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-authored tribute to Vigo, produced by François Margolin in 1995. The list of directors is as impressive as it is diverse: Catherine Breillat, Costa Gavras, Claire Denis, Raymond Depardon, Abbas Kiarostami and Parviz Kimiavi, Pavel Lungin and Raoul Ruiz. Most of the episodes take Vigo’s original as a springboard for formal remotivation and thematic speculation. Some redirect À propos de Nice towards contemporary fictional sketches set in the
‘realism’ led to opposition between Les Cahiers du Cinéma and Cinéthique, both of Marxist persuasion in 1970. The debate (triggered by Costa Gavras’ political though mainstream films Z and L’Aveu released respectively in 1969 and 1970) centred on the possibility or otherwise of combining popular appeal with political effectiveness. The main contradiction is that for a political film to have an impact, to generate reactions and to change the dominant ideology, it has to be screened and viewed. In other words, to be seen it has to
the way in which structure ‘represents’ and ‘explains’ content, and claims to ‘know’ and ‘judge’ events within a ‘cause-effect chain’, Elephant serves to foreground the ideological mediation of the narrative process. The radicalism of this combination of form and narrative can be explored through reference to Loach’s Hidden Agenda, which approached Britain’s alleged shoot-to-kill policy through an investigative structure resembling a political thriller. John Hill (1997b: 131) located complaints about this structuring alongside the ‘Costa-Gavras debate’, which tied
impossibility of spending, of giving, of losing, and the relentless nature of the law of value’. Compare Chabrol on the political films of Costa-Gavras: ‘Tout est récupéré [everything is recuperated]’ (Chabrol 1976 : 319). 8 Italics in original. 9 ‘an idiotic sign, like all the others: Fascist
’/ ‘in attempting to pass his entry exam into Hollywood he overdoes it’. 28 ‘À 15 ans j’ai passé 10 heures par jour à regarder des films comme Gothika . Même si j’aime aussi Costa-Gavras ou Werner Herzog’/ ‘Even if I also appreciate directors such as Costa-Gavras or Werner Herzog, at the age of 15 I
its formal aspects do not correspond. It is exemplified principally by two directors: Constantin Costa-Gavras and Yves Boisset, who adapted the American and Italian political thriller to the French context. The most important single event for French society in the second half of the twentieth century, socially, politically and culturally, is undoubtedly May 1968. As Jill Forbes points out, ‘the Events of May 1968 led to a
she refuses him. This is a rose-coloured perspective, of course; other international films such as Amen. (2002, Costa-Gavras) reveal uncomfortable truths of Catholic complicity in collaboration during the war and also in hiding Nazis in the subsequent decades. Lelouch may tread lightly in his judgment of the Catholic Church, but the film's condemnation of the authorities and individuals who sought to profit from this ‘miserable’ situation is clear. In a heartbreaking scene, one of the last things Henri Fortin's father (Henri senior) says to his
cinematic critiques including Reds (Warren Beatty, 1981), Missing (Costa Gavras, 1982), Silkwood (Mike Nichols, 1983), and of course Stone’s own Salvador (1986), Platoon (1986) and Wall Street. By the time that Natural Born Killers arrived in cinemas, US audiences were more likely to be savouring The Bodyguard (Mick Jackson, 1992), Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1993), Forrest Gump (Robert Zemeckis, 1994) and The Lion King (Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff, 1994). Only in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction (1994), fêted by the Academy with a Oscar for Best Screenplay and six
Nuit chez Maud narrowly missed a prize for best actress, which Fabian lost to Vanessa Redgrave (Isadora Duncan). And while Trintignant took Best Actor for his role as a magistrate in Costa-Gavras’s political thriller Z (also Best Picture), many thought he equally deserved that distinction for Maud’s church-going engineer. Rohmer’s popular success mystified industry experts: how could an austere picture
one of several niche directors who sought to strike a different tone and maintain some of the agendas set by Pakula and Coppola a decade earlier. Alongside him, Warren Beatty, Constantin Costa-Gavras and Mike Nichols all made important contributions to Hollywood’s more daring liberal wing, with movies such as Reds (1981), Missing (1982) and Silkwood (1983). The Russian Revolution, South American politics and corporate and political cover-ups seemed unlikely subjects for critical let alone commercial successes during the decade, but each of the directors bucked the