Film at Lincoln Center announces Luc Moullet: Anarchy in the Alps, celebrating the influential director’s often eccentric and distinctive style with a selection of his work from August 8–14, with Moullet in person for select screenings.

Following his start as a writer for the French film magazine Cahiers du cinéma in the late 1950s alongside Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Éric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette, and Claude Chabrol, the critic turned director released his first feature film Brigitte et Brigitte, a key work of the French nouvelle vague, and was hailed by Godard as “revolutionary.” Bafflingly underappreciated, Moullet boasts a body of work most often noted for its irreverence, offbeat humor, and anti-authoritarian themes, with momentary flashes of empathy and connection between everyday people. 

He was distinguished from the rest of his New Wave cohort by, among other things, his particular interest in westerns and comedies, but as with his more widely recognized peers, Moullet’s approach is anything but straightforward, boldly reimagining and re-engineering genre tropes while relentlessly, zanily satirizing the structures of modern life in a style that’s wholly, unmistakably his. Film at Lincoln Center is proud to welcome the last living pillar of the French New Wave to New York for a well-deserved showcase of his rarely screened features and shorts, several of which will be seen from new 4K restorations, culminating with limited opportunities to hear from the director during several in-person appearances to discuss his life and work.

Organized by Dan Sullivan. Special thanks to Cinema Guild.

Tickets will go on sale on Wednesday, July 9 at 2pm, with an early access period for FLC Members starting Wednesday, July 9 at noon. Tickets are $17; $14 for students, seniors (62+), and persons with disabilities; and $12 for FLC Members. See more and save with 3+ Film Package ($15 for GP; $12 for students, seniors (62+), and persons with disabilities; and $10 for FLC Members), the $99 All-Access Pass, or the $69 Student All-Access Pass.

FILMS & DESCRIPTIONS
All films screen in the Walter Reade Theater (165 W. 65th St.) 

New 4K Restoration
Brigitte et Brigitte
Luc Moullet, 1966, France, 76m
French with English subtitles

Brigitte et Brigitte

Luc Moullet’s shaggy-dog debut—hailed by Jean-Luc Godard as “revolutionary”—is an exemplary work of the Nouvelle Vague at the crest of its influence and renown. Two girls with the same name (Françoise Vatel and Colette Descombes) become roommates after separately arriving in Paris to attend university, and although they hail from different regions in France, the fads and trends of their day have shaped them similarly. An episodic delight suffused with strong early indications of Moullet’s wit, charm, and sense of the place of the absurd within the everyday, Brigitte et Brigitte also features memorable performances from Moullet’s New Wave cohort Claude Chabrol, Éric Rohmer, and a young André Téchiné, and as well as the legendary Samuel Fuller, himself a crucial inspiration for the Cahiers du cinéma contingent. Film restored by La Traverse with the assistance of the Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée (CNC). Restorations carried out by Cosmodigital and L.E. Diapason and distributed in North America by Cinema Guild.
Saturday, August 9 at 3:15pm
Thursday, August 14 at 6:00pm

New 4K Restoration
The Smugglers / Les Contrebandières
Luc Moullet, 1967, France, 80m
French with English subtitles

The Smugglers / Les Contrebandières

A truly singular object that is both a loving spoof of Hollywood-style action thrillers and a sociological send-up of the burgeoning student movement, The Smugglers follows two women (Françoise Vatel and Monique Thiriet) who work on the French side of the border in the Southern Alps running goods (and people). When the two women discover that they’re both romantically involved with the same man, a delirious threeway chase ensues that will find our heroines (and their two-timing third) running afoul of state officials and underworld figures alike. Also notable for inaugurating Luc Moullet’s career-spanning interest in landscape, not so much as background but rather as still another character in the farce we call “life.” Film restored by La Traverse with the assistance of the Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée (CNC). Restorations carried out by Cosmodigital and L.E. Diapason and distributed in North America by Cinema Guild.
Friday, August 8 at 8:30pm – Introduction by Luc Moullet
Thursday, August 14 at 8:00pm

New 4K Restoration
A Girl Is a Gun / Une aventure de Billy le Kid
Luc Moullet, 1971, France, 79m
French with English subtitles

A Girl Is a Gun / Une aventure de Billy le Kid

Like a Hollywood B western directed by a French outsider artist, Luc Moullet’s psychotropic oater stars Jean-Pierre Léaud as Billy the Kid in a wild comic performance that’s equal parts Clint Eastwood and Three Stooges. The fractured-beyond-recognition plot finds the bandit on the run from the law through a rocky desert wasteland with a seductive and possibly duplicitous woman (Rachel Kesterber) in tow. Set to a shivery, avant–cold wave soundtrack (complete with titular theme song), it all climaxes in a delirious Duel in the Sun-meets-acid-freak-out finale. Film restored by La Traverse with the assistance of the Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée (CNC). Restorations carried out by Cosmodigital and L.E. Diapason and distributed in North America by Cinema Guild.
Saturday, August 9 at 8:00pm – Introduction by Luc Moullet
Wednesday, August 13 at 8:15pm

