Une Vie
Tuesday, March 18, 2025
Dir. Alexandre Astruc, 1958, 86min
Starring Maria Schell, Christian Marquand
Cinema loves a good crumbling-marriage story and Une Vie is a whopper of one. But the difference in this adaptation of Guy de Maupassant’s debut 1883 novel is that the basis for matrimony was never reciprocal love. Starry-eyed aristocrat Jeanne (Maria Schell) is so smitten with the fetching yet destitute Julien (Christian Marquand) that it takes many years and a child together to see that the philandering scoundrel was just after her money. The painterly Normandy countryside serves as the backdrop for Alexandre Astruc’s gorgeous and bleak period drama that got a bit unfairly lost among the more audacious French New Wave titles starting to emerge in the late ’50s.
Imported 35mm print courtesy of Institut Français.
Tuesday, March 11, 2025
Adapted from de Maupassant’s novella of the same name, a delicate family drama of an unhappy marriage, the arrival of a possible new love, and the confused parentage that tends to result. Directed by André Cayette (Anatomy of a Marriage) whose work continues to offer revelations long underseen in the US.
Tuesday, March 4, 2025
Ophüls takes on the oft-adapted Guy de Maupassant, presenting three of his tales addressing the pitfalls of pleasure that can accompany aging, distance, boredom, and obsession, and featuring a cast of French acting royalty that includes Jean Gabin, Danielle Darrieux, and Simone Simon, all wondrously captured by the director’s characteristically ever-roaming camera. 35mm print courtesy of Institut Français.
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