Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 04/15/24

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Monday, April 15, 2024

My Little Loves (Jean Eustache, 1974)

Martin Loeb in My Little Loves

Cast: Martin Loeb, Jacqueline Dufranne, Ingrid Caven, Henri Martinez, Dionys Mascolo, Maurice Pialat, Pierre Edelman, Marie-Paule Fernandez. Screenplay: Jean Eustache. Cinematography: Nestor Almendros. Film editing: Françoise Belleville, Vincent Cottrell, Alberto Yaccelini.

A deadpan film about coming of age, which as usual means learning about sex, set first in a French village where such learning is discouraged and then in a French city, where such learning is haphazard. Regarded by many as a masterpiece, though I have my reservations about its lack of narrative drive. Beautifully filmed by Nestor Almendros.