172 Pépé le Moko

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FrauBlucher
Joined: Mon Jul 15, 2013 8:28 pm
Location: Greenwich Village

Re: 172 Pépé le Moko

#26 Post by FrauBlucher » Sat Apr 03, 2021 7:19 pm

domino harvey wrote:
Sun Mar 28, 2021 9:17 pm
This may help, from Cahiers' 1957 guide to French directors (written by various contributors including Truffaut but not assigned to any) (translation by jdcopp)
Julien Duvivier

Some tell you that today’s Duvivier is not worthy of yesterday’s Duvivier and rate L’Affaire Maurizius by wailing for Pépé le Moko. One could respond by burning Un carnet de bal in the name of Sous le ciel de Paris. In fact, Duvivier’s career is like a temperature chart with spiked highs and vertiginous slumps that, when led back to a happy medium witnesses an enviable warmth. If it it is rare that his films make rapt, it is rarer that his films make bored. His taste for a certain style of the baroque, culminating with La Fête à Henriette make him the champion of the unexpected, often guileful, sometimes aggravating. Constructed in stucco rather than cut in marble, his structures are not those that last but perishables are not the lest of foodstuffs.
If you're still not quite sure what to make of their take, well, welcome to Cahiers du Cinema!
Indeed about the Cahiers du Cinema. I'd like to think the "chart spiking high" was for many of his 1930s output.

Algiers would absolutely make a great supplement in line with The Front Page on the His Girl Friday release. I just wonder being that it's in the public domain how is and who has the negative if they still exist. TCM aired it last week and it looked pretty rough

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