February 9 The opening of the retrospective .
Diane Baratier presents the films of his father. She says this wonderful thing (I quote roughly): "we've always said that my father's films were unclassifiable. Me, if I tried to classify them, I would say they belong to the genus movies non-synchronous. And it's an important thing to my father, I believe, this non-synchronous with his films. It is his relationship to the world that takes place there. "
This can be seen very quickly with
Goha first Tunisian film in color, with Omar Sharif, dating from 1958. Or how Baratier to get by with a big machine and a story in a straight line to cover their tracks and impose its singularity. The film is often funny and even touching. Despite the ongoing chaos, the constant interference of the narrative by staging, Baratier takes his film from one end to another. And when there's a donkey in the script, there's a donkey in the picture. This is never set, it is never folk, the material it has and it deals equally with other subjects. If Omar Sharif crying beside his donkey, the donkey also has a part to play in the scene.
They say that if everything is at this level, the retrospective should be worthwhile.
February 13 Two short films.
future Eves (1964), very nice title, is a documentary in a garment factory models. The images of supermodels dislocated, filed, shaped, demolded sanded, rubbed, mingle with images of live models. In the end, we no longer know very well who is alive and who died. Plastics strives to surprise us, while the flesh freezes. It's a film naughty and nice. In
Trap (1968), Jean-Baptiste Thierree, decadent aristocrat, seeks to Arrabal's a trap for humans, and Arrabal him find what he needs while saying there is a big pink pig within him and he does not see it. Thierrée awaits the release from prison and comes across two girls, Bulle Ogier, Bernadette Lafont, who he invited to come and rob at night. They come to escape the trap, and transform the mansion into Thierrée monumental mess, the way of
Small Daisies Vera Chytilova. The film loses a bit in fantasy. It's much patina et ça ne surprend pas, mais l’image est belle (des noirs et blancs excessivement saturés, jusqu’à nous donner parfois l’impression d’un dessin), et Gaspard Noé se tuerait pour faire un court-métrage comme ça.
Dragées au poivre (1963).
Grande comédie.
Dedans il y a Simone Signoret, Anna Karina, Sophie Daumier, Alexandra Stewart, Marina Vlady, Monica Vitti (génialissime !), Jean-Paul Belmondo, Francis Blanche, Romolo Valli, Claude Brasseur, Guy Bedos, Jean-Pierre Marielle, Jean Richard, François Périer, Jacques Dufilho, Georges Wilson, Jean Babilée, Jean-Baptiste Thierrée, et pas mal others. Saying that there is in this film is important. It gives the idea that
Dragees Pepper is the equivalent of a
Asterix in 1963: parade of stars of the moment. The only difference is that here, for Baratier, everyone gives back. At no time could not see an actor cachetonner.
Comedy is haunting, musical, sometimes narrative sketches and sometimes (but what does that say? A history student in cinema verite that eventually realize that the truth is Jacques Demy? The ascension of a celebrity from day to shoot a Hollywood movie about Versailles? and sex, mostly, right? Everyone wants to sleep with everyone in this film. It is full of eroticism. And erotic fantasy.). Seize evidence and with so much grace (because it is a film always gracious when he could at any moment become wobbly and heavy) of something as fragile miracle. One thinks
year 01 by Jacques Doillon, but that's about all. And yet, 01 year
exhausted when
Dragees pepper constantly outbid the folly of imposing progressively.
February 14 Doll (1962)
Context: a dictatorship in South America, but the film is shot in Paris. For slum Baratier filmed those of Nanterre.
The story: A scientist discovers the secret of the duplication of matter (cloning, in short, but the word may not exist yet at the time). It tackles the dictator's wife, played by a man (Sonne Teal). It is a clone, and penetrates. So the body of the dictator's wife played by a man and speaking with the voice of the scientist, who is organizing a revolution with people in slums, who are Arabs who pose as South Americans (which were discovered during the shooting that person in a pink dress that followed for several days for the film was actually a man). Meanwhile, you kill the dictator, but as you kill him too early compared to what was expected, it is replaced by a young revolutionary who vaguely resembles her and who agrees to be killed in his place for the coup takes place. Add to that the good is interpreted by Jacques Dufilho and keeps singing. In short,
The doll is an extraordinary transgender film, confirming my first impression on Baratier: this is a filmmaker who focuses on gender, eroticism, and therefore gender.
Another confirmation: the mess is total, yet the film is held.
