Mar 2010
The end of a cycle
A cycle of Maurice Pialat releases comes to a close with the twin releases of landmark works by one of the true giants of the motion-picture artform.
Pialat’s 1983 A nos amours. [To Our Romance. / Here’s to Love.] pits the filmmaker himself in a tender, ruthless performance against Sandrine Bonnaire at the moment of her tremendous, entirely natural-born debut into the world of cinema. This 2x DVD edition includes a 2003 video-interview with Bonnaire; the outstanding 55-minute film-analysis of A nos amours. by Xavier Giannoli (director of last year’s A l’origine), L’Œil humain; a 14-minute excerpt from a 1983 interview with Pialat, interspersed with rushes from scenes deleted from the final film; 31 minutes of video screen tests; and trailers for all seven of the Pialat features currently in The Masters of Cinema Series. An accompanying 48-page booklet includes a new essay by critic and filmmaker Dan Sallitt, a short image-essay by Craig Keller, and an English-language transcript of the sit-down conversation that took place between Pialat and Jean-Luc Godard one fine day in 1984.
We’re also proud to be releasing a 2x DVD set dedicated to a pair of Pialat’s crucial early short works (1951’s Isabelle aux Dombes, or Isabelle in La Dombes, and 1953’s Congrès eucharistique diocésain., or Diocesan Eucharistic Congress.) and one of his most lauded features: the 1987 Palme d’Or-winning Sous le soleil de Satan [Under the Sun of Satan]. Both Pialat and Bonnaire return, this time playing opposite the extraordinary Gérard Depardieu to breathe cinematographic life into Georges Bernanos’ haunting novel of a country priest in the throes of spiritual crisis and the village girl whose compulsions formulate an earthly, and tangible, satanism. This uncanny, hypnotic picture is supplemented on-disc by a massive assembly of extra material: an 11-minute 2003 video interview with Gérard Depardieu; 13 minutes of footage from the 1987 Cannes Festival press-conference for the film’s premiere; a 7-minute interview with Pialat and Depardieu, shot directly after the film won the Palme d’Or; a 54-minute 1987 TV programme given over to discussion about the film by Pialat and Catholic writer André Frossard; 14 minutes of on-set footage; a 55-minute featurette containing excised scenes and alternative versions of sequences from the film, commented upon by editor Yann Dedet, apprentice editor and future director Cédric Kahn, and screenwriter and assistant Sylvie Pialat; and trailers for the seven Pialat features in The Masters of Cinema Series at present. The set also includes a 28-page booklet containing a new illustrated essay by writer Gabe Klinger, excerpts from a 1987 interview with Pialat, and remarks from Sandrine Bonnaire made shortly after the filmmaker’s 2003 death.
If you still haven’t plunged into the profound and bracing depths of Maurice Pialat — a filmmaker whose art deserves unexaggerated mention in the same breath as “Vigo” or “Renoir” — now is the season to discover something new under the sun.