A nos amours

1983, France, directed by Maurice Pialat

Perhaps the most unsettling film in the Pialat canon, in large part because of the director's extraordinary onscreen presence. The genuine rigours, both emotional and physical, through which the actors are put are very apparent here, with them forced to react to Pialat-as-actor's incredibly unpredictability and even violence, not least in the extraordinary dinner-party scene where his character returns to the family home after a period of exile and throws what seems like a new equilibirum utterly off-balance. Pialat is a terrific, though challenging, actor in his own right, and on the strength of this film it's not hard to see why others might not have wanted to direct him, though he seems to have enjoyed considerable loyalty from several actors who returned several times to his sets.

Loulou

1980, France, directed by Maurice Pialat

A film that follows very much in the steps of its predecessor, Passe ton bac d'abord. While the social milieu is different -- a combination of characters drawn from both slightly lower and slightly higher tranches than the earlier film, with the socio-economic specificity of Paris also added in -- there's a great deal of continuity between the late-adolescent mistreatment of friends and lovers and the adult version of the same thing in Loulou. There's also a continued sense of a terrifically depressing drift in the France of the Giscard era, despite the often positive social liberalization of French life in that period. Not for the first time, I have the sense that Mitterrand's 1981 election was as much as anything a desire to move on from the grey decade of the 1970s, during which it became increasingly difficult to take seriously the promises of French social life. From such unpromising social turf you often get wonderfully interesting films, of course. It was an exquisite pleasure to see Jacqueline Dufranne as Depardieu's mother here: she was both wonderful and heart-breaking as the mother/foster-mother in La Maison des bois, one of the warmest and, as that film progressed, most distressing performances I've seen. 

Passe ton bac d'abord

1978, France, directed by Maurice Pialat

A distinct change of pace for Pialat, something of a return to the sources of L'Enfance nue in geographical and sociological terms, and a move away from the deep focus treatment of relationships (familial and romantic) of the the immediately preceding films. Here, though, the narrative follows, in loose format, a group of teenagers as they attempt to navigate the end of school and the beginning of a new phase of life. Mired in France's economic and social woes in the post-1968 period, it's dispiriting stuff -- most of the kids are already accepting of a fate that radically limits their horizons (while remaining very self-aware), and even those who dream of escape have adapted themselves to the realities of precarious employment. There's also a profound sense of fraying bonds: even though the film focuses on a group, individual loyalties are constantly shifting and unreliable, with relationships taken up or dropped with little sense of purpose or commitment. One of the great challenges of the film is the lack of a truly defined protagonist, and yet Pialat makes of this a virtue -- there's a sense of collective experience that transcends individual anecdote, further reinforcing the sense that no-one can escape the fabric in which they've been living.

La Gueule ouverte

1974, France, directed by Maurice Pialat

The more I watch and re-watch Maurice Pialat's films, the more I'm convinced that he belongs in the very first rank of directors of the past forty years or so. Whether he's working with major stars or non-professionals he extracts performances of a rare conviction and humanity, and his observational skills are peerless. It sounds like his rough cut for this film was far, far longer so the final product is the result of he paring down a tremendous amount of material, including snipping away more or less any reference to Philippe Léotard's professional life (in contrast, say, to the constant references to work in Nous ne vieillirons pas ensemble -- though no-one actually works that much onscreen!). The rhythm of the film is quite similar to its immediate predecessor, constantly moving back and forth toward the central narrative of the decline of a seriously ill parent, and there are other connections with earlier Pialat films, most notably the wonderful final shot taken from a departing car -- clearly referencing one of the best moments in La Maison des bois. Like that film/series and Nous ne viellirons pas ensemble, Pialat spends a great deal of time exploring the deep tension between Paris and the provinces, one of the great oppositions in French life, though here he chooses to make Paris a virtual absence in terms of its onscreen depiction. The image above is from one of the film's most remarkable sequences, an early scene that runs an uninterrupted eight minutes or so: it's a notable technical accomplishment but also provides exceptional insight into the relationships between the film's four central characters and most particularly the mother-son pair. Filmed from a slightly elevated perspective, the two actors never directly face each other yet the scene is a kind of final confrontation as they lay bare their lives together, no subject off limits now that cancer has reared its head. 

