| What crosses a foreigner's mind
when he sees the number of different films playing in
Paris is: "Don't these people have video recorders
?". Think of any famous film made since Charlie
Chaplin started twirling a stick, and it will probably be
playing somewhere each year in Paris. You and I might
have got out on video, or waited for the umpteenth rerun
on television, but the French aren't happy unless they
can queue up to pay to go into a theatre a little bigger
than my living room to watch the thing on a screen a
little bigger than my television. But perhaps they are
right. No - one ever comes in and asks if he can watch
the news on the other channnel. Seing how seriously the
French take their cinema it should be no surprise that
Woody Allen, another cinephile takes more money here than he does in the States. French cinema
is subsided by the state in the attempt to fortify it
against what plague more terrible than international
comunism and Islamic fundamentalism combined: the English
language. They are going to lose. Their film can be good
and have been brillant but they do produce some
pretentious rubbish. When an american producer wants to
spend wast amounts of money he sinks the Titanic, or
raises it ; sends men across the universe, or have the
aliens come to us. The most expensive French movie ever
made was about two tramps on a bridge. A FRench film done
well and you get "A bout de
souffle" or more recently,
"Un air de famille" or "Chacun
cherche son chat". Done badly you get
a painter, poet, philosopher of a certain age, and a
young actress who loves him because he is such a genius
and who is prepared to expose her public hair because the
film is about Art; lots of Angst and voyeurism, and not a
lot hapening.
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