An Evening with Pierre Lhomme
Pierre Lhomme in person!
Over the course of a half-century-long career, the great Pierre Lhomme has made an unmistakable mark on the history of cinematography in France and abroad, creating a body of work remarkable both for its flexibility of tone and unity of vision. Join us for a double bill showcasing the range of Lhomme’s gifts.
Army of Shadows
Jean-Pierre Melville | France | 1969 | 145m | Format: 35mm
This austere, heartbreaking portrait of French Resistance fighters— sheathed in trench coats, capped in fedoras, and struggling to survive in a gray occupied Paris—is widely and justly considered director Jean-Pierre Melville’s crowning achievement. It also locates the emotional core beneath his characteristic layers of cool remove. Lhomme’s camera has a tender feel for the cool of city mist and the texture of light on skin. “It’s here,” wrote the critic J. Hoberman, “that Melville fully achieved his notion of the sublime.”
Be Seeing You / À bientôt, j'espère
Chris Marker and Mario Marret | France | 1968 | 39m | Format: DIGIBETA
Class of Struggle / Classe de lutte
The Medvedkin Group | France | 1969 | 37m| Format: DIGIBETA
Made under the auspices of the filmmaking co-op SLON, À bientôt, j'espère consists largely of candid interviews with striking textile workers from the French city of Besançon as they stake out their grievances not only against factory owners but also against the larger factors keeping them at the lower rung of the social ladder. After completing the film, Marker confessed that, despite his best efforts, it was still the work of an outsider, and that the only way to fairly document the workers’ condition would be to give them control over the filming. The result was Classe de lute, a simmering first-person document of working-class discontent in the late 1960s, and a fascinating look at the immediate causes and effects of May ’68.
