If you’re not in Chicago over the weekend for this year’s Pitchfork Music Festival and happen to be in New York City or Philadelphia tomorrow (July 14th), take a couple hours out of your day to celebrate Bastille Day by soaking up some classic French film.
Film Forum in NYC is screening the father of French New Wave, Jean Pierre Melville’s, Le Doulos (The Finger Man) for a limited time only. Le Doulos is a 1962 French crime film noir based on a novel by Pierre Lesou that “unfolds through two characters, Maurice and Silien, and consistently switches back and forth between them, leading the audience to grasp randomly for a distinct main character or hero (despite the fact that both are criminal anti-heroes). Through Maurice and Silien’s actions, the film explores just how deeply qualities such as friendship and loyalty run.” (Wikipedia)
International House in Philly is screening Jean Luc Godard’s 1966 radical new wave flick 2 ou 3 choses que je sais d’elle (Two or Three Things I Know about Her) one time only at 7:00pm as part of their 5th Annual Bastille Day Celebration. 2 ou 3 choses que je sais d’elle is a summation of Godard’s concerns and techniques from the decade which his films single-handedly redefined the avant-garde: the prevalence of prostitution of all kinds in modern society; America in Vietnam; the advent of the consumer society; the upward spiral of existential angst.