Risks and Reinvention: The Cinema of Louis Malle

Louis Malle Feature Films in Series:
Elevator to the Gallows (1958) Jan 26, 28, 31
The Lovers (1958) Jan 30 & 31
Zazie dans le Metro (1960) Feb 6 & 7
Viva Maria! (1965) Feb 13 & 14
Lacombe, Lucien (1974) Feb 20 & 21
Murmur of the Heart (1971) Feb 27 & 28

Louis Malle Documentaries in Series:
God’s Country (1985) Jan 29
And the Pursuit of Happiness (1986) Feb 5
Phantom India, Part 1 (1968) Feb 9
Calcutta (1969) Feb 12
Phantom India, Part 2 (1968) Feb 16
Human, Too Human (1974) Feb 19
Phantom India, Part 3 (1968) Feb 23
Place de la Republique (1974) with Vive le Tour (1962) Feb 26

This past summer the Film Society of Lincoln Center presented a near-complete retrospective of the films of Louis Malle, a major filmmaker who achieved great success in both his native France and his adopted America. We are pleased to present a sampling of that retrospective, with a selection of Malle’s early feature films as part of our Monday Night Classic Cinema series, and a selection of Malle’s documentaries as part of the Sunday night Pentangle series. We will also offer Thursday afternoon screenings of the rarely seen and magnificent Phantom India, Malle’s seven-part meditation on India in the late 1960s.

“Louis Malle was born in 1932 in Thumeries, France. He studied filmmaking at France's national film academy, IDHEC; right after he was invited to work with oceanographer/ filmmaker Jacques Yves Cousteau on a film inspired by Cousteau's best-seller,The Silent World. The film proved an even greater success than the book and, at 23, Louis Malle shared the Cannes Film Festival's Golden Palm for Best Film. It was a dizzying start to what would prove an equally dizzying career. Pierre Billard's wonderful biography of Malle bears the title "The Lonely Rebel," and in many ways that's an apt description for a director who, despite legendary charm and social graces, never quite fit in. With films like Elevator to the Gallows, The Lovers and Zazie, Malle invented the New Wave before its official birth. Malle did not abandon the documentary once he became a successful fiction filmmaker; on the contrary, the documentary figures as a constant source of renewal for him.” (Film Society of Lincoln Center)

The series kicks-off with Malle's debut feature, Elevator to the Gallows, in a beautiful restored print. “It is an enormously stylish, noir-flavored thriller that featured a largely improvised musical score by the great Miles Davis years before he would work on an American film. "New Wave" before such a concept truly existed, Elevator carries you along with its raucous, infectious energy as it offers a look at a world in which everybody seems to be playing an angle on somebody else.” (Film Society of Lincoln Center)

All of the remaining titles, with the exceptions of Phantom India, God’s Country and And the Pursuit of Happiness will be shown in new 35mm prints. Film descriptions from the Pacific Film Archive and the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

Photos: Louis Malle (left); Elevator to the Gallows (right)