DIRECTOR: Henri Colpi
PRODUCERS: Alberto Barsanti, Claude Jaeger
PRODUCTION CO: Procinex, Société Cinématographique Lyre, Galatea Film
SCREENPLAY: Marguerite Duras, Gérard Jarlot
EDITORS: Jasmine Chasney, Jacqueline Meppiel
MUSIC: Georges Delerue
WITH: Alida Valli (Thérèse Langlois), Georges Wilson (The Tramp), Charles Blavette (Fernand), Amédée (Marcel Langlois), Paul Faivre (Pensioner), Pierre Parel (Manager), Catherine Fonteney (Alice), Diane Lepvrier (Martine)

FESTIVALS: Cannes

REVIEWS

“The title reflects the fate of this too-little-known film which won the Grand Prize at Cannes and the prestigious Pris Louis Delluc. Scripted by Marguerite Duras, it was directed by Henri Colpi, the esteemed film editor best known for his work with Resnais (Last Year at Marienbad, Hiroshima Mon Amour). Colpi's forte as editor is in giving the matrix of memory and desire an emotional register through form.

The setting here is a bleak Parisian suburb in August, when anyone who is anyone has left for les vacances; our story concerns those who stay. The proprietress (Alida Valli) of a working-class bar is stunned when a tramp (Georges Wilson) walks in who is the image of her husband, deported and presumably killed by the Germans sixteen years earlier. The kind, gentlemanly stranger has lost his memory, clearly damaged by the war himself; he is a tabula rasa onto which she paints her longing.”

– Pacific Film Archive

“Henri Colpi was already a noticeable figure in editing, notably alongside Alain Resnais and, occasionally, Agnès Varda. He directed his first and most memorable feature film in 1961, which was based on a script co-written by Marguerite Duras… A moving questioning of memory and the ways in which real memories — as well as emotions — build or reconstruct relationships between people.”

​– Harvard Film Archive

FILM SOCIETY SCREENINGS

Hamilton     
Monday, 05 August, 6.30pm

Nelson     
Wednesday, 14 August, 6.00pm

Queenstown
Tuesday, 27 August, 8.00pm

​Auckland     
Monday, 16 September, 6.15pm

Dunedin     
Wednesday, 25 September, 7.30pm

Whanganui  
Monday, 07 October, 7.00pm​

Palmerston North
​Wednesday, 16 October, 6.00pm​
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French Connections is presented in
co-operation with the Institut Français and the Embassy of France