Anatomy of a Marriage
HE SAID/SHE SAID: When it comes to the often-fraught state of life known as marriage, whose perspective should we trust more—the man’s or the woman’s? It’s a subject that is rarely (if ever) addressed head-on…but such issues were tailor-made for André Cayatte, mid-20th century France’s most forthright filmmaker. How surprised will you be to discover that his ambitious double look at marriage is still as trenchant as it was when it was released sixty years ago?
Anatomy of a Marriage: My days with Jean Marc /La Vie conjugale
6:30 PM (1964, dir. Andre Cayatte, 112m)
Anatomy of a Marriage: My days with Françoise / La Vie conjugale
8:45 PM (1964, dir. Andre Cayatte, 112m)
Frequently maligned by the Nouvelle Vague, André Cayatte actually made more adventurous stories about women than the young turks, as these two films and 1965’s Trap for Cinderella demonstrate. Here, Cayatte provides a “he said-she said” double feature chronicling the rise and fall of a marriage from the perspective of each spouse. Husband Jean Marc (Jacques Charrier) goes first; wife Françoise (Marie-José Nat) gets in last licks. The similarities and differences in their accounts are handled with dynamic but low-key élan by Cayatte—possibly the most underrated directors from the cinéma de papa period.
Midcentury Productions’ AUTEURES: THE OTHER SIDE OF THE LOST CONTINENT ’24 features 15 films from France zeroing in on the status of women in the cinéma de papa period. These films feature women both in front of and behind the camera, covering a rich panorama of their perspectives about their place in French society. Based primarily on researches by Phoebe Green, AUTEURES is an eye-opening look at unjustly neglected works ripe for rediscovery.
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