Maurice Pialat
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Maurice Pialat
Biography
Once described as the true heir to Jean Renoir's legacy, French filmmaker Maurice Pialat is noted for his brutal, insightful portraits of the less savory aspects of family life and French society, as well as for his ability to evoke unusually powerful and realistic performances from his actors regardless of their professional status. Pialat, who is known as one of his country's more "difficult" directors due to both his subject matter and on-set clashes, was born in Puy-de-Dôme but raised in Paris after the age of three. He started out as a painter and jack-of-all-trades and did sporadic work as an actor. In the late '50s, Pialat became fascinated with cinema, and he got his start making short films, notably L'Amour Existe (1961), which won a prize at the Venice Festival.After spending much of the '60s working in French television, Pialat made his feature-film debut in 1968 with L'Enfance Nue (Naked Childhood), a cinema verité-style drama utilizing nonprofessional actors. A study in New Wave realism that was relentless in its focus on the unglamorous realities of life, the film won Pialat international acclaim. His subsequent work continued in the realist vein, with very rare excursions into the genre realm (Police [1985], Sous le Soleil du Satan [1987]). Some of Pialat's more notable films include Loulou (1980), a study of middle-class ennui and the liberating benefits of hooliganism; À Nos Amours (1983), which focused on the emotionally problematic life of a promiscuous teenager (Sandrine Bonnaire); Under the Sun of Satan (1987), a religious moral drama that won the Palme d'Or at Cannes; and Van Gogh (1991), a nearly three-hour look at the last year of the painter's life. A frequent collaborator with actors Gerard Depardieu and Sandrine Bonnaire, Pialat also worked as an actor in both his films and those of other directors. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
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Maurice Pialat
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Maurice Pialat
| Maurice Pialat | |
|---|---|
| Born | 31 August 1925 Cunlhat, Puy-de-Dôme |
| Died | 11 January 2003 Paris, France |
Maurice Pialat (31 August 1925 – 11 January 2003) was a French film director, screenwriter and actor noted for the rigorous and unsentimental style of his films. His work is often described as being "realist",[1] though many film critics[1][2] acknowledge that it does not fit the traditional definition of realism.
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Life and career
Pialat originally intended to become a painter, but met with little success.[3] Having acquired a camera at age 16, he tried his hand at documentary films before making his first notable short, L'Amour existe, in 1960.
Pialat came to filmmaking late. He directed his feature-length debut, 1969's L'Enfance Nue (The Naked Childhood) at the age of 44. The film, which was co-produced by French New Wave director François Truffaut, won the Prix Jean Vigo.
During his 35 year career, Pialat completed only ten major features, many of which—most notably Loulou—have been interpreted as being autobiographical. He directed Gérard Depardieu in three films, including Sous le soleil de Satan (Under the Sun of Satan), for which Pialat won the Palme d'Or at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival.
In a posthumous tribute written for the French film magazine Positif, critic Noël Herpe referred to Pialat's style as a "a naturalism that was born of formalism."[2] In English-language film criticism, he is often compared to his American contemporary John Cassavetes.[3][4]
Summarizing Pialat's stance as a filmmaker in a profile for Film Comment, critic Kent Jones wrote: "To say that Pialat marched to the beat of a different drummer is to put it mildly. In fact, he didn't really march at all. He ambled, and fuck anybody who got it into their head that they'd like to amble along with him. Or behind him. Or ahead of him."[3]
Style
The films of Maurice Pialat are often noted for their loose yet rigorous style and for their somewhat elliptical editing, which emphasizes an unsentimental worldview. Describing the unique aesthetics of Pialat's work, film critic Kent Jones wrote: "Even more than Jean Eustache [...] Pialat was an irascibly private artist, charting a twisted, crook-backed path with each new movie, almost always emerging with works in which the mind-bending vitality of immediate experience trumps all belief systems, allegiances, plans. [...] More than Cassavetes, more than Renoir, Pialat wanted every frame of celluloid bearing his name to be marked by the here and the now. [...] He was always willing to bend his narratives around experience. And the frequent ruptures, discontinuities, perspective shifts, and ellipses in his work are less single-minded than those of Cassavetes, more far-reaching in their implications."[3]
Pialat's work is marked by the use of long takes, which often feed from sudden peaks of dramatic intensity in character interaction. He also has played supporting roles in some of his movies.
Filmography
Feature films
- L'Enfance Nue (Naked Childhood) (1968)
- Nous ne vieillirons pas ensemble (We Won't Grow Old Together) (1972)
- La Gueule ouverte (1974)
- Passe ton bac d'abord (Graduate First) (1979)
- Loulou (1980)
- À nos amours (To Our Loves) (1983)
- Police (1985)
- Sous le soleil de Satan (Under the Sun of Satan) (1987)
- Van Gogh (1991)
- Le Garçu (1995)
Short films (selected)
- L'Amour existe (1960)
- Janine (1961)
- Maître Galip (1962)
- Jardins d'Arabie (1963)
- Byzance (1964)
- Pehlivan (1964)
References
External links
- Maurice Pialat at the Internet Movie Database
- Maurice Pialat Resource (in French)
- Literature on Maurice Pialat
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Mentioned in
Maurice Pialat: L'Amour Existe
(2007 Film)
Van Gogh
(1991 Drama Film)
Loulou
(1980 Drama Film)
Go Fast
(2008 Action Film)
Cyril Collard
(Director, Writer, Actor, Drama)
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