Gigi + Chéri
COLETTE… the legendary writer (1873-1954) was a singular figure in French life & letters for more than half a century, whose novels indelibly captured the vagaries of Belle Epoque life and love with a discerning, feminist eye. After World War II filmmakers caught up with her, bringing her taut but tender tales to the big screen.
AUTEURES kicks off with a full day of these films, featuring four distinct and fascinating women at the center of the action, beginning with the matinee of Gigi and Chéri and an evening screening of Minne and The Game of Love / La Blé en herbe.
Gigi
12:30 PM She won’t take being a grande horizontale lying down! When Colette’s near-fairytale of a Belle Epoque adolescent refusing to join the family business as a third-generation courtesan was brought to the screen , it made a star of Danièle Delorme and made Jacqueline Audry into a filmmaker to be reckoned with. (1949, Jacqueline Audry, 82m)
Chéri
2:15 PM The last love of a courtesan is a beautiful, petulant boy (Jean Desailly) who refuses to grow up…until he does. Notable MCP rediscovery Marcelle Chantal (you may remember her as the doomed object of obsession in Amok and the opium-smoking temptress in Au Nom de la loi) is sublime in the final film of her illustrious career. (1950, dir. Pierre Billon, 90m)
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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