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Bertrand Blier, the irreverent French film director behind Oscar-winning romantic comedy Get Out Your Handkerchiefs, has died aged 85.

Blier left his mark on 1970s and 1980s French cinema with films known for their dark humour and cynicism.

He helped to launch the international career of now controversial actor Gerard Depardieu, who starred in the director’s 1974 comedy drama Going Places (Les Valseuses) with Miou-Miou and Patrick Dewaere, about two aimless thugs on a crime and sex spree across the country.

Get Out Your Handkerchiefs (Préparez Vos Mouchoirs),about a ménage-à-trois, won the best foreign-language film Oscar for France in 1979 and...

Bertrand Blier, the irreverent French film director behind Oscar-winning romantic comedy Get Out Your Handkerchiefs, has died aged 85.

Blier left his mark on 1970s and 1980s French cinema with his films known for their dark humour and cynicism. His helped to launch the international career of now controversial actor Gerard Depardieu who starred in the director’s 1974 comedy drama Going Places (Les Valseuses) with Miou-Miou and Patrick Dewaere about two aimless thugs on a crime and sex spree across the country.

Get Out Your Handkerchiefs (Préparez Vos Mouchoirs) about a ménage-à-trois won the best foreign-language Oscar for France in 1979 and...

In the wake of the box office and critical success of "Fargo," all eyes were on the Coen Brothers and their next film, "The Big Lebowski," which celebrates its 25th anniversary this week. Instead of following up their Oscar-winning black comedy with another richly profound crime film, the Coens made a stoner comedy starring Jeff Bridges as an easygoing slacker perfectly content to spend his days sipping White Russians and bowling with his buddies. Decades later, The Dude has become a cultural icon and "The Big Lebowski" is considered a bonafide comedy classic. When it was first released, however, it received a lukewarm reception in the States, save for a few diehard fans that understood its low-key greatness.

No one was clamoring for a sequel, except John Turturro who pleaded with the Coen Brothers to sign off on a spin-off centering around his character Jesus Quintana — the perverted rival bowler...

Bertrand Blier’s edgy romp about a pair of ne’er-do-well petty-crooks will go too far for many viewers — they’re antisocially chauvinistic in some really outrageous ways. Are they jolly adventurers or just terminally obnoxious? The twisted social comedy really needs its talented cast: Gérard Depardieu, Patrick Dewaere, Miou-Miou, Jeanne Moreau, Brigitte Fossey, and a very young Isabelle Huppert. The new presentation includes a commentary by Richard Peña.

Going Places

Blu-ray

Cohen Film Collection / Kino Lorber

1974 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 118 min. / Les valseuses / Street Date October 11, 2022 / Available from Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Gérard Depardieu, Patrick Dewaere, Miou-Miou, Jeanne Moreau, Brigitte Fossey, Jacques Chailleux, Isabelle Huppert, Thierry Lhermitte.

Cinematography: Bruno Nuytten

Production Designers: Jean-Jacques Caziot, Françoise Hardy

Film Editor: Kénout Peltier

Original Music:

Written by Bertrand Blier and Philippe Dumarçay from the novel by Bertrand Blier <smaStéphane Grappellill>

Produced by Paul Claudon

Directed by Bertrand Blier

The freedom of the screen that came with...

The Cannes Film Festival has set its lineup for this year’s Cannes Classics program, which shines a spotlight on restorations of classic movies and features contemporary documentaries about film. Kicking off the sidebar is Jean Eustache’s controversial film The Mother and the Whore, the 1973 Cannes Grand Prize winner which incited riots at the time. Also included in the program are films by Vittorio de Sica (Sciuscià), Satyajit Ray (The Adversary), Orson Welles (The Trial) and Martin Scorsese (The Last Waltz), as well as a new 4K master of Singin’ in the Rain to mark the movie’s 70th anniversary.

Among the documentaries is Ethan Hawke’s study of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, The Last Movie Stars. Executive produced by Scorsese, it features Karen Allen, George Clooney, Oscar Isaac, Latanya Richardson Jackson, Zoe Kazan, Laura Linney and Sam Rockwell among others in an exploration of the iconic couple and American cinema.

