Les Créatures (The Creatures). 1966. France. Written and directed by Agnès Varda. With Catherine Deneuve, Michel Piccoli, Eva Dahlbeck. North American premiere. In French; English subtitles. 94 min.
Agnès Varda described The Creatures as a “love story, between people who don’t talk.” Olivier Assayas, in turn, has called it a film that in 1966 “rivaled in audacity with Persona, Fahrenheit 451, or Blow Up ….[W]ithout a doubt the strangest entry in a body of work where fantasy and enigma, clarity and mystery, coexist in a way that is rare among filmmakers.” Set on the stark, foggy island of Noirmoutier in winter, its haunting musical score by Pierre Barbaud incorporating the perpetual echoing sound of lashing waves, The Creatures is a conceptually playful if disturbing reflection on the solitude of marriage and creativity. Michel Piccoli—acting as a stand-in for Varda’s husband, Jacques Demy (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg)—stars as a sci-fi novelist whoinvents “imaginary adventures” for the local islanders as the inspiration for his latest project while his wife (Catherine Deneuve, standing in for Varda herself) is mutely unnerved by her own imagined dangers (a crab, a chess game, other people, a baby). Or perhaps the stand-ins are the other way around?
4K digital restoration by Ciné-Tamaris and the CNC – Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée, with the support of the CNC, SHE ECHOES, and CHANEL; courtesy Janus Films.
Keller Dorian: Film gaufré: Sonia Delaunay. 1926. France. North American premiere. Silent. 3 min.
“In 1926, Robert and Sonia Delaunay made an experimental short film in collaboration with Chevreau, the cameraman. This was the first publicly screened film to adapt the Keller-Dorian-Berthon lenticular process for use indoors under artificial lighting conditions…. The work survives only in an incomplete form. It was originally projected during the course of a lecture by Sonia Delaunay at the Sorbonne on January 27th, 1927, and represents a series of mannequins photographed against a background of textiles and paintings. The last shot of this short reel shows Sonia Delaunay herself enthroned amid brightly coloured draped fabrics” (François Ede).
4K digital restoration by the CNC – Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée; courtesy the Delaunay estate – Pracusa.