Behind the Scenes With My Favorite Actors: Emmanuelle Béart in André Téchiné's Les égarés (2003)

***Taken from the Region 1 DVD Strayed.***

Operation Screenshot (Films of the 2000s): Jacques Rivette's Histoire de Marie et Julien (2003)

Artist and Muse #17

Few films have centered on the complex relationship between an artist and muse more successfully than Jacques Rivette's 1991 masterpiece LA BELLE NOISEUSE (THE BEAUTIFUL TROUBLEMAKER)
It is a film of collision as Rivette, the most uncomprimising director of the 1st French New Wave, collaborates with with possibly the greatest actress of the second New Wave, Emmanuelle Beart.
Rivette was 63 when he directed the then 27 year old Beart in their first film together. One of the great films about art, and more importantly the creation of art, LA BELLE NOISEUSE makes clear the blurring line and equal importance of the artist-muse relationship.
Rivette's masterful film, in my opinion one of the best ever made, won the Grand Prize at the Cannes film festival and is currently available on dvd from New Yorker Home Video. The intriguing companion piece DIVERTIMENTO remains out of print in America but can be obtained fairly cheaply from Asian market importers.
Rivette and Beart would meet again in 2003's THE STORY OF MARIE AND JULIEN, an astonishingly great ghost story that shows them both still at the top of their game and miles above most of their peers.
Rivette nearing 80 is continuing to create one of the most startling original canons in all of film history and has just released DON'T TOUCH THE AXE in France. Along with Eric Rohmer, Rivette remains an artist that is as fresh and vital in his 80s as most are in their 20s.
Beart turns 44 year this year and remains one of France's greatest actors and most passionate activists. She admitted in THE STORY OF MARIE AND JULIEN'S supplemental material that her collaborations with Rivette are special ones...here is hoping their mystical journey together in film continues in the future.

Serrault and Beart

I am frankly overwhelmed right now with what has become a very dark July 30th. So in tribute to the great Michel Serrault, who also joined Ingmar Bergman and Tom Snyder in the great unknown today, I will just offer this one image from my favorite film of his.

Here is Michel staring longingly at the lovely back of Emmanuelle Beart in Claude Sautet's memorable and haunting 1995 feature NELLY AND MONSIEUR ARNAUD. I can still remember how touched I was by both Michel and Emmanuelle's work in this film when I saw it in an empty Kentucky theater back in the Fall of 95. Today I would like nothing more than to be back in that little theater twelve years ago, surrounded only by the flickering images of what has too soon become just a memory.