Themes: Writer's Life, Fantasy Life, Family Gatherings
Main Cast: Dirk Bogarde, Ellen Burstyn, John Gielgud, David Warner, Elaine Stritch
Release Year: 1977
Country: FR/CH
Run Time: 110 minutes
Plot
The first English-language film from Alain Resnais, this drama about a spiteful, alcoholic novelist contains the French director's typically playful surrealist touches and recurring use of characters shackled by memory. John Gielgud stars as Clive Langham, a drunken author in failing health who spends an increasingly intoxicated evening at his Rhode Island estate working on his new novel. Clive bases the characters in the melodramatic story on his own family, including his two sons, Claude (Dirk Bogarde) and the illegitimate Kevin (David Warner), as well as Claude's wife Sonia (Ellen Burstyn). Imagining a bitter love triangle full of spite between the three protagonists of his tale, Clive uses generous doses of imagination and symbolism, including a discordant soccer player (Denis Lawson) related to Kevin and werewolves. When his real-life family appears for a meal with Clive, however, they are not quite the embittered, devious players in the author's booze-fueled fiction. Although dividing critics between those delighted with Resnais' comic flourishes and others annoyed by his arty pretensions, Providence (1977) swept the Cesar Awards, France's Oscar equivalent, winning seven including Best Director for Resnais. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
Jacques Saulnier - Art Director, Claude Serre - Art Director, Lise Fayolles - Associate Producer, Catherine Leterrier - Costume Designer, John Bates - Costume Designer, Alain Resnais - Director, Albert Jurgenson - Editor, Philippe Dussart - Executive Producer, Miklos Rozsa - Composer (Music Score), Philippe Brun - Camera Operator, Charles Merangel - Production Designer, Ricardo Aronovich - Cinematographer, Antoine Gannage - Production Manager, Klaus Hellwig - Producer, Yves Peyrot - Producer, Yves Gasser - Producer, Claude Serre - Set Designer, Jacques Maumont - Sound/Sound Designer, David Mercer - Screenwriter, Yves Saint Laurent - Costume/Wardrobe
Over a drunken, tormented night, dying writer Clive Langham (Gielgud) struggles with the plot of a novel. The characters are based on Langham's own family, who are depicted as spiteful, treacherous and decadent. Langham makes these people interact in a variety of settings - courtrooms, mortuaries, werewolf-haunted forests. Although it is obvious that the writer's perceptions are distorted by bitterness and guilt, the extent of this is not made clear until the end, when the "real" family members come to Langham's house to celebrate his birthday.
Unusual elements in the film
The film contains a unique variety of visual techniques which illustrate Langham’s internal editing of his material. We watch one scene evolve, and after several minutes, Langham decides that the dialogue is all wrong. The scene is performed again with different dialogue accompanying the basic actions of the scene. The most unusual example of internal editing is a scene between Dirk Bogarde and Ellen Burstyn. Burstyn enters the frame on the left side through a door. The camera then follows the characters in one continuous shot as they walk to the other side of the room, as their conversation progresses. In the end, Burstyn returns to the side of the room where the door was. Now the door is gone, and she must descend a flight of stairs for her exit from the scene.
Although he was one of the preeminent theatre actors of the twentieth century, John Gielgud felt that this was his only completely successful attempt at film acting.[1]
L'aventure de Guy (1936) ·Schéma d'une identification (1946) ·Ouvert pour cause d'inventaire (1946) ·Visite à Oscar Dominguez (1947) ·Visite à Lucien Coutaud (1947) ·Visite à Hans Hartung (1947) ·Visite à Félix Labisse (1947) ·Visite à César Doméla (1947) ·Van Gogh (1947) ·Portrait d'Henri Goetz (1947) ·Le lait Nestlé (1947) ·L'alcool tue (1947) ·La bague (1947) ·Journée naturelle (1947) ·Van Gogh (1948) ·Malfray (1948) ·Les jardins de Paris (1948) ·Châteaux de France (1948) ·Guernica (1950) ·Gauguin (1950) ·Statues Also Die (1953) ·Night and Fog (1955) ·Toute la mémoire du monde (1956) ·Le mystère de l'atelier quinze (1957) ·Le chant du Styrène (1958)
