“Rickshaw driver take me home… I’ll pay you one and half, a flat double or even exorbitantly more, Rickshaw driver please just take me home. I don’t care about my rights, I don’t believe in the police, I don’t want to mess things up. I’m all sozzled out on Peco’s beer, I’m a good citizen- an earnest patriot, I know some Kannada by rote. Now just take me home”
- Ancient Bangalore Saying
“We have entered the age of irony”
- Paul Schrader sums up ‘Pulp Fiction’
These are strange hard times we walk through. Everything is mired up in implicit duplicity.
Your heart went out when they took down the old cinema hall. You hate the mall that came up in its place, whole and soul. But it won’t stop you from going to the multiplex. Maybe you could take a stand. But what’s the point? And rest assured nobody is going to hold it against you. Even if you’re a politician… or priest.
Ambiguity reigns. The good and the bad have collided through the loop holes. The same way the black areas and white areas have mixed in a convenient gray. You couldn’t tell at twilight if the sun’s coming up or going down.
Welcome to the world of the master, the godfather of all that is grey, fatal and yet implicitly cool in cinema. Over three decades before the world became as we know, Melville almost seems to have predicted our everyday quandaries and choices in a world he envisioned and created in the chiaroscuro of shadow and light. A world of mysterious men and women governed by a strange karma. Seductive. Treacherous.
One in which you can lose yourself only to discover in retrospect how wrong you were every step of the way.
Bangalore Film Society invites you through 3 classic films of the master Jean-Pierre Melville and to see the world ‘Through a Mirror Darkly’
Friday 21 November 2008 Time: 6.30pm
Le Samourai(1967/Color/105min) Dir: Jean-Pierre Melville
There is no solitude greater than the samurai's, unless perhaps it be that of a tiger in the jungle.
- The Book of Bushido
Directors John Woo & Johnny To have called it the most perfect film ever made while Jim Jarmusch adapted it with searing poetry and made ‘Ghost Dog’, possibly his finest film. Channeling his passion for the American Gangster flick through France in the swinging 60s, Melville’s stylish and existential tale of a lonely hitman double-crossed, on-the-run and bound by a code is pure jazz masquerading as film. It was also Melville’s first of his legendary collaboration with Actor Alain Delon who brilliantly essays the iconic assassin ‘Jef Costello’.
KINDLY NOTE THE CHANGE IN TIMING FOR SATURDAY
Saturday 22 November 2008 Time: 6.00pm
Le Cercle Rogue (1970/Color/140min) Dir: Jean-Pierre Melville
"Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, drew a circle with a piece of red chalk and said: 'When men, even unknowingly, are to meet one day, whatever may befall each, whatever the diverging paths, on the said day, they will inevitably come together in the red circle."
‘Le Cercle Rogue’ was Melville’s filmmaking masterclass, his greatest work. His epic portrait of a group of jaded criminals attempting a jewel heist, stands alongside ‘Rififi’ and ‘The Killers’ as among the greatest heist film of all times. Featuring the classic 30min heist sequence that blends together action, poetry and high tension and great performances from the acting ensemble and a memorable score by Eric Demarsan, Melville’s beast is a cool calculated seduction.
Sunday 23 November 2008 Time: 6.30pm
Un Flic (1972/Color/100min) Dir: Jean-Pierre Melville
‘The only two feelings men give rise to are ambiguity and derision’
- Eugene Francois Vidocq
Melville’s final work, the brilliant and even caustic ‘Un Flic’ is also his most severely under-rated. A thrilling and cool cat-and-mouse chase between a gang of master thieves and one very very tough cop is imbued with layers of complexity and deception. Possessing a ferocity and nihilism that were more subdued in ‘Le Samourai’ and ‘Le Cercle Rogue’, ‘Un Flic’ is a powerful and worthy last entry in an oeuvre which changed the history of cinema forever.
Venue: Ashirvad, 30, St. Mark's Road cross, Op. State Bank of India
Tel: 2549 2774/ 2549 3705/ 9886213516
BFSBLOG
ADMISSION FOR FILMS FOR MEMBERS ONLY. NON-MEMBERS ARE REQUESTED TO ARRIVE 15 MINS EARLY AND REGISTER.
(Members whose membership has expired are requested to kindly renew their membership)
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