February 17
The city can (1974)
A developer takes a shanty town and a dump into a modern city where you will not even need to go to Paris for fun.
Baratier, introduced in the mid-wrecker by Daniel Duval, put their hearts and joy in a scathing comedy anarchist and poetic. Sequences on mud sleds towed by cars are very strong, very beautiful. Roland Dubillard plays an alcoholic janitor whose word never seems to stop. The scene of the pressure cooker on credit is hilarious. And Pierre Schaeffer, composer of musique concrete, is fantastic architect of state.
It's really a beautiful thing to discover that the film Baratier today. It gives the idea of a freedom that does not meet nowhere. Humanism has extinguished the insolence, good conscience destroyed humor. Moreover, in this film, an Arab slaughtered a sheep in his bathtub, and it made me think of that little phrase uttered by President indescribable. The leftists were offended, saying that the Arabs never n'égorgeaient sheep in the bathtub of their housing project. But the problem is not about the truth, but about himself, that a statement so quickly be taken very seriously and seems to be a problem, a fantasy story neighborhood to act as a speech. The spirit of seriousness is absent from films Baratier. But not mind at all.
February 18
Nothing, that's the order (2002)
psychiatric clinic, real sick, and the actors who play sick. A poetic text, a hellish mess, a semblance of romance between James and Amira Casar Thierrée.
Besides the Cinematheque, a G20 meeting at the Ministry of Finance. Yeah, not the Ministry of Culture or the ecology. CRS yawn and ask that buses do not stop there and passersby to cross the street. The press, very busy. On the Seine, the boats ready to leave the department with the national bullion to Normandy. Formal prohibition to park his bike. Not practical for a bomb. Where do the boats?
That afternoon, in the Salle Henri Langlois everyone starts a nap. A few laughs from time to time. A digital image appalling. For some authors, the transition from silent to sound was a calamity. But one of the film to digital is another.
February 19
A program of five short films of Jacques Baratier, produced between 1948 and 1956
outdoors before the Ministry of Finance, Friends of the Earth come to life and Attac. They are a fortnight against the G20. It's pouring. A bit sad, I agree with them briefly and then go away see Shorts Baratier.
sun Girls (1948) is a brief foray among the Berbers of Ouarzazate. Splendid colors and some beautiful faces. A party. A child recites the alphabet and then ran.
In The City Lunch (1951), Michel Simon presents gymnasts, contortionists, jugglers and trapeze artists of Montmartre. This is a short film for its impressive sense of space, cohabitation and disorder. And the pleasure to shoot all these acrobats is obvious, palpable. Perfect body, agile, taking risks unheard. Michel Simon tells us it is a profession that teaches all.
In Occupation dancer (1952), Baratier interested in dance lessons by Jean Babilée. Not the greatest achievement of the filmmaker. More agreed. Even if the desire is still there for the dancers. But John escapes Babilée filmmaker.
Ménilmontant Knight (1953) boards, as its title implies, Maurice Chevalier in the neighborhood of his childhood, Menilmontant. One would have spent a little reviews of Heavy singer, but the images of the area are superb, poignant. A village in Paris. Trees, flowers, children. The plans are brief and poetic there are flashes in the Doisneau, compositions that seem both highly developed and taken on the spot.
And Paris by night (1954) is a marvel, a poem for the city, what happens to what we see. There is no common thread except that movement of the night and the fate of the little day comes, there are no comments in voiceover, there is simply a place that meets all these images, these charming and funny scenes. More than Doisneau, this time it's Imre Kertesz and Man Ray: cinégéniques moments deeply at how this small group of drunken which crosses Paris singing the same song and found one side to the other night.
What is striking in these shorts is the desire of Baratier for a place and time given. It is projected there in these figures, for eroticism, for drunkenness, by the desire to capture something fleeting, almost trivial, and to give, through cinema, print the truest . True and funny, but not comical or forced. It seems innate - a tone that will. One could say he is a Baratier explorer close. First attracted by Africa (it is there waives become a painter), he's an anthropologist of his city, its neighborhoods.
The image above is not Jacques Robert Doisneau Baratier but because I did not find frames corresponding to short films made today. It represents John Babilée.
's column following the retrospective is here .
China, as it appears through the film resembles a heap of garbage placed in the middle of the world where we manage a few flashes of poetic and political groaning under the despair and rage. The more we see of Chinese films, the less one wants to visit China. Winter vacation and no exception to this anti-tropism. 