This year’s line-up will also celebrate classics such as Singin’ In The Rain and Indian director Satyajit Ray’s 1970 work The Adversary.

Late French filmmaker Jean Eustache’s recently restored cult 1973 drama The Mother And The Whore will open Cannes Classics this year, the line-up for which was announced on Monday (May 2).

Other highlights include two episodes of the series The Last Movie Stars directed by Ethan Hawke about Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman; a screening of Singin’ In The Rain to coincide with the 70th anniversary of its release and a restored 4K version of Vittorio de Sica’s 1946 work Sciuscià.

Cohen Film Collection is gearing up for a number of newly restored releases, among them Simon Callow’s 1991 drama “The Ballad of the Sad Café” and a number of Buster Keaton works.

Part of New York-based Cohen Media Group, Cohen Film Collection restores classic films and re-releases them theatrically. It’s vast catalogue includes the Merchant Ivory collection, of which “The Ballad of the Sad Café” is a part.

Based on the 1951 novella by Carson McCullers, the film stars Vanessa Redgrave, Keith Carradine and Rod Steiger.

The George Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York, is currently finishing the restoration of the film, which Cohen Film Group plans to release next year.

“There’s still a number of features to go, so we’re working our way through those, including some of the films set in India, which I’m personally really interested in,” says Tim Lanza, Cohen Film Collection vice president and archivist.

John Turturro, left, with Bobby Cannavale in “The Jesus Rolls. Photo: Atsushi Nishijima/Screen Media

No, it’s not a Christian movie but a sequel to The Big Lebowski. Well, sort of a sequel. The Jesus Rolls, which debuts on DVD and Blu-Ray on May 5, is not directed nor written by Joel and Ethan Coen, but by John Turturro, who played the bowling-loving, spandex-wearing character who calls himself “the Jesus,” and doesn’t pronounce it the way Hispanics usually do.

If there were a Big Lebowski sequel, the bowling adversary of the Dude and pals Walter and Donny, is not the first character that would spring to mind for most audiences. But this is not really a Lebowski sequel. Instead, director John Turturro is playing the same character as in the Coen brothers classic, but now that character has been transported to another movie, for a remake of the 1974 French sex farce Les Valseuses,...

For French musician Émilie Simon, the flamenco-meets-gypsy vibe writer-director John Turturro was seeking for the soundtrack to his movie “The Jesus Rolls” turned out to be in her musical and genetical DNA.

“This music originally comes from where I grew up in the south of France,” says the 41-year-old electronic musician, who has released five albums in France since her self-titled 2003 debut. “It was something deep in my genes, my blood, my childhood. It’s a language I understand and am very sensitive to.”

“The Jesus Rolls,” which opens this weekend, picks up the story of Puerto Rican bowling kingpin Jesus Quintana, who made his infamous ball-licking cameo in “The Big Lebowski” to the tune of the Gipsy Kings’ cover of “Hotel California.” He returns here having been released in jail to join up with Bobby Cannavale and French chanteuse Audrey Tatou. What few people know is the character was...

The Jesus lives! The oddball bowling obsessive immortalized by John Turturro in “The Big Lebowski” resurfaces two decades later in “The Jesus Rolls,” a road movie every bit as eccentric as the character he played in the 1998 cult favorite. In a way, the “Lebowski” connection does a disservice to Turturro’s film — an in-spirit spinoff, made with the Coen brothers’ blessing, but definitely not a sequel — since this uneven offbeater actually has less to do with the earlier Coen comedy than it does Bertrand Blier’s wildly antiestablishment 1974 foreign-film sensation “Going Places,” of which it is a more-than-loose (and much less commercial) remake. The movie is set to reach U.S. screens in early 2020, several months after opening in Italy, where it premiered as a pre-opening event for the Rome Film Festival.

and the very stereotypes from which the Jesus character was born. With his signature strut, hairnet-covered cornrows, purple-painted...

