L'été

Another unknown Hanoun film, the first of its four seasons. Shot in a week with limited resources and in an almost amateurish manner, it is a small film of great interest due to the cinematographic ideas it contains.

Close to the world of the nouvelle vague, although with a transcendental tone very much like the first Bresson (the debt is recognized in the quote to the little donkey Baltazhar).

An attractive young woman has ended her relationship with an attractive young man and decides to "find herself" during the summer in a lonely house in the middle of the French countryside. The film is a collage of images and themes as she writes letters to a friend, thinks about her old boyfriend, caresses herself naked in bed, runs through the garden, tells us about the music she hears and the books she reads, worries about political news and remember quotes from Hegel. It is therefore very much like a small cinematographic diary.

The aim is to give structure to this hodgepodge in a purely cinematographic manner and not through a standard written script (a traditional plot, the development of a character...). This apparently translates into shaping it through rhythm, montage, repetition of images and cinematographic techniques (the use of photography alternating with the moving image, certain uses of voice-over and its relationship with the image... ), but above all in the tireless and cyclical repetition of the same motifs, as if it were a musical composition (which ultimately resorts to somewhat narrative elements).

There is no progress until the abrupt ending, and the film could continue for another hour insisting on the same motifs, or end half an hour earlier. The duration does not imply a gradual advance, but simply a greater familiarization with the motifs that it repeats and weaves over and over again.

The young protagonist is a beautiful model, but Hanoun abuses interesting poses, affected looks into space, with too much of a "rural vogue" tone. Naturally, she is a young progressive intellectual, committed, liberated, who takes photographs on the street in front of revolutionary graffiti on the walls, who explains to us the dangers of an incomplete proletarian revolution and who sends us a string of philosophical quotes.

In the first scenes she introduces us to the motifs that will be repeated throughout the film: resting in the countryside, memories of the police attacks in May '68, communist news, meetings with her ex-boyfriend, Kleist's book that she is reading, the music records she listens to, the letter she writes by hand to her friend, the texts she writes on type... and throughout the film these motifs will be developed successively: long quotes from Michael Kohlhass, Monteverdi and the baroque to Liszt that will play successively during the film, her German friend reading the letter she writes to him, the naked girl in bed remembering the sexual encounters with her boyfriend, many political and poetic quotes, her wanderings through the wheat fields and the neighbors' farms, notes on the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia.

There is, as in much French (and not only French) cinema of the time, a whiff of pedantry that is about to ruin the film and a lot of affectation, a typically (and ridiculously) cool vision of May '68, and of course baroque music to accompany the images (a Magnificat by Monteverdi...exactly like Bresson in his Mouchette); but at the same time there is a pleasant humility (far from the bombastic Godard) that at times gives us a certain sense of inventiveness that is less inconsequential and gratuitous than in much nouvelle vague. Above all, there are many interesting ideas and an innovative formal treatment that tries to explore more purely cinematographic paths than in the usual commercial cinema, although we struggle to find the necessary rigor to make it totally satisfactory.

It is difficult to give an assessment of a film that appears to us as a very small artistic object that is as purely cinematographic as the result could be improved.

L'été takes place mostly at a large country house in Normandy, called Le Broy. A young activist has left Paris following the riots of 1968 and is spending some time on her own at the house. The house is owned by friends of her parents, who are not using it that season, but it's due to be refurbished at some point, which stops the stay feeling open-ended.

She spends time corresponding with a friend, listening to classical music and thinking about her partner who she has left behind. She also spends quite a lot of time frolicking in the gardens and the surrounding countryside. The movie anthologises a lot of the slogans from the 1968 rioters, maybe the touchstone here is "Vivez sans temps morts - jouissez sans entraves" or "Live without dead time - play without hindrance".

Reading about 1968 would be a pre-requisite for watching this movie. It is still an inspiring time for me. A group of very beautiful French students decided it was time to overthrow the government and free people from the oppression of parliaments, laws, consumerism and wage slavery. They weren't even close to a victory, but their lessons for personal fulfillment live on. The world wasn't ready for these actions, but the Time of Cherries will come again.

The young lady is often shown naked, which is in line with the theme of sexual revolution for 1968.

Although the movie is playful, there is also a sense of grief, those that make revolution only halfway, dig their own graves, is a very poignant slogan. The lady is shown with her face being reflected in some old dark glass, as if she has a foot in the next world.

It is ironic, probably intentional, that a privileged upper middle class woman holidays in her wealthy parents friends' home, and also that she comes across quite a lot of people working, and all she does is essentially take leisure. Not inconsistent with '68 principles, but a fairly essential comment. I know that if any of my reactionary friends watched the movie they would hit the roof seeing this contrast.

The music is perhaps represented as being in touch with the revolutionary instincts, no brash Russians, but mellifluous Monteverdi, Couperin, Handel, Bach etc. One interesting tune was Fantasy for guitar imitating the harp in the style of Ludovico, by Alonso Mudarra. The major expression of grief and betrayal is expressed by a relating of the plot of Kleist's novella Michael Kohlhaas, which ends in a baroque act of defiance.

My heart goes out to the filmmakers. This film sits apart from the other three seasons in the Tetralogy of Marcel Hanoun. The others are much more connected in a group.