Son of Gascogne (1995) vs. The Slender Thread (1965)

[Curtis, baby]

Son of Gascogne (Pascal Aubier, 1995) vs. The Slender Thread (Sydney Pollack, 1965)

Vote for either x1995 or x1965 (italicization unnecessary).

The deadline for voting is 12 a.m. EST on Tuesday, March 26.

If you need access to the films, please let us know.

[Curtis, baby]

@kanafani @ItsUhhMee please upload your films to the appropriate thread in the Resources subforum!

[kanafani]

Plot summary (from Rosenbaum's review):

The story concerns a fatherless 18-year-old boy named Harvey (Grégoire Colin) from Le Havre whose mother works as a tour guide for Russians. To help her out, he goes to Paris to host a group of Georgian folksingers arriving by train to give a concert, and winds up courting a Russian-Georgian girl named Dinara (Dinara Droukarova) who’s come along to help them with their French. Shortly after the Georgians’ arrival, a Paris-based Hungarian actor and director (Laszlo Szabo, playing himself) declares that Harvey is a dead ringer for (fictional) French New Wave director Alexandre Gascogne, said to have died in the mid-70s; Szabo is convinced that Harvey is his son.

I've first seen this movie many years ago, and what most affected me back then was the lyrical and poetic portrayal of the Harvey/Dinara romance. I had a crush on Dinara, which probably inflated my appreciation of the movie. I watched it again yesterday, and the thing I really got a kick out of this time is the dizzying number of fanciful and playful cameos from a host of new wave and post-new wave directors and actors: Chabrol, Michel Deville, Jean Rouch, Patrice Leconte, Szabo, a bunch of actors and actresses from Chabrol and Rivette movies... Otar Iosseliani shows up in a few scenes as well. But I'm glad to say that the Harvey/Dinara is really still the beating heart of the movie. One of the most lovely portrayals of very young people in love I've seen.

The only other Pascal Aubier movie I've seen is Valparaiso, Valparaiso, a quite hilarious satire of leftist micro-groups in the seventies. He’s apparently directed tons of movies for French TV that I've heard a lot of good things about but have not got my hands on yet.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this as much as I did.

Here's the Rosenbaum review

[ItsUhhMee]

The Slender Thread, director Sidney Pollack's debut film and stars Sidney Poitier and Anne Bancroft. Bancroft plays a housewife who took a handful of pills in a suicide attempt. Experiencing possible regret, she calls a suicide hotline, manned by Poitier. The film then delves into her story via flashbacks while Poitier frantically attempts to reach the authorities to get her help. While the acting by the lead players is excellent, it's the writer, Sterling Silliphant (who would win an Oscar a few years later for In the Heat of the Night) that really deserves credit here. It easily could've delved into melodrama, which, for the most part it avoids, yet keeps it's sense of urgency at almost an action film level pace.

I really hope you guys enjoy it, and I'm looking forward to hearing others opinions on it.

[MatiasAlbertotti]

x1995

[mesnalty]

x1995

I didn't much like The Slender Thread, I'm afraid. The ingredients are all there - two great lead actors and a crackerjack premise - but it all seems somehow flat. I think I would have liked it better if Poitier's story was more of a framing narrative and the film went deeper into Bancroft's story.

Son of Gascogne was quite charming. I can't say I admire it as much as Rosenbaum does, but the cameo-spotting is great fun.

[Lencho of the Apes]

I didn't much like either one, both seemed to be selling a thing I don't believe in. It may be that I'm grumpier than usual these days.

Apropos of very little, I did a little research into the history of suicide-prev hotlines after watching the movie, and one of the factoids I turned up was that the first such line in San Francisco (1962, iirc) was popularly known as "Call Bruce." That tickled me.

[kanafani]

selling a thing I don't believe in.

Hey I don't recall Gascogne trying to sell nothin'.

[Lencho of the Apes]

…. the glitz and glamour of an artsy demimonde...

[kanafani]

…. the glitz and glamour of an artsy demimonde...

Well they are 'movie stars', so a certain level of glitz is to be expected, but there wasn't exactly a People Magazine level of glamour depicted. Mostly they sit around and have dinner really. There's definitely tons of nostalgia, and that era of movie-making and social-protest-making is super-romanticized, but that is understandable since the director lived through it, and it didn't bother me really. Plus this all gets balanced quite nicely by the two younger leads who are perhaps charmed by all this but get to ultimately move on from it. I don't know Lencho, maybe you are indeed a little extra grumpy these days. Come on man, that was a cute movie.

[john ryan]

x1995

[arkheia]

x1995


Hadn’t heard of either film before so these were nice surprises. I found some interesting aspects in The Slender Thread, principally around how the dramatic premise is foregrounded while a second film, of police tracing wires throughout the city, operates insidiously in the background while being firmly hidden from the spectacle in front. I liked Lencho's comment in his Letterboxd review about it being "very Cold War", it certainly seems to be a key text in understanding how current policies and political events were being filtered into Hollywood storytelling. I also posted some further thoughts on Letterboxd here.


I think The Son of Gascogne ultimately won me over though. It's the kind of film that appears deceptively simple but offers more reflection in tying together its coming-of-age process with the filmmaking generations who saw themselves growing up in the shadow of the New Wave. There’s a breezy nostalgia to be found in all the cameos and references but certain narrative turns also complicated this nostalgia. Taking on the perspective of the two young characters, both of whom are enamored by this past (Harvey searching for a father figure and place of belonging and Dinara studying it) and who are in some ways symbolic of a post-French New Wave filmmaking which is told about this glorious past and feels it must prove itself in relation to it. I laughed out loud at the ultimate reveal about the Gascogne film Heat, which of course parallels into Harvey's eventual conclusion about his relation to Gascogne, but the film's tone is delicate to neither indulge nor condescend these young characters. As an additional note, I thought the phrase 'le cinéma de papa' to be especially poignant here and even more humorous in the way the phrase's legacy has since snowballed and its own parentage has subsequently been called into question.

I also came across this blogpost which has some thoughtful insights into the film: https://grunes.wordpress.com/2007/03/11 ... bier-1995/

[kanafani]

Lovely summaries, arkheia!

[arkheia]

Lovely summaries, arkheia!

Thanks and thank you and ItsUhhMee for the two films!

[Mario Gaborovic]

x1965

[Curtis, baby]

Voting closed! Son of Gascogne (1995) wins!