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A cineaste’s cineaste, an auteur’s auteur, French film critic-turned-director Luc Moullet began his career writing in the pages of Cahiers du Cinéma where he drew early attention to pulpy masters such as Samuel Fuller, Edgar G. Ulmer and Fritz Lang. It is Moullet’s book on Lang that Brigitte Bardot can be seen reading in the bathtub in Jean-Luc Godard’s Contempt. And just as Godard, François Truffaut, Éric Rhomer and Claude Chabrol took up cameras, Moullet made his first feature in 1966 but missed the spotlight that fell on his French New Wave compatriots. That could be timing or because comedy is his preferred métier but Moullet has never let obscurity slow him down. Now in his late 80s, he has built a career quietly making features, shorts and documentaries that can be as infectiously funny and charmingly human as they have been difficult to see even in his native country. On one level, it’s easy to see why Moullet remains a filmmaker for connoisseurs. Whether he’s playfully tweaking genre conventions, from the Western to the rom-com, or satirizing modern life, from work to relationships to consumerism, his touch is light, his humor droll, and his approach to story loose. Whether he’s shooting in landscapes — the French Alps are a favorite location — or shabby interiors, his sense of humor emerges through cumulative effect. As incident builds on incident, grins become guffaws and suddenly we’re in on the joke, too. The Archive is pleased to present this five-night retrospective of Moullet’s key works, many in new digital restorations.
Special thanks to Gaël Teicher, La Traverse.
Special thanks to our community partner: Villa Albertine.
