Word: films
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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FOLLOWING New York Times procedure, the following selection includes only those films released commercially in the United States during 1968. This excludes films shown only at the New York Film Festival; it also excludes films that arrived in Boston in 1968 but opened elsewhere in 1967 (Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers). To make things simpler, I eliminate European films made over two years ago but released during 1968 (Bunuel's Nazarin and, regrettably, Godard's masterpiece Pierrot...
Chabrol has gleefully acknowledged the presence of at least one death in each of his films, and these deaths act as elaborate metaphors for forces of change and reevaluation. Christine's death in Champagne Murders brings about a violent reappraisal of the three characters' commitments, and the film ends on zoom pull-backs leaving them in Jimbo either to destroy one another or to form a new menage. Frederique's death in Les Biches also ends on a note of moral uncertainty as we wonder whether it will act as an agent of destruction or of change. If Les Biches...
...characters, theme, and content, able to articulate everything his characters cannot. His ability to do exactly what he wants is shown in the brutal climax of The Champagne Murders, a one-and-one-half minute montage of all the camera movements and color schemes that have previously dominated the film, which arrives at a shocking (Marnie-like) shot of unearthly colors and images foreign to it. In Les Biches, the soft lighting of the night scenes is as magnificant as any in film history, as are the time-compression montages of Frederique and Why in St. Tropez. The fact that...
Equally clumsy is the film's direction, the work of Christian Marquand. Every sequence is overlong and overdone. The editing is helter-skelter, with some scenes totally incomprehensible. The color is shoddy and dank; the musical score is too loud and irrelevant. Worst of all, it is highly questionable that Marquand even bothered to direct any of his cast...
...comedy and tends to deliver her lines as if she were practising English elocution. The people around her (among them Charles Aznavour, Ringo Starr, Richard Burton, John Huston, Walter Matthau, Marlon Bando and James Coburn) manage to look like they had a hell of a good time making the film, but, alas, this does nothing for the audience...