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Christophe Honoré selected Catherine Breillat’s 36 Fillette: “Her work is very important for French cinema.” Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Jacques Demy’s Lola (starring Anouk Aimée with Marc Michel), Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas, Zhangke Jia and composer Yoshihiro Hanno, Yves Robert’s La Guerre des Boutons, Alain Resnais’ Providence and L'Année Dernière à Marienbad, Kenneth Lonergan’s Manchester By The Sea, Sophie's Misfortunes, and Catherine Breillat’s 36 Fillette all came up in our discussion.

Christophe Honoré with Anne-Katrin Titze on why Alain Resnais is a king: “I’m interested in narrative play and people who have a ludic relationship to storytelling.” Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Christophe Honoré was in New York to present Winter Boy, starring Paul Kircher, Vincent Lacoste, Juliette Binoche, and Erwan Kepoa Falé, shot by Rémy Chevrin (Guermantes, [film]On...

The great Saul Bass—to my mind the greatest graphic designer of the 20th century—was born 100 years ago today, on May 8, 1920. In over a decade of writing about movie posters I’ve only really written about Bass once—in an article about the evolution of designs for Vertigo—which is surprising because he was undoubtedly the first poster designer I ever knew the name of, and of the six movie posters hanging in my apartment two are by Bass: those for Seconds and The Man With the Golden Arm. Saul Bass is just too well known, and has been written about so widely, that I never felt I had much to add to the discussion. And when Jennifer Bass and Pat Kirkham’s extraordinary Saul Bass: A Life in Film & Design was published in 2011 there seemed little more left to say.But I can’t let this centenary pass unremarked.

Jan Kounen’s comedy “My Cousin,” starring Vincent Lindon and François Damiens, will be one of the biggest French releases of the year. The film screens Friday at the Unifrance Rendez-Vous in Paris. In an exclusive interview with Variety, he talks about his key motivations for the project.

“My Cousin” is about two cousins (Lindon and Damiens) with wildly incompatible personalities and different ways of life, set in a luxurious Bordeaux vineyard. It marks a major new departure for Kounen, and is his first feature film for 11 years, after his 2009 Cannes closing film, “Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky.”

Kounen has a cult following from previous pics such as “Dobermann” (1997), and spiritual Western “Blueberry” (2004), and is well known for his interest in shamanism, including his 2004 documentary “Other Worlds.” This interest has fed into his recent Vr projects – “Ayahuasca” (Kosmik Journey), “7 Lives” and “-22.7°C.”

“My Cousin” is produced by Richard Grandpierre’s Eskwad,...

In the mood for Cannes - star kiss between Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina from this year’s Cannes Film Festival poster Photo: Festival de Cannes

With just a day to go before the official launch of the full programme in Paris, the organisers of the Cannes Film Festival have unveiled the poster for the 71st edition.

It features a still taken from Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierrot Le Fou (1965), and is said to be inspired by the work of Georges Pierre (1927-2003), stills photographer who worked on the shoots of more than 100 films in a 30-year career that began in 1960 with Jacques Rivette, Alain Resnais and Louis Malle. The image features a passionate embrace between stars Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina.

Pierre also worked in partnership with Robert Enrico, Yves Robert, Claude Sautet, Bertrand Tavernier, Andrzej Zulawski, Andrzej Wajda, and of course Jean-Luc Godard. Committed to achieving recognition for stills...

For the second time in recent memory, a Jean-Luc Godard film has inspired the annual Cannes Film Festival poster — this year with an image from his 1965 crime/romance pic Pierrot Le Fou. It’s a fitting tribute to have another Godard movie memorialized given this year’s event marks half a century since the legendary filmmaker played a part in halting the 1968 proceedings amid a wave of civil unrest throughout France. The last Godard movie to inspire the poster was Contempt (Le Mépris) in 2016.

The fest has been teasing out info ahead of tomorrow’s lineup reveal and today unveiled the official affiche — a collectible that’s annually anticipated and dissected.

Pierrot Le Fou, based on the 1962 novel Obsession, starred Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina. He’s a TV executive bored by his bourgeois Parisian life who drops everything and runs off with an old girlfriend (Karina) who’s being chased by hitmen.

Mubi is showing The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe (1972) from November 17 - December 16, 2016 in the United States.There is deception throughout The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe. Sometimes, it’s deliberate; sometimes, it’s not. From the sleight of hand card trickery that plays out under its opening credits to its hilariously enacted case of intentionally-mistaken identity, the film is an increasing volley of duplicity and modified perception. But it’s more than just what happens in the film. This 1972 spy movie send-up is itself a cleverly crafted ruse, a straight-faced farce that incorporates most everything one associates the cinematic sub-genre and slyly points out the subtle silliness inherent in its recurrent conventions. Characters and the viewer will often see something and assume it to mean something—one is accustomed to always looking for clues and revealing “tells” in a movie like this—only to have...

