CINEMATHEQUE SONOTHEQUE
CINEMATHEQUE SONOTHEQUE - MONDAY JUNE 1 - SONOTHEQUE - 1444 W. CHICAGO - 312.226.7600
SONOTHEQUE PRESENTS: LA KERMESSE HEROIQUE/CARNIVAL IN FLANDERS (1935) – DIRECTED BY JACQUES FEYDER
CINEMATHEQUE SONOTHEQUE: FROM ARTHOUSE TO GRINDHOUSE
EVERY FIRST MONDAY OF THE MONTH
FILMS SELECTED BY JOE BRYL
6PM to 9PM
NO COVER
21+
Henri Langlois (co-founder of the Cinémathèque Française with Georges Franju and Jean Mitry and also co-founded of the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) in 1938) in an interview in Paris:
HL: "We started a little film club in 1935 called the Circle of Cinema, projecting silent films only - no music or blah-blah, or post-film debates, so nobody was put on the spot. The atmosphere was non-threatening, so people came."
HL: "There are cinephiles and cinephages"
"What's the difference?"
HL: "Truffaut is a cinephile. A cinephage - a "film nerd" - sits in the front row and writes down the credits. But if you ask him if the films worthwhile, whether it's good, he'll say something sharp, but that's not the point of movies. To love cinema is to love life… to really look at this window on the universe. It's incompatible with note taking."
Presently, the plethora of cinematic film-blogs, both by respected critics and impassioned cinephiles, has created an abundance of critical insight into the practice of cinema. Prominent film theorists and scholars like David Bordwell (http://www.davidbordwell.net/) and film journalists and critics like Dave Kehr (http://www.davekehr.com/) discuss cinema daily with erudite research in developments of film theory and vital insight into film history while ardent cinephiles like Campaspe Smith of Self-Styled Siren (http://selfstyledsiren.blogspot.com/) and Kimberly Lindbergs of Cinebeats (http://cinebeats.blogsome.com/) offer penetrating analysis on works that range from the Jack Cardiff/Alain Delon/Marianne Faithfull late sixties cult film Girl on a Motorcycle to Julien Duvivier's little seen French classic La Fin du Jour (1938).
However, before the magic of the web with it's technological ability to create an endless and continuous dialogue of information, the cine-club in all its quaintness and simplicity offered an appealing environment where devoted filmgoers could view little seen films, socialize and exchange ideas on cinema and ultimately on life. By the 1920s these cine-clubs could be found in most major cosmopolitan cities around the globe. French director Marcel L'Herbier (L'Argent) spoke between 1923 and 1927 in film clubs such as the Club Francais du Cinema and the Cine-Club de France while Spanish director Luis Bunuel was a cine-club enthusiast from his arrival in Paris in 1925. Future La Nouvelle Vague directors like Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, and Claude Chabrol and Zanzibar director Phillipe Garrel weaned themselves daily on the films screened by Herni Langois at the Cinémathèque Française and were known as les enfants de la cinémathèque ("children of the cinémathèque"), as they could often be found in the front row of packed screenings.
To try to re-capture this enthusiasm for film Sonotheque hosts a monthly series titled Cinematheque Sonotheque - From Arthouse to Grindhouse on the first Monday of each month. Although cinema-going forces one into a social setting, by its very nature it is a sedentary and solitary activity. It is our hope to offer a socially inviting environment where filmgoers can fraternize, mingle and discuss specially selected little-seen cinematic treasures, make new friends and share in their enthusiasm for film.