New 4K Restoration
Anatomy of a Relationship / Anatomie d’un rapport
Luc Moullet, Antonietta Pizzorno, 1976, France, 83m
French with English subtitles

Anatomy of a Relationship / Anatomie d’un rapport

Luc Moullet’s follow-up to the far-out excursions of The Smugglers and A Girl Is a Gun grounds itself in the shared everyday life of a couple. Moullet himself plays a filmmaker who struggles to earn a living practicing his vocation; his professional frustrations are matched by his apparent inability to please his intellectual wife (Christine Hébert), sexually or otherwise. Moullet and Pizzorno (Moullet’s real-life wife and creative partner) set the proceedings in spare, claustrophobic spaces, chronicling quarrels, cringe-inducing episodes, and fleeting moments of tenderness on the way to a comic meditation on filmmaking’s capacity to complicate relationships. Film restored by La Traverse with the assistance of the Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée (CNC). Restorations carried out by Cosmodigital and L.E. Diapason and distributed in North America by Cinema Guild.
Friday, August 8 at 6:00pm – Q&A with Luc Moullet and Antonietta Pizzorno
Thursday, August 14 at 1:00pm

New 4K Restoration
Origins of a Meal / Genèse d’un repas
Luc Moullet, 1978, France, 118m
French with English subtitles

Origins of a Meal / Genèse d’un repas

Luc Moullet’s first feature-length documentary finds him tackling a knotty question: where does the food that winds up on our plates really come from? Using tuna, eggs, and bananas as a kind of triple case study, Moullet tracks the origins of these everyday foods to a multitude of far-flung locations (including Senegal, the Ivory Coast, and Ecuador), constructing a charming yet philosophically serious exploration of food, its place within the global capitalist system, and its role in the perpetuation of colonial structures the world over. Film restored by La Traverse with the assistance of the Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée (CNC). Restorations carried out by Cosmodigital and L.E. Diapason and distributed in North America by Cinema Guild.
Sunday, August 10 at 8:00pm
Wednesday, August 13 at 3:00pm

The Comedy of Work / La comédie du travail
Luc Moullet, 1987, France, 85m
French with English subtitles

The Comedy of Work / La comédie du travail

In this typically delightful comedy, Luc Moullet examines a recurring topic in his work: the shifting character of labor in an ever-changing, capitalism-dominated world. Sabine Haudepin stars as Françoise, a job counselor who is trying to find employment for two men who are out of work, one of whom is her work-averse lover, while the other is a recently fired bank clerk who cannot bring himself to admit that he lost his job. The Comedy of Work, as its title might imply, is a dryly comic investigation into the contradictions and indignities of modern labor, and it might be Moullet’s most incisive work.
Saturday, August 9 at 5:15pm – Q&A with Luc Moullet
Monday, August 11 at 1:00pm

The Seats of the Alcazar + Le Fantome de Longstaff

Le Fantome de Longstaff

This double bill program finds Luc Moullet adapting Henry James as only he can in Le Fantome de Longstaff, as well as the all-too-personal comedy of The Seats of the Alcazar, which ranks among the most profound and insightful meditations on movie love in his eclectic filmography. 

The Seats of the Alcazar / Les sièges d’Alcazar
Luc Moullet, 1991, France, 54m
French with English subtitles

Among the most moving and delightful treatments of cinephilia in Moullet’s oeuvre, The Seats of the Alcazar follows Guy, a writer for Cahiers du cinéma who, while covering a Vittorio Cottafavi retrospective, begins to suspect one of his colleagues, a critic for Positif named Jeanne, is tailing him….

Le Fantome de Longstaff
Luc Moullet, 1996, France, 20m
French with English subtitles

This free adaptation of a short story by Henry James follows an ailing American woman who travels to Rome with a friend and encounters what appears to be the ghost of a man she knew years earlier.
Sunday, August 10 at 1:00pm
Thursday, August 14 at 3:15pm

Up and Down / Parpaillon
Luc Moullet, 1993, France, 84m
French with English subtitles

Up and Down / Parpaillon

At once a spoof of French cycling culture and a loving tribute to Alfred Jarry, the 19th-century writer and forerunner of surrealism who invented “the science of exceptions” known as pataphysics, Up and Down follows a rally up the French Alps’ Parpaillon pass. A connoisseur of slapstick and cycling alike, Luc Moullet litters the route with an elaborate series of gags, yielding an idiosyncratic and hilarious work that once again finds Moullet melding sociology with absurdism to unforgettable effect.
Sunday, August 10 at 5:30pm – Introduction by Luc Moullet
Tuesday, August 12 at 1:00pm

Shipwrecked on Route D17 / Les naufragés de la D17
Luc Moullet, 2002, France, 81m
French with English subtitles