Danièle Delorme and Jean Gabin in 'Deadlier Than the Male.' Danièle Delorme movies (See previous post: “Danièle Delorme: 'Gigi' 1949 Actress Became Rare Woman Director's Muse.”) “Every actor would like to make a movie with Charles Chaplin or René Clair,” Danièle Delorme explains in the filmed interview (ca. 1960) embedded further below, adding that oftentimes it wasn't up to them to decide with whom they would get to work. Yet, although frequently beyond her control, Delorme managed to collaborate with a number of major (mostly French) filmmakers throughout her six-decade movie career. Aside from her Jacqueline Audry films discussed in the previous Danièle Delorme article, below are a few of her most notable efforts – usually playing naive-looking young women of modest means and deceptively inconspicuous sexuality, whose inner character may or may not match their external appearance. Ouvert pour cause d'inventaire (“Open for Inventory Causes,” 1946), an unreleased, no-budget comedy notable...

Film Movement continues with its Classic series and delivers their next title in a continuing line-up of new Blu-ray presentations, The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe, a seminal French comedy of the period from director Yves Robert. A stylized paean to the comedic tradition of Jerry Lewis, this is straight-faced screwball comedy not quite as daring or inventive as the title’s sterling reputation promises (it did win the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival). Notable, especially considering the significant talent in front of and behind the camera, it’s a comedy classic of uncomplicated froth, though its ability to amuse now seems dwarfed by expectation.

Traveling violinist Francois (Pierre Richard) is misidentified as a superspy by France’s national intelligence. As a host of people desperately attempt to interpret Francois’ strange actions, everyone becomes more and more assured of his significant skills. Meanwhile, Francois is embroiled...

'Father of the Bride': Steve Martin and Kimberly Williams. Top Five Father's Day Movies? From giant Gregory Peck to tyrant John Gielgud What would be the Top Five Father's Day movies ever made? Well, there have been countless films about fathers and/or featuring fathers of various sizes, shapes, and inclinations. In terms of quality, these range from the amusing – e.g., the 1950 version of Cheaper by the Dozen; the Oscar-nominated The Grandfather – to the nauseating – e.g., the 1950 version of Father of the Bride; its atrocious sequel, Father's Little Dividend. Although I'm unable to come up with the absolute Top Five Father's Day Movies – or rather, just plain Father Movies – ever made, below are the first five (actually six, including a remake) "quality" patriarch-centered films that come to mind. Now, the fathers portrayed in these films aren't all heroic, loving, and/or saintly paternal figures. Several are...

Section to also include celebrations of Ingrid Bergman and Orson Welles as well as screenings of The Terminator and Jurassic Park 3D.

Costa-Gavras has been named guest of honour at this year’s Cannes Classics section of the Cannes Film Festival (May 13-24).

The Greek-French film director and producer won the Palme d’or with Missing in 1982, was member of the jury in 1976 that crowned Taxi Driver and picked up the award for best director with Section spéciale in 1975.

The filmmaker will be present for a screening of Z, which won the jury prize in 1969, and has had the original negative scanned in 4k and restored frame by frame in 2K, supervised by Costa-Gavras.

Orson Welles

Marking 100 years since the birth of Orson Welles, Cannes will screen restorations of films from the legendary Us actor, director, writer and producer, who died in 1985.

The titles include his staggering debut Citizen Kane (1941), which has received a 4k restoration completed...

Paris-based industry veteran, who also works with actor Amr Waked, deepens ties with Egypt.

Paris-based producer Daniel Ziskind has signed to act as the European representative of Egyptian Mohamed Hefzy’s Cairo-based production house Film Clinic.

Under the accord, Ziskind will support Film Clinic’s co-production and sales activities in Europe.

“I’m very happy to join the Film Clinic family,” Ziskind said. “The company has a great line-up and strategy.”

First feature

The first project under the collaboration will be Mohamed Diab’s drama Clash, his second film after the much-praised Cairo 678 tackling sexual harassment through the experiences of women on a bus.

Set against the backdrop of violent demonstrations that erupted at the end of former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi’s Islamist reign in summer of 2013, Clash revolves around two groups of opposing protestors who find themselves trapped in the same police van as fighting rages around them.

“It’s a timely...

