Directed by Jean-Pierre Melville • Documentary • 1946 • 19 minutes
In Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1946 film debut, we follow aging circus clown Beby, from one night’s performance to the next. After the show, Beby eats the same spaghetti dinner his wife has been preparing for decades, lingers over fond memories, including a signed photo from Groucho Marx, and curls up with his tiny dog (while his wife sleeps in the next room). The next day, Beby and his longtime partner, Maïss, linger at a cafe, watching passers-by who provide plenty of fodder for that evening’s performance. Melville captures both the drudgery and delight of circus performance — a job that’s the same as any other, but at the same time unlike any other.
Up Next in France Before the New Wave
-
Lady Chatterley's Lover
Directed by Marc Allégret • Drama • With Danielle Darrieux, Leo Genn, Erno Crisa, Jean Murat • 1955 • 100 minutes
This is the first film of D.H. Lawrence’s controversial novel, which premiered in 1955, five years before the uncensored novel even appeared in print in the UK. Danielle Darrieux (in...
-
Travels in the Congo (Voyage au Congo)
Directed by Marc Allégret • Documentary • 1927 • 117 minutes
In 1925, Marc Allégret accompanied André Gide on a journey to French Equatorial Africa, the Congo, as his secretary, and novice filmmaker. Filming throughout their 11-month travels, and only three years after Nanook of the North, Allég...
-
Martin Roumagnac
Directed by Georges Lacombe • Drama • With Marlene Dietrich, Jean Gabin • 1946 • 108 minutes
This tragic postwar romance is a tale of class anxiety and classic Romantic fatalism, run through with a typically French frankness about sex and gender. Jean Gabin is the titular character, an unpretent...
