a sympathetic portrait that is clearly designed to rehabilitate this backwater in the French national psyche.

Given the film’s success (the highest grossing ever in France until The Intouchables), I’d say it struck a chord, but the Ch’ti lingo was so problematic for this non-native French speaker that I can’t really give a fair opinion.

Much of the regional dialect is incomprehensible to me and enabling the English subtitles doesn’t help. Many scenes simply cannot be translated literally and some are so far removed from the original French that it’s like watching two different films.

Maybe I’ll rewatch and re-rate if I can improve my Ch’ti comprehension.

Le fil

A stereotype-busting coming-out film considering its focus upon gay Arabs in an Islamic country (Tunisia), and they are not anywhere near as subtle as you would expect. It is hard to shake the notion however that their behaviour is more a discreet luxury of the bourgeoisie than typical of Tunisian attitudes in general.

I only watched because I spotted Salim Kechiouche (Le Clan, Mektoub, My Love, Engrenages) on the cast, but came away pleasantly surprised by a very moving and intelligent flick.

The Prelinger Antidote

Robert Bresson raises the art of kleptomania to visual poetry in this film about a young man who chooses thieving on the streets of Paris over an honest-day’s work.

Via minimal editing and incredibly nuanced and subtle direction, we are invited to observe the pickpocket’s successes and failures as he attempts to hone his craft. Psychologically we are toyed with—appalled at the audacity of his crimes, but admiringly complicit when he pulls them off. At one moment we wish him caught while at others we dread the possibility—perhaps because this bad man is actually a very complex man. An arrogant man but also a vulnerable man.

At times, Pickpocket feels like the polar opposite of those social guidance propaganda films from the 1950s. Instead of explaining how to avoid ne’er-do-wells, it gives you tips on how to be one.

It’s not hard to appreciate why censors in some countries were so spooked by it.

1 chance sur 2

It’s like a couple of your acting heroes got together with a beauty icon and produced a turd you couldn’t bring yourself to flush. Fascinatingly and entertainingly bad. The kind of shit we can all get behind because looking down upon cringe unites us.