Read More: Watch: The Women Will Rise in New 'Game of Thrones' Season 5 Trailer New York-based distribution company Film Movement announced today the launch of Film Movement Classics, a new label to release restored versions of older films, specifically those out of print in the U.S. The first two releases will both be Eric Rohmer films: "Full Moon In Paris" (screening at the Film Society of Lincoln Center) and "The Marquise of O" (in select cities alongside Jessica Hausner's "Amour Fou"). Company Co-President Michael E. Rosenberg said of the project, "Launching our Classics label allows us to expand how we can serve our audience. Our core business will remain with highly-acclaimed new independent films, but now we can also bring back favorite titles from decades ago, newly restored." The two other titles announced for a 2015 re-release (and restoration) are Yves Robert's "The Tall Blond Man With One Black Shoe" and Peter.

Marc Allégret: From André Gide lover to Simone Simon mentor (photo: Marc Allégret) (See previous post: "Simone Simon Remembered: Sex Kitten and Femme Fatale.") Simone Simon became a film star following the international critical and financial success of the 1934 romantic drama Lac aux Dames, directed by her self-appointed mentor – and alleged lover – Marc Allégret.[1] The son of an evangelical missionary, Marc Allégret (born on December 22, 1900, in Basel, Switzerland) was to have become a lawyer. At age 16, his life took a different path as a result of his romantic involvement – and elopement to London – with his mentor and later "adoptive uncle" André Gide (1947 Nobel Prize winner in Literature), more than 30 years his senior and married to Madeleine Rondeaux for more than two decades. In various forms – including a threesome with painter Théo Van Rysselberghe's daughter Elisabeth – the Allégret-Gide relationship remained steady until the late '20s and their trip to...

Above: Lancelot du Lac (Robert Bresson, France, 1974).

One of France’s most beloved and recognizable poster designers, Raymond Savignac (1907-2002) created some 600 posters over a 50 year career, working almost exclusively in advertising. His simple, whimsical, colorful designs, reminiscent of children’s book illustrations, famously promoted Dunlop, Bic, Perrier, Air France, Cinzano and many other companies with an ineffable charm and wit. As far as I can tell, he designed only ten movie posters during his career, all of which I have gathered here. Five of them were created for the director Yves Robert (best known for The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe, the poster for which was designed by Savignac’s friend and peer Hervé Moran) and three for the later films of Robert Bresson. In fact one of Savignac’s final works was for a retrospective of Bresson in 2000.

A protegé of the great designer A.M.

French actor known for her role as the cantankerous widow in Tatie Danielle, the 1990 film directed by Étienne Chatiliez

With her remarkable portrayal of the cantankerous, mean-spirited and selfish widow in Tatie Danielle (1990), Tsilla Chelton joined the ranks of those elderly female performers who, after a long career in show business, suddenly find themselves as film stars. Like Katie Johnson in The Ladykillers (1955) and Ruth Gordon in Harold and Maude (1972), Chelton, who has died aged 93, finally moved into the limelight in her 70s.

In this second feature directed by Étienne Chatiliez, Auntie Danielle manipulates everyone around her, including her great-nephew, his family and a housekeeper whom she regularly abuses, until she meets her match in a young woman paid to look after her. Not pathetic or twinkly-eyed, as older people are generally depicted in the movies, Chelton, in the antipathetic title role, is on screen most of the time, not seeking understanding,...

In 1938 the disturbed 26-year-old John William Warde spent several hours on a 15th-floor ledge of the Gotham hotel in New York before throwing himself down into a Fifth Avenue packed with spectators. In 1948 Joel Sayre wrote a classic New Yorker piece about the incident, "The Man on the Ledge", which in fictionalised form became the 1951 Henry Hathaway film Fourteen Hours starring Richard Basehart as the jumper. Howard Hawks turned down an invitation to direct the film but came up with the notion of Cary Grant playing a philanderer hiding on a ledge from an irate husband and pretending he's a would-be suicide. Grant declined, but Yves Robert borrowed this idea for his comedy Pardon Mon Affaire (1976) starring Jean Rochefort, which Gene Wilder transposed to San Francisco as The Woman in Red (1984).

This all comes back to New York in Man on a Ledge, in which wrongly imprisoned cop Nick Cassidy...

Yeah, I know War of the Buttons (La guerre des boutons) is technically a family film, but any story that dives into the murky waters of kids left to their own delinquent behaviors is always of interest to me. An this French remake seems interesting.

Word is that when Yann Samuell's treatment for a new War of the Buttons was pitched at Cannes in May 2010, it generated an enormous amount of enthusiasm. Why exactly we're not sure, but producer Marc du Pontavice said this of the new film: "We were looking for a powerful idea within "War of the Buttons", an ideal that would draw an invisible link between the school of society and what Yann aptly calls a Society of Children. To make a film that talks about integration, independence and innocence - in that joyful spirit that comes with the delight of disobedience. In that respect, the...