Paris Vu Par...

Produced by Barbet Schroeder, then a young member of the Cahiers Du Cinema group and the future director of Reversal of Fortune (1990) and who appears in the Jean Rouch episode, Paris vu par . . . is like most, if not all (I can't think of an exception) portmanteau films, a patchy affair, but if anything its charms have grown with the years.

Six directors, Jean Rouch, Claude Chabrol, Eric Rohmer, Jean-Daniel Pollet, Jean Douchet and Jean-Luc Godard were assigned separate sections of Paris and each given the task of making a short 16-millimetre film which was then released as part of this compendium work. Aside from the delights of seeing Paris in the 60s, viewers will of course have their preferences for the individual contributions. For me Jean-Daniel Pollet's bittersweet story of an assignation between a timid dishwasher and a brassy street prostitute on Rue Saint Denis was the stand-out whilst Jean-Luc Godard's more detailed version of a story told in his feature A Woman Is a Woman (1961), shot by Albert Maysles and starring Joanna Shimkus, is of interest. Chabrol's story of a young boy who uses a set of ear plugs to block out the sounds of his parent's incessant squabbling and Rohmer's of a supercilious shop assistant who thinks he has killed a drunk with his umbrella are also exemplary of the short film style of the period and fans of the French New Wave will certainly find this collection pleasing.

DVD Extras: An informative introduction by film critic and historian, Noël Simsolo; and two overlapping interview featurettes with director, Jean Douchet in which he discusses the production history of the film and his own contribution to it.

Available from: Madman

 

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