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1517 W. Fullerton Ave.
Chicago IL 60614
800.331.6197
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9am-5pm, Mon.-Fri.
Rental hours:
10am-10pm, Mon.-Sat.,
12pm-10pm, Sun. & holidays
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FACETS CINÉMATHÈQUE
September - October 2008
The Facets Cinémathèque is located at 1517 W. Fullerton Ave. in Chicago. For more information on films playing in the Cinémathèque, please call 773-281-4114. To order advance tickets online, visit the TicketWeb website by clicking here.
Nouveau Before It Was New:
THE AVANT-GARDE CINEMA
OF ALAIN ROBBE-GRILLET
September 26 - October 2
The Facets Cinémathèque is very proud to present Nouveau Before It Was New: The Avant-Garde Cinema of Alain Robbe-Grillet, co-presented by The Cultural Services of the French Embassy, a retrospective of works written and directed by the late Alain Robbe-Grillet, who passed away earlier this year. Robbe-Grillet was an agronomist until the age of 30, when he began writing. After making his reputation in French literature as one of the founders of the nouveau roman, he would eventually be named one of the "immortals" of the Académie Franéaise, the anointed protector of the French language, Robbe-Grillet changed careers yet again, pursuing work as a screenwriter and filmmaker. The Facets Cinémathèque celebrates this final career move with a five-film series featuring a quartet of exceptionally rare films presented in new prints courtesy of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
ArtForum
L'IMMORTELLE
(THE IMMORTAL WOMAN)
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NOMINATED Golden Bear Berlin Intl Film Fest |
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A man shares an abrupt, passionate affair with a woman who soon disappears. Fearing that she has been kidnapped and forced into prostitution, he searches the labyrinthine streets of Istanbul for her. Robbe-Grillet's directorial debut disturbingly evokes the uncertainty and mystery of a strange, foreign land. Time Out London calls L'Immortelle a "fragmented mystery-romance." With Franéoise Brion, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze.
Directed by Alain Robbe-Grillet, France/Italy/Turkey, 1963, 35mm, 100 mins. In French with English subtitles.
Showtimes:
Fri., Sept. 26 at 7 & 9 pm
Thurs., Oct. 2 at 7 & 9 pm
TRANS-EUROP EXPRESS
"As challenging and influential again today as it was in the 1960's -- a key text of the postwar European avant-garde"
-Senses of Cinema
Recommended! "[Robbe-Grillet] turns a conventional thriller into an elaborate and sometimes elusive formal study... Odd and worth seeing"
-Chicago Reader
An author played by Robbe-Grillet himself considers ideas for a film while riding the Trans-Europ Express and dreams up a sordid melodrama of gangsters, drugs, and bondage. When a gangster (Trintingnant) does show up aboard the same train, this fantasy comes to life. With Marie-France Pisier, Jean-Louis Trintingnant.
Directed by Alain Robbe-Grillet, France, 1966, 35mm, 105 mins. In French with English subtitles.
YouTube clip Senses of Cinema
Showtimes:
Sat., Sept. 27 at 5 & 9 pm
Tues., Sept. 30 at 7 & 9 pm
LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD
(L'ANNÉE DERNIORE A MARIENBAD)
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WINNER Golden Lion Venice Film Fest |
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NOMINATED Best Writing, Story and Screenplay Academy Awards |
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"Be prepared for an experience such as you've never had from watching a film... when you stagger away from it, you will feel you have delighted in (or suffered) a unique and intense experience"
-New York Times
"Seeing the film again, and succumbing, like a dance partner, to its gliding moves, one has to ask: how could a film this beautiful ever have been thought unapproachable?"
