Alain Resnais

Alain Resnais

Born: June 3, 1922
Died: March 1, 2014
in Vannes, Morbihan, Bretagne, France
Alain Resnais (3 June 1922 – 1 March 2014) was a French film director and screenwriter whose career extended over more than six decades. After training as a film editor in the mid-1940s, he went on to direct a number of short films which included Night and Fog (1955), an influential documentary about the Nazi concentration camps.

Resnais began making feature films in the late 1950s and consolidated his early reputation with Hiroshima mon amour (1959), Last Year at Marienbad (1961), and Muriel (1963), all of which adopted unconventional narrative techniques to deal with themes of troubled memory and the imagined past. These films were contemporary with, and associated with, the French New Wave (la nouvelle vague), though Resnais did not regard himself as being fully part of that movement. He had closer links to the "Left Bank" group of authors and filmmakers who shared a commitment to modernism and an interest in left-wing politics. He also established a regular practice of working on his films in collaboration with writers previously unconnected with the cinema such as Jean Cayrol, Marguerite Duras, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Jorge Semprún and Jacques Sternberg.

In later films, Resnais moved away from the overtly political topics of some previous works and developed his interests in an interaction between cinema and other cultural forms, including theatre, music, and comic books. This led to imaginative adaptations of plays by Alan Ayckbourn, Henri Bernstein and Jean Anouilh, as well as films featuring various kinds of popular song.

His films frequently explore the relationship between consciousness, memory, and the imagination, and he was noted for devising innovative formal structures for his narratives. Throughout his career, he won many awards from international film festivals and academies.

Description above from the Wikipedia article Alain Resnais, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Movies for Alain Resnais...

Alain Resnais, l'audacieux
Title: Alain Resnais, l'audacieux
Character: Self (archive footage)
Released: September 5, 2022
Type: Movie
A genius inventor of forms, Alain Resnais is one of the fathers of cinematic modernity. This portrait, rich in archives, looks back on the career of a discreet non-conformist, in perpetual search of renewal to fight against anxiety.
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Bacri, comme un air de famille
Title: Bacri, comme un air de famille
Character: Self (archive footage)
Released: January 14, 2022
Type: Movie
Jean-Pierre Bacri was never happy about anything. But beyond the caricature of the grumpy man, from his apprenticeship years to his death in January 2021, this film tells the story of this quintessential Frenchman: a man turned towards others, an actor by accident, a moralist by vocation, who was left unaffected by flattery and false honors by success, and ready for all kinds of anger when it was necessary to speak out against injustice and stupidity. The film tells the story of how Jean-Pierre Bacri's life changed several times: from Algeria to France when he was eleven years old in 1962; from bank clerk to apprentice theater actor; from Pieds-noirs film star to screenwriter for Alain Resnais; and from Cannes playboy to Agnès Jaoui's mad lover, the most decisive encounter for his life as well as for his work
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Dans les oreilles d'Alain Resnais
Title: Dans les oreilles d'Alain Resnais
Character: Self (archive footage)
Released: January 10, 2019
Type: Movie
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Propos d'Alain Resnais
Title: Propos d'Alain Resnais
Character: Self (voice)
Released: January 1, 2007
Type: Movie
Audio interview with Alain Resnais
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Hiroshima: The Time of Return
Title: Hiroshima: The Time of Return
Character: (voice)
Released: February 28, 2005
Type: Movie
Luc Lagier puts Alain Resnais' film back in its historical context and in the filmmaker's biography. He tells the story, then the development of what was originally intended to be a short documentary film and which turned into an unusual allegory. Composed of fascinating archives, including notably the correspondence between Duras and Resnais, this analysis of 'Hiroshima mon amour' manages to put the film in perspective while detaching itself from it. A rare and captivating work.
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May Days
Title: May Days
Character: Self
Released: January 1, 1978
Type: Movie
Filmmaker William Klein documents the Paris student riots that occurred in May of 1968.
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The Lovely Month of May
Title: The Lovely Month of May
Character: Self (uncredited)
Released: May 1, 1963
Type: Movie
Candid interviews of ordinary people on the meaning of happiness, an often amorphous and inarticulable notion that evokes more basic and fundamentally egalitarian ideals of self-betterment, prosperity, tolerance, economic opportunity, and freedom.
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Sign of the Lion
Title: Sign of the Lion
Character: Un Consommateur (uncredited)
Released: May 3, 1962
Type: Movie
An American in Paris lives by sponging off his working friends, and throws a party using borrowed money when his rich American aunt dies, believing firmly in his horoscope.
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Title: Cinépanorama
Character: Self
Released: February 4, 1956
Type: TV
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The Devil's Envoys
Title: The Devil's Envoys
Character: Extra (uncredited)
Released: December 5, 1942
Type: Movie
At the end of the 15th century, a man and a woman, posing as traveling minstrels, are sent by the Devil to a castle to seduce its inhabitants.