By now, John Turturro is used to being recognized as Jesus Quintana, the flamboyant, purple-polyester-clad competitive bowling maven who stares down Jeff Bridges’ “the Dude” at the lanes in “The Big Lebowski.” The chameleon-like character actor has made multiple films with the Coen brothers, Spike Lee and even Michael Bay. But when he goes out in public, people always seem to recognize him as “the Jesus.”

“If soldiers take ‘The Big Lebowski’ with them when they go overseas into battle, there’s a reason why. Something about not growing up, and living in the moment. People would all like to go to the supermarket in your bathrobe and drink out of the milk carton,” says Turturro, who’s been asked more times than he can count when the Coen brothers are going to make a sequel. (They’re not.)

But now he’s done one better: Turturro has taken matters...

The work of Jim Thompson has had a healthy life on screen, ranging from adaptations in America and beyond, notably in Europe. Ahead of Yorgos Lanthimos tackling one of his most popular novels, we have a new restoration for 1979’s Série noire, which is adapted from Thompson’s 1954 novel A Hell of a Woman by writer Georges Pérec and director Alain Corneau.

Ahead of opening at New York City’s Metrograph this Friday, we’re pleased to debut the exclusive trailer for the restoration courtesy of Rialto Pictures. Starring Patrick Dewaere as Franck Poupart, a down-on-his-luck salesman who gets involved in a robbery scheme that pushed him ever further into despair, perhaps humorously so. Named one of the best French films of all time by Time Out, see the trailer below.

In one of the strangest pairings in film adaptation history, prankish French modernist experimentalist Georges Perec (Life: A User...

Raoul (Gérard Depardieu) really wants his wife Solange (Carole Laure) to be happy. She’s become depressed and prone to dizzy spells, and he doesn’t know what to do. Furiously, and loudly, discussing this with her in public, Raoul is sure he notices her eyeing a bearded fellow sitting alone across the room. Raoul asks to sit next to the man, Stéphane (Patrick Dewaere), a school teacher who is awkwardly confused, but seemingly polite enough not to refuse.

Continue reading ‘Get Out Your Handkerchiefs’ Is An Outlandish, Subversive Romantic Comedy That Flirts With Going Too Far [Review] at The Playlist.

In Bertrand Blier’s Heavy Duty (Convoi exceptionnel), the 80-year-old French auteur revisits some of the themes that have marked his oeuvre ever since his 1974 breakout hit, Going Places (Les Valseuses), which was a rambunctious and altogether scandalous road movie starring the late Patrick Dewaere alongside a young Gerard Depardieu.

This time, Depardieu, who’s now 70, partakes in another sort of road trip, teaming up with comic star Christian Clavier (Serial (Bad) Weddings) in a meta-fictional narrative about two men trying to make their way through a film that keeps rewriting itself aloud. There’s something playful and Pirandello-like ...

In Bertrand Blier’s Heavy Duty (Convoi exceptionnel), the 80-year-old French auteur revisits some of the themes that have marked his oeuvre ever since his 1974 breakout hit, Going Places (Les Valseuses), which was a rambunctious and altogether scandalous road movie starring the late Patrick Dewaere alongside a young Gerard Depardieu.

This time, Depardieu, who’s now 70, partakes in another sort of road trip, teaming up with comic star Christian Clavier (Serial (Bad) Weddings) in a meta-fictional narrative about two men trying to make their way through a film that keeps rewriting itself aloud. There’s something playful and Pirandello-like ...

"All that matters is that my wife is happy." Cohen Media Group has debuted an amusing trailer for their upcoming re-release of the French film Get Out Your Handkerchiefs, originally titled Préparez vos mouchoirs, which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 1979. The somewhat absurd comedy is about a worried husband who tries to find a lover for his depressed wife, but she falls in love with a bullied thirteen-year-old math prodigy and wants to have the boy's baby. Yeah, sounds very kinky, and very French. Starring Carole Laure, Gérard Depardieu, and Patrick Dewaere. The 35mm film has been restored to 2K (alas not 4K) and will get a small theatrical run beginning in New York in March. Looks like a fun watch. Here's the restoration trailer (+ poster) for Bertrand Blier's Get Out Your Handkerchiefs, on YouTube: A worried husband finds a lover for his depressed wife,...

Celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, Bertrand Blier’s Get Out Your Handkerchiefs has been restored by the Cohen Film Collection and returning to theaters at Quad Cinema on March 15. Starring Gérard Depardieu, Patrick Dewaere, and Carole Laure, the film follows a love triangle between the characters that turns both more comedic and more emotional. Winner of the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 1979, as well as the National Society of Film Critics award for Best Picture, we’re pleased to present the exclusive trailer and poster for the restoration.

Beloved by Pauline Kael, she said, “The social comedy Blier’s work is essentially sexual comedy: sex screws us up… and some people are so twisted that no matter what try to do for them they wreck everything… Sexually, life is a keystone comedy, and completely amoral—we have no control over who or what excites us.”

See the trailer and poster below,...

We've been hearing for years that John Turturro is interested in reprising his role of Jesus Quintana from The Big Lebowski, and now it appears he's getting his wish. Birth Movies Death has learned that the actor is currently shooting a movie that is secretly a spinoff of the Coen Brothers' cult classic, in which "the Jesus" is a very minor character.  Officially, the project is a remake of Bertrand Blier's 1974 French sex comedy Going Places, originally starring Gerard Depardieu and Patrick Dewaere as two awful, womanizing criminals with Miou-Miou, Jeanne Moreau and Isabelle Huppert playing a variety of sexual conquests for them. Here's a clip: Turturro, who is directing off his own script, and Bobby Cannavale are the main duo...

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Danièle Delorme and Jean Gabin in 'Deadlier Than the Male.' Danièle Delorme movies (See previous post: “Danièle Delorme: 'Gigi' 1949 Actress Became Rare Woman Director's Muse.”) “Every actor would like to make a movie with Charles Chaplin or René Clair,” Danièle Delorme explains in the filmed interview (ca. 1960) embedded further below, adding that oftentimes it wasn't up to them to decide with whom they would get to work. Yet, although frequently beyond her control, Delorme managed to collaborate with a number of major (mostly French) filmmakers throughout her six-decade movie career. Aside from her Jacqueline Audry films discussed in the previous Danièle Delorme article, below are a few of her most notable efforts – usually playing naive-looking young women of modest means and deceptively inconspicuous sexuality, whose inner character may or may not match their external appearance. Ouvert pour cause d'inventaire (“Open for Inventory Causes,” 1946), an unreleased, no-budget comedy notable...

Odd List Aliya Whiteley Feb 19, 2013

Covering 85 years of cinema, Aliya provides her pick of 25 stylish, must-see French movies...

I’m going to kick this off in best New-Wave style by pointing out that we should be praising each great director’s body of work rather than showcasing favourite movies in a list format; after all, France came up with the concept of the auteur filmmaker, stamping their personality on a film, using the camera to portray their version of the world.

Yeah, well, personality is everything. So here’s a highly personal choice, arranged in chronological order, of 25 of the most individualistic French films. They may be long or short, old or new, but they all have one thing in common – they’ve got directorial style. And by that I don’t mean their shoes match their handbags.

The Passion Of Joan Of Arc (1928)

There are no stirring battle scenes,...

Alain Corneau, the French director who died in 2010 at the age of 67, shortly after completing this glossy thriller, was little known in Britain. After working as an assistant to Costa-Gavras he made some notable crime movies, including Choice of Arms (starring Yves Montand) and Série noire, a transposition of Jim Thompson's pulp novel A Hell of a Woman from Chicago to suburban Paris starring Patrick Dewaere. But his masterpiece is the stately 1991 Tous les matins du monde, featuring Depardieu père et fils and set in the world of 17th-century baroque musicians.

Already remade by Brian De Palma as Passion, Love Crime starts well as a psychological drama in which two highfliers – bitchy, sadistic Christine (Kristin Scott Thomas) and seemingly submissive Isabelle (Ludivine Sagnier) – come into conflict as their heads batter the glass ceiling of the American multinational they work for in Paris. It goes badly off course, however, when...

