Above: detail from the Argentinian poster for Magnet of Doom. Artist unknown.Jean-Paul Belmondo, the great French movie star who died last week at the age of 88, had a marvelous face. He wasn’t a classic matinee idol like his friend and compatriot Alain Delon but with the combination of his soulful puppy-dog eyes, lopsided boxer’s nose, and luscious feminine lips he could play both hoodlums or heartthrobs (and in Breathless he played both at the same time). A classic tough guy best known outside France for art movies, he was initially synonymous with the angry alienation of the French New Wave and starred in films by Godard, Truffaut, Melville, Malle and Lelouch. But he could play comedy as well as action (he was renowned for doing his own stunts) and was for a while promoted as a French James Bond. By the ’70s and ’80s—when he was...
- 9/16/2021
- MUBI
Raoul Coutard, the French director of photography who revolutionized the field of cinematography with his unorthodox camerawork and lighting, has died. Closely associated with the French New Wave, the largely self-taught Coutard collaborated with Jean-Luc Godard in the 1960s, shooting almost all of the Franco-Swiss director’s classics of ageless cool, including Breathless, Band Of Outsiders, Pierrot Le Fou, and Contempt; in the process, he innovated and popularized the use of handheld camerawork and other techniques. Coutard was 92.
A veteran of the French Indochina War, Coutard lived in what is now Vietnam for 11 years, working as a freelance combat and editorial photographer for such magazines as Life and Paris Match. His first credit as a cinematographer is the stuff of film legend. After agreeing to “photograph” Pierre Schoendoerffer and Jacques Dupont’s documentary The Devil’s Pass, Coutard showed up on set believing he had been hired as ...
A veteran of the French Indochina War, Coutard lived in what is now Vietnam for 11 years, working as a freelance combat and editorial photographer for such magazines as Life and Paris Match. His first credit as a cinematographer is the stuff of film legend. After agreeing to “photograph” Pierre Schoendoerffer and Jacques Dupont’s documentary The Devil’s Pass, Coutard showed up on set believing he had been hired as ...
- 11/10/2016
- by Ignatiy Vishnevetsky
- avclub.com
He was one of the few directors of war movies with first-hand experience of conflict
Pierre Schoendoerffer, who has died aged 83, was one of the few directors of war films who had actually lived out the adventures of his soldier heroes. The American film-makers William Wellman, Sam Fuller and Oliver Stone did so, but no other director explored the same subject as single-mindedly and doggedly as Schoendoerffer.
His experiences of combat as a military cameraman and as a prisoner of war during the conflict in Indochina marked his output, most directly La 317ème Section (The 317th Platoon, 1965), about a doomed French unit; Le Crabe-Tambour (The Drummer Crab, 1977), about French officers involved in the fall of the French empire after the second world war; his Oscar-winning television documentary La Section Anderson (The Anderson Platoon, 1967), which followed the lives of Us soldiers in Vietnam; and Diên Biên Phú (1992), about a Us war...
Pierre Schoendoerffer, who has died aged 83, was one of the few directors of war films who had actually lived out the adventures of his soldier heroes. The American film-makers William Wellman, Sam Fuller and Oliver Stone did so, but no other director explored the same subject as single-mindedly and doggedly as Schoendoerffer.
His experiences of combat as a military cameraman and as a prisoner of war during the conflict in Indochina marked his output, most directly La 317ème Section (The 317th Platoon, 1965), about a doomed French unit; Le Crabe-Tambour (The Drummer Crab, 1977), about French officers involved in the fall of the French empire after the second world war; his Oscar-winning television documentary La Section Anderson (The Anderson Platoon, 1967), which followed the lives of Us soldiers in Vietnam; and Diên Biên Phú (1992), about a Us war...
- 3/16/2012
- by Ronald Bergan
- The Guardian - Film News
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.