Though Jean-Pierre Melville directed a few early films set during WWII—such as his pensive debut, Le silence de mer (1949), about a Nazi soldier lodging in the country home of a reticent French family, and Léon Morin, prêtre (1961), about ...
Read More »Legacies of Sade: Masochistic Liberation in Luis Buñuel’s Belle de Jour
“There are many ways to be free. One of them is to transcend reality by imagination, as I try to do.” —Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin Though Catherine Deneuve was an established force in European cinema by Luis ...
Read More »Feminine Fury Revisited: Georges Franju’s Eyes Without a Face
“And now you see these rabid creatures overtaken: they have fallen into sleep, abominations that they are, maidens in old age, ancient children, whom no god mixes with, nor man, nor beast, ever.” —Aeschylus, The Eumenides 1960 was a banner year for ...
Read More »MY LIFE AS A ZUCCHINI: A French Fable of Isolation and Belonging from Fantasia 2017
This enchanting French film has both a subtitled and an English-dubbed version. Although the dubbed version features the voice talents of Ellen Page and Amy Sedaris, among others, I implore you to see the French version if you can. The ...
Read More »Episode 24: Immoral Tales, Part 4: Alain Robbe-Grillet
In this final part of their series inspired by Cathal Tohill and Pete Tombs’ Immoral Tales: European Sex & Horror Movies, 1956-1984, Kat and Samm discuss unclassifiable French director (and writer) Alain Robbe-Grillet. Known for his surreal and often controversial ...
Read More »Lost Girls: An Exclusive Look at the Upcoming Jean Rollin Book & New Perk Announcement
Many of you know me as Diabolique’s Associate Editor, but I’m also excited to be the editor of an upcoming book focused on the career of French fantasy and horror filmmaker Jean Rollin, Lost Girls: The Phantasmagorical Cinema of Jean Rollin. To be ...
Read More »Episode 23: Immoral Tales, Part 3: Jean Rollin
In the third part of their series inspired by Cathal Tohill and Pete Tombs’ book Immoral Tales: European Sex & Horror Movies, 1956-1984, Kat and Samm explore the work of French poète maudit Jean Rollin. First, they discuss Rollin’s colorful, ...
Read More »Announced — Lost Girls: The Phantasmagorical Films of Jean Rollin
A few days ago it was announced that Canadian small press publisher Spectacular Optical—responsible for 2014’s Kid Power! and 2015’s Satanic Panic: Pop Cultural Paranoia in the 1980s, to which I was a contributor, and co-run by Kier-La Janisse of ...
Read More »Interview: Director Gaspar Noé on Love (2015)
Damning issues are presented in Love (2015), Gaspar Noé’s latest film. As the writer-director has stated, though, this is life. And life is life: cheating, lying, self-destruction, vicious fights, and habitual drug use are so common in relationships he has observed—particularly ...
Read More »French Cinema and the Great War: Remembrance and Representation
In these last few particularly trying months — which have included Brexit and Trump winning the US presidential election — there seems to have been a desperate scramble to make comparisons between current events and historical tragedies. In a time ...
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