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identified as an actor of considerable talent with, potentially, a significant screen career ahead of him. Moreover, as he progressed to more prominent roles in films such as Un Héros très discret (Audiard, 1996), Le Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain (Jeuent, 2001) and Amen (Costa-Gavras, 2002), Kassovitz’s rising celebrity profile (as both director and actor) and obvious onscreen charisma even
Roman Polanski’s The Pianist (2002), in which the American actor Adrien Brody is unproblematically represented as a Polish Jew, and in which the use of English by all ‘Polish’ and ‘German’ characters (excepting some ambient dialogue and street signs) is both unbroken and unmentioned (2008: 190). Costa-Gavras’s later films, including 2002’s Amen and 2008’s Eden à l’ouest (in which a fake language is concocted from reversed French, so the migrant protagonist can retain an anonymous, almost mythical ‘Eastern’ identity), are much more interested in the power of languages
hommes tomber ). Alongside this core oeuvre of polars , he also wrote the scripts for such varied films as Lautner’s 1985 drag comedy La Cage aux folles III (Lautner, 1985 ); Jean-Jacques Andrien’s ( 1988 ) postwar drama Australia ; and even Jérôme Boivin’s 1989 dark comedy about a murderous talking dog, Baxter (Boivin, 1989 ). He made a brief foray into sound-mixing with Costa-Gavras
against Nicolas Sarkozy is to avoid the danger of a France at war with itself, in conflict and in crisis, divided and torn apart’. Other signatories included the writer Marie NDiaye, the actress Jeanne Moreau, the film director Constantin Costa-Gavras and the singer Georges Moustaki.
a long and distinguished, though variable, career. In retrospect Oliver! seems like an incongruous film for the times. The end of the 1960s, the decade of so-called sexual liberation, was also one of political upheaval. Vietnam and the Paris riots of May 1968 are perhaps the two most dramatic episodes of the period’s turbulence, anticipated or reflected in films like Weekend (Godard, 1967), Z (Costa-Gavras, 1968
Catholic Church. Léon Morin, prêtre (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1961) with its priestly central character is a notable exception. However, unlike Costa-Gavras's internationally produced Amen. (2002), France has largely left Catholic priests and nuns to fill secondary roles in ensemble casts of good Samaritans, such as those in Les Misérables , La Rafle and Monsieur Batignole. Perhaps films exploring these diverse identity groups will emerge in contemporary French cinema over the next twenty years as this unrelenting drive to reconcile previously forgotten aspects of
Brecht’s Galileo (filmed directly between the two projects) than the vital political activists of filmmakers such as Costa-Gavras, Gillo Pontecorvo or even Resnais. Both Trotsky and Larrea led hermetic lives of purely textual production, one pathetically cut off from past glories, the other Oedipally alienated by the younger generation’s political apathy and unfocused rage. Much of this dearth of topical relevance is rooted in
lived in the same apartment block; while director Costa-Gavras the iconic auteur of 1970s civic cinema – was also a regular visitor (Aubel 2003 : 19). Kassovitz’s parents appear, therefore, to have been part of the increasingly politicised intellectual and artistic scene found in Paris during the late 1960s and 1970s; though the extent to which they were actively involved in such movements is unclear. For
, Kassovitz’s particular brand of social cinema can be compared with the spectacularisation of politics found in French civic cinema of the 1970s, employed by directors such as Costa-Gavras (with whom Kassovitz has recently worked) and Yves Boisset. Certainly Kassovitz would have been familiar with the work of these directors, if only due to the fact that such filmmakers moved within similar social, artistic
their actions ( 2003 ). They pretend to be resistants and this represents an ad hoc, spontaneous and ultimately counterproductive kind of heroism, made even more problematic when there are reprisals from the Germans, including taking hostages. The German authorities here will serve their own kind of justice by wrongfully convicting individuals and executing them unless the real culprits identify themselves. As previously seen in Séction spéciale (Costa-Gavras, 1975), the French judicial system of the time collaborated in delivering this perverted form of justice