Nous ne viellirons pas ensemble

1972, France, directed by Maurice Pialat

Pialat worked with major film stars for the first time on Nous ne vieillirons pas ensemble but the transition is seamless, and he extracts a performance of exceptional complexity and humanity from Jean Yanne, despite the character's overtly boorish aspects. Indeed, it's rare to see an actor embrace an unsympathetic part quite so fully: one scene of physical abuse is the more distressing for the sense that real people were hurt in the making. The filming process surely influenced Yanne's subsequent turn, at least in the films he made as a director, to a lighter register, quite a departure after a decade with Chabrol, Godard and Pialat. The rhythm of the film is beguiling despite the subject matter of an extended breakup: there's a sense of a pendulum swinging in ever smaller arcs as the inevitable outcome approaches, and yet there's no hint of the melodrama that often accompanies such a scenario. Indeed, the prevailing tone is one of deep melancholy, even tragedy for characters who struggle to communicate at the most fundamental level despite their constant verbal interactions. 

La Maison des bois

1971, France, directed by Maurice Pialat

Pialat's 1971 television series is an immersive, all-encompassing work, set in a small French village during the Great War and using the experiences of a handful of Parisian children sent to live with a rural family as a means to sketch French society of the time. The format is perfectly suited to Pialat's expansive, quietly observational style -- there's ample space for the privileged moment and for scenes to unspool in unhurried fashion, whether it's the lazy Renoir-esque summer picnic (with it's comedy interstices) or the tableau of weary, homesick soldiers passing through. Pialat finds ways to insert all of the key elements of wartime village life -- the home guard, the church, the school, even the local aristocracy. It's only when the film leaves the rural setting that it stumbles: the seventh and final episode seems awkwardly tagged on, undercutting the poignancy of what came before. I've read online that Pialat himself didn't like the episode, though can't find a source for that; whatever the reasons, it feels like the work of another, with far less of the subtlety that makes the remainder of the work so compelling.

L'Enfance nue

1968, France, directed by Maurice Pialat
Although it's a little rough around the narrative edges in the concluding segment - the protagonist's final transformation seems abrupt, signaling a more radical change in character for which we haven't been fully prepared - Pialat's L'Enfance nue is an extraordinary feature début, a film of deceptive simplicity that's both visually compelling and politically bracing (I suspect Pialat wouldn't have found much merit in criticisms of the narrative progression, in any case).

Pialat's pursuit of a clear sense of place and time is announced in the opening images, depicting a union march, presumably an actual event, before transitioning to the story of a young boy moving through the fostering system. In many respects, Pialat's primary fascination is with France's institutions and the way in which the country treats its citizens and, indeed, makes them into citizens in the first place. He provides a detailed depiction of the world of fostering and child services, making clear both the problems and benefits - to the foster parents - of the system (and using real childcare workers as actors). That portrait prefigures, among other things, the school scenes in his subsequent work, the First World War mini-series La Maison des bois, scenes that are again about the ways in which the state instills ideas of citizenship.

Equally striking is Pialat's deeply humane view of his characters, and his avoidance of miserabilism even while acknowledging the difficult, financially strained lives he depicts. There's an exceptional warmth to the way in which he captures many of the conversations, an ear for the rhythms that sustain life - the courtesies and moments of humour that pepper every day (the two old women laughing over the discovery of a skin magazine, or the scene in which one of the women sings, in a quavering voice, songs of her youth). That ear for dialogue and the "privileged moment" finds its visual counterpart in Pialat's ability to direct the eye to unexpected splashes of colour - as seen in the yellow, blue or green in the stills above, for instance, or the careful composition of the shot below, with a band of brightness sandwiched between dark hats and grey skies. There's nothing heavy-handed about this use of colour, grounded in Pialat's training as a painter, but it equally gives the lie to the idea that there's something artless about his work.