The second film in the series (last months offering was the Robert Siodmak/Edgar G. Ulmer 1929 German silent People on Sunday) for Cinematheque Sonotheque will be Jacques Feyder's 1935 French historical comedy La Kermesse heroique/Carnival in Flanders (109 minutes). Jacques Feyder (born July 21, 1885; died May 24, 1948) began acting in silent films in France in 1912, worked as a screenwritter and by 1915 began directing. Almost forgotten today, Feyder was one of the finest directors in Europe. His Queen of Atlantis/L'Atlantide (1921) was based upon Pierre Benoit's best-selling exotic novel of the French foreign legion and the woman no man can resist, was filmed under grueling conditions on location in the Sahara and in a large tent studio outside of Algiers. In 1925 he directed his masterpiece Faces of Children/Visages d'enfants, a coming-of-age story of a child's reaction to his mother's death filmed on location in the Haut-Valais region of Switzerland, with spectacular mountain scenery (both films are available on Image Entertainment's Rediscover Jacques Feyder - French Film Master DVD with his 1922 film Crainquebille).
Carnival in Flanders was a huge international hit, with special success in the U.S. opening at the Filmarte Theater, one of New York City's major outlets for foreign films. It won the Grand Prix du Cinema Francais, Best Director award from the Venice Film Festival and New York Film Critics' first award for Best Foreign Language Film. However, the film caused great controversy in Feyder's native Belgium, since the film humorously depicted Flemish collaboration, both socially and sexually, with the enemy between Dutch middle-class wives and their Spanish conquerors. This Ernst Lubitsch-like farce finds the husbands either running away or acting dead, the wives "entertaining" the invades and ultimately the town left none the worse and free of taxation. This tongue-in-cheek farce deftly balances witty comedy, lush settings and a modern sophistication similar to the popular screwball American comedies of the thirties.
Working on Carnival in Flanders as production assistant was Marcel Carne who later on would direct Les enfants du paradis/Children of Paradise (1945), one of most enduring classics of French cinema. The exceptional cinematography was by Harry Stradling Sr. who would later emmigrate to the US where he would be cameraman for such films as the Vivien Leigh vehicle Dark Journey (1937), Alfred Hitchcock's Jamaica Inn (1939), Vincente Minnelli's The Pirate (1948) and Elia Kazan's A Streetcar Named Desire (1951).
Feyder also worked in the USA between 1929 and 1931 where he filmed The Kiss with Grete Garbo. He also filmed the German version of Anna Christie with Garbo in 1930 (a Hollywood practise at the time filming versions of works specifically made for foreign markets). He returned to France in 1934 and continued directing until 1942 spending his last days in Switzerland and dying in 1948, the year that saw the passing away of both Eisenstein and Grffith.
However, Carnival in Flanders suffered its worse attack much later when it was singled out by future director, then young film critic, Francois Truffaut in Une Certaine Tendence du Cinema Francais as emblematic of a cinematic tradition of a classical approach to French filmmaking that made everything "pleasant and perfect". Yet it is exactly this combination of perfection and pleasantness that continues to impress one over 70 years later.
We will also screen a short film created by the United States Treasury Department titled Uncommon Valor narrated by Raymond Massey with a special message by then Captain of the United States Marine Corps Reserve; Tyrone Power. Uncommon Valor follows the creation and dedication of the Iwo Jima Memorial, an immense bronze statue that stands in Arlington National Cemetery.
Doors open at 6pm with the shorts starting at 6:30pm followed by the main film. All prints are DVD projection. There is no cover for the screening but entrance is 21+ (not due to any salacious nature of the films but only because of the venue's licensing). All films in the series are selected by Joe Bryl, musical director and co-owner of Sonotheque.
Upcoming Monday July 6:
The third offering in the series will be Traite de Bave et D'Eternite/Treastie on Venom and Eternity (1951). Directed by Isidore Isou, founder of the Letterist movement, precursor of Situationism, Treastie on Venom and Eternity created a scandal in Cannes in 1951 with its use of "discrepant" and "chiseled" cinema. With its disjunction of word and image and its polemic of the rupture of language and photography Isou heralded a new approach to avant-garde film. We will screen an authorized edition, mastered in HD from the 35mm internegative restored by the French National Film Archives with a soundtrack remastered by Frederic Acquaviva (and not the shorter and more accessible version from the Raymond Rohauer collection).