-New Yorker
"Marienbad is both utterly lucid and provocatively opaque—an elaborate joke on the world's corniest pickup line and a drama of erotic fixation that takes Vertigo to the next level of abstraction"
-Village Voice
"Remains one of cinema's glorious enigmas, endlessly compelling and intriguing"
-Los Angeles Times
"One of the most perplexing and emblematic entries in the mid-century European experimentalist film movement, Last Year at Marienbad remains as dreamy, creepy, enigmatic and maddening as in its own time"-Chicago Tribune
Recommended! "The overall tone is poker-faced parody of lush Hollywood melodrama, yet the film's dreamlike cadences, frozen tableaux, and distilled surrealist poetry are too eerie, too terrifying even, to be shaken off as camp. For all its notoriety, this masterpiece among masterpieces has never really received its due."
-Chicago Reader
"Still has the power to spark long, ponderous conversations over post-show cups of coffee"
-The Onion
Last Year at Marienbad centers on a mystery: Did X really meet A last year at Marienbad, or is he merely trying to seduce A away from her sinister husband M with a false story (and is M really A's husband anyway)? Robbe-Grillet's script is legendary for its ingenious play with time and memory, and Delphine Seyrig became an instant icon as A, impossibly chic in her Chanel and sleek chignon. The formal gardens, baroque balustrades, and rococo hallways of the Marienbad château constitute one of cinema's most instantly recognizable landscapes. Scored with eerie organ music, and shot in elegant widescreen black and white by the great cinematographer Sacha Vierny, Marienbad is enduringly enigmatic. Peter Greenaway recently wrote: "I have been trying to re-make this film ever since." (Cinematheque Ontario)
Directed by Alain Resnais, France, 1961, 94 mins. In French with English subtitles.
Trailer Senses of Cinema New York Times (Crowther) New York Times (Harris)
Roger Ebert Chicago Reader
Showtime:
Sat., Sept. 27 at 3 & 7 pm
THE MAN WHO LIES
(L'HOMME QUI MENT)
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WINNER Best Screenplay and Best Actor Berlin Intl Film Fest |
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Questions abound in this Alain Robbe-Grillet puzzler, one of his major works. Set largely in a Czech castle (evoking Kafka) at the end of WWII, the movie stars Jean-Louis Trintingnant as a mysterious stranger who may be a resistance hero, or the colleague of one – or not a partisan fighter at all but a traitor, or the colleague of a traitor. The kaleidoscopic narrative, absurdist like Kafka, blurs the lines between legend and fact, and Robbe-Grillet, unlike John Ford, prints both. Or neither. No one under 18 will be admitted! With Sylvie Bréal and Jean-Louis Trintingnant.
Directed by Alain Robbe-Grillet, France/Czechoslovakia, 1968, 35mm, 95 mins. In French with English subtitles.
Showtimes:
Sun., Sept. 28 at 3, 5 & 7 pm
EDEN AND AFTERWARDS
(L'ÁDEN ET APRÈS)
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NOMINATED Golden Bear Berlin Intl Film Fest |
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An erotic tale of murder and vampirism, this film is set somewhere between the fictitious landscapes of the Marquis de Sade and Lewis Carroll (Alice in Wonderland meets The Story of O!). In café Eden, a group of bored students, engaged in a series of baroque parlor games, are visited by a mysterious stranger whose presence evokes new menacing fantasies. Alain Robbe-Grillet's first color film is an hallucinogenic head-scratcher full of trippy happenings, psychedelic imagery, and lots of nudity and S&M. No one under 18 will be admitted! With Catherine Jourdan and Pierre Zimmer.
Directed by Alain Robbe-Grillet, France/Czechoslavakia, 1971, 35mm, 93 mins. In French with English subtitles.
YouTube trailer
Showtimes:
Mon., Sept. 29 at 7 & 9 pm
Wed., Oct. 1 at 7 & 9 pm
Tickets:
$9 general admission 
FREE for Facets Members!
For all Cinémathèque inquiries, contact Charles Coleman at 773.281.9075 or charles@facets.org
FREE for Facets Members!
For all Cinémathèque inquiries, contact Charles Coleman at 773.281.9075 or charles@facets.org