Review by Barbara Snitzer

Barbara Snitzer writes about French cinema at her movie blog Le Movie Snob

An open letter to M Daniel Auteuil:

D’abord, merci M Auteuil for letting me vicariously spend some of my remaining summer moments in my beloved Provence, especially the most beautiful village I have visited there, Salon-de-Provence. It is my sincere hope your directing début will attract more visitors than those who know it as Nostradamus’ birthplace. (Of course, not too many, especially the English.)

I congratulate you on the favorable reviews you are receiving, and it is with great regret that I cannot join the enthusiastic bandwagon. I do not agree with some criticisms I’ve heard from France that you are not a competent director; au contraire. Choosing a work from the .uvre of Marcel Pagnol whose works are set in the region of your childhood and brought you international acclaim are wise choices,...

French film director and close associate of François Truffaut

The film director Claude Miller, who has died aged 70 after a long illness, was continually dogged by comparisons to his friend and mentor François Truffaut. Hardly a review of his films failed to mention Truffaut in some way or another. This came about for various reasons. Miller was Truffaut's production manager on several occasions and made subtle references to the older director's work in many of his own films, almost always mentioning him in interviews. He had a small role in Truffaut's L'Enfant Sauvage (The Wild Child, 1970) and adapted La Petite Voleuse (The Little Thief, 1988) from a 30-page screenplay that Truffaut had written a few years before his death.

When Truffaut was once asked whether he had started a school of directors, he denied it. "These people are more influenced by other directors than myself. If Claude Miller has points in common with me,...

Award-wining French film director best known for Tous les Matins du Monde

It is fair to say that the majority of audiences who saw the film Tous les Matins du Monde (All the Mornings of the World, 1991) – directed by Alain Corneau, who has died of lung cancer aged 67 – had previously never heard of (or heard) the music of the baroque composer and viola da gamba virtuoso Marin Marais. However, the lacuna was soon filled after this sensitive, painterly and vivid recreation of 17th-century French musical life had won seven Césars (France's Oscars), become an international success and resulted in a bestselling CD of the soundtrack by Le Concert des Nations ensemble.

Starring Gérard Depardieu as the older Marais, looking back on his reckless younger self (played by Depardieu's son, Guillaume), it remains Corneau's biggest success outside France. In fact, Tous les Matins du Monde, one of the few films...

Le Monde and other French news outlets are reporting that Alain Corneau has succumbed to cancer at the age of 67. Just last week, Jordan Mintzer reviewed Corneau's latest, Crime d'amour (Love Crime), for Variety, calling it a "taut, sinister psycho-procedural." Starring Kristin Scott Thomas and Ludivine Sagnier and having just opened in theaters in France, the film is set to screen in a couple of weeks at the Toronto International Film Festival.

In 1992, Corneau's Tous les matins du monde (All the Mornings of the World) swept France's César Awards, winning best film, director, cinematography (Yves Angelo), supporting actress (Anne Brochet), music (Jordi Savall), costume design (Corinne Jorry) and sound. In 2004, Corneau was awarded the Prix René Clair.

Updates, 8/31: "Mr Corneau's movies included science fiction, police thrillers, a look at office politics in Japan and a mood piece about ancient India," writes Douglas Martin in the New York Times, "but...

Paris -- The French awards season wrapped in Paris on Monday night as the Romy Schneider/Patrick Dewaere prizes for the year's most promising young talents went to Deborah Francois and Louis Garrel at a lavish awards ceremony at Paris' Hotel de Ville.

Francois was honored for her performance in Remi Bezancon's "The First Day of the Rest of Your Life," which also won her the 2009 Cesar award for most promising actress. Garrel starred in Christophe Honore's telefilm "La Belle Personne" and in the 2008 Festival de Cannes competition title "Frontier of Dawn," directed by his father Philippe. "Dawn" hit Gallic theaters in October.

An all-male jury of French journalists voted for the Schneider prize -- awarded since 1984 -- while an all female jury picked Garrel for the Dewaere prize. Replacing the traditional Jean Gabin award, the Dewaere prize is named for French actor Patrick Dewaere, who committed suicide in 1982 at...