- Pépé le Moko
This past Friday, Northwestern University’s Block Cinema concluded its series dedicated to legendary film programmer and cinephile Henri Langlois with a screening of L’Atalante, Jean Vigo’s unwavering masterpiece, easily among the most beautiful films ever made. Langlois’s relationship with the film is well-known. During his stint as head of the Cinematheque Francaise, he famously attempted to restore the film using both the domestic theatrical print and footage found in different versions from around the world, a sort of atonement for what he considered his own inadequacy compared to Vigo’s artistry. Langlois once said the director “makes films as easily as breathing. He sees, he dreams, he thinks, he writes, he lives cinema. . . . If the cinema is an art of sleep, there’s only one man who holds the key to dreams, Jean Vigo.”
- The Lower Depths (dir. Jean Renoir, 1939) You could put any 30s Renoir film—Grand Illusion, The Rules of the Game, La Bête Humaine—in this space and be correct, so I went with one of his minor efforts if only to suggest that there’s no such thing as a “minor” Renoir film. It’s maybe the most hopeful and animated depiction of a decidedly dour milieu, a testament to Renoir’s uniquely humanist tendencies.
