Word: coutard
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...then neither are the other motivations in The Jerusalem File interference from Pleasence and Williamson and several ominous appearances by the black sedan. The students drive across the dunes to meet their fate, and the movie ends as it began: badly. Raoul Coutard's photography, however, is very easy on the eyes, as is Daria Halprin, modeling the latest in kibbutz sportswear...
...Confession was shuttled out of Boston without surplus discussion or playing-time: it entered the Harvey chain, but played the Orson Welles in a print dubbed with bad American gangsterese. Photographed by Raoul Coutard, written by Jorge Semprun, directed by Costa-Gavras (there's talent in those credits), this chronicle of the Czech Slansky trials resonates with modern fears of industrial slates, of resulting dehumanization, and the ascendance of politics over morals. But it's no sermon: the bulk of the film is anti-melodramatic, a complex historical document, and terror comes through to both mind and gut because...
...middle of Vietnam horrors. It's a slight piece of social history. But it is accurate, emotionally powerful, and if it didn't preach pacifism in a Have-Have Not war, it would come very close to non-partisanship. The film's power is in the eye of Raoul Coutard, who here debuts as writer-director. American soldiers freeze in grotesque command postures. A theater explodes and its audience flees, losing intestines en route. Slum kids piss on a child-exploiting businesswoman's car. The connecting tissue doesn't equal the fragments, but these fragments are hard-edged stuff...
...most part, Coutard's tone remains one of understatement. He is out to win sympathy not to shock. The war rarely intrudes violently into the path of Hung and Xuan. But it is always in the background--in the insistent beating of helicopter wings or the constant presence of Americans in uniform...
...even when Coutard falls toward sentiment, when he lingers too long over Xuan crying or exploits an especial cuteness in Hung's expression, it is not so much an indulgence as a tactic. He is playing on sentiment only as a way of striking through the numbness of Western response toward Vietnam...