Shipwrecked on Route D17 / Les naufragés de la D17

Set during the Gulf War, this dreamy, digressive ensemble piece begins with a champion rally car racer finding himself stranded in the French Alps; his driving partner heads into the nearest village to look for help, soon encountering an array of quirky and eccentric residents. An episodic work in which memorable characters pass us by, one after the other, Shipwrecked on Route D17 is a kind of comic political fable, but it’s also a stylistically audacious synthesis of cinematic genres, drawing from the racing film and paranoiac thriller in equal measure.
Sunday, August 10 at 3:00pm – Q&A with Luc Moullet
Thursday, August 12 at 3:15pm

The Prestige of Death / Le prestige de la mort
Luc Moullet, 2006, France, 72m
French with English subtitles

The Prestige of Death / Le prestige de la mort

Luc Moullet contemplates the twilight of his career—and his own mortality—in this comic pseudo-documentary, a characteristically charming, satirical, and yet intellectually serious inquiry into the struggle against “the end.” The film follows Moullet, playing a magnetic self-caricature, as he endeavors to rejuvenate his career and win over a whole new audience… by faking his own death, swapping his passport with that of a dead body he stumbles upon. An extremely free remake of Cecil B. DeMille’s The Whispering Chorus (1917), The Prestige of Death ranks among Moullet’s most personal and profound meditations on cinema and filmmaking.
Tuesday, August 12 at 8:00pm

Land of Madness / La Terre de la folie
Luc Moullet, 2009, France, 89m
French with English subtitles

Land of Madness / La Terre de la folie

Luc Moullet’s most recent feature functions as a marvelous encapsulation of his artistry to date, a deadpan noir-tinged documentary that takes the comparatively high murder and suicide rates of a remote area in the Alps as its point of departure. Moullet travels to five villages, interviewing the residents about murder, madness, and the strange case of provincial life. A darkly funny consideration of the extremes of human experience and an irreverent interrogation of country life, Land of Madness is also a moving self-portrait and a substantial, provocative late addition to Moullet’s oeuvre.
Saturday, August 9 at 1:00pm
Monday, August 11 at 3:15pm

The Shorts of Luc Moullet, Program 1
91m
French with English subtitles

Overdone Steak / Un steak trop cuit

This program collects an assortment of short films by Luc Moullet: his directorial debut, Overdone Steak; the early ethnographic documentary Terres noires; the quasi–performance art hijinx of Essai d’ouverture; and two critical studies in capitalism, More and More and Less and Less. 

Overdone Steak / Un steak trop cuit
Luc Moullet, 1960, France, 19m
In Moullet’s directorial debut, two siblings argue about—what else—what’s for dinner.

Terres noires
Luc Moullet, 1964, France, 19m

This early documentary examines two villages, one in the Pyrenees and one in the Alps, that are more or less isolated from the world around them due to their lack of roads.

Essai d’ouverture
Luc Moullet, 1988, France, 14m

A remarkable and comic work of self-portraiture, this film follows Moullet as he struggles to open a bottle of Coca-Cola.

More and More / Toujours plus
Luc Moullet, 1994, France, 24m

Moullet examines what just may be the cathedral of high-consumerism and, by extension, capitalist society: the modern supermarket.

Less and Less / Toujours moins
Luc Moullet, 2010, France, 14m

The follow-up to More and More comically probes the sometimes convenient, sometimes baffling automation of modern life.
Friday, August 8 at 1:00pm
Tuesday, August 12 at 6:00pm

The Shorts of Luc Moullet, Program 2
98m
French with English subtitles

Le Litre de lait

This program collects an assortment of short films by Moullet: the anarchic comedy tutorial Barres; La Valse des médias, an essay on the public library systems; the travelogue-esque Cabale des oursins and Le Ventre de l’Amérique; and the autobiographical Le Litre de lait. 

Barres
Luc Moullet, 1984, France, 15m

In this documentary ode to anarchy, Moullet showcases a variety of ways to get onto the Paris metro without paying the fare.

La Valse des médias
Luc Moullet, 1987, France, 27m

This typically clever work of cinematic sociology examines the modernization of public libraries in France and the rise of the media library.

Cabale des oursins
Luc Moullet, 1991, France, 17m

An idiosyncratic take on the travelogue, Cabale des oursins finds Moullet touring the slag heaps of northern France, meditating upon possible uses for these seemingly useless remnants of the coal mining industry.

Le Ventre de l’Amérique
Luc Moullet, 1996, France, 25m

This signature documentary finds Moullet wishing to experience a United States beyond the usual fixation on New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco—and so he travels to Des Moines, Iowa, of all places.

Le Litre de lait
Luc Moullet, 2006, France, 14m

In this foray into autobiography, a teenage boy is tasked with buying some milk from the wife of his mother’s lover.
Friday, August 8 at 3:30pm
Wednesday, August 13 at 6:00pm

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