Retrospectives at the Cinémathèque

At the end of July, the sun has finally imposed itself as master of the place after many months of battle. So you promise yourself to combine your taste for cinema with that of the great outdoors, in order to spend all your evenings at La Villette at the "open-air cinema". But your entire plan falls apart when you find a newspaper article announcing that the event is cancelled until further notice.

You who already saw yourself sitting on the grass marveling at Isao Takahata's animated film, the tale of Princess Kaguya … You are depressed. You still take a look at the movie posters that are programmed in your usual cinema. However, you are apprehensive because they do not live up to your expectations.

Here is a remedy for your filmic grief, a way to comfort yourself, in part, by allowing you to see or revisit great classics. However, these screenings will take place in a movie theater, so you will have to postpone your picnic – cinematographic to another day. Nevertheless, if you were looking for chills with the breeze at sunset, watching these movies will also make you shiver… but of emotion.

This antidote: Two retrospectives, of two directors with very different universes, at the cinematheque for the last week of July.

Adventurer John Huston:

John Huston (1906 – 1987) is a director who very quickly wanted to sign his own subjects. His greed for autonomy and freedom pushed him to travel far from Hollywood, making him one of the first "international" filmmakers. A desire for great adventure that is felt in the exoticism of the filming locations as well as in his creativity (mythical odyssey, search for the aesthetics of colors).

• Monday, July 25:

LE PIEGE (1972), 1h38, Vostfr – 14h30. At the request of Angus Macintosh who seeks to dismantle a network of spies, Joseph Rearden poses as a criminal and ends up in prison. One of the detainees offers to make him escape.

THE WILD CONVOY of R. C. Sarafian (1971), 1h45, Vostfr (J. Huston actor) – 8:00 p.m. In the 19th^century, a trapper is left for dead after being injured by a bear. While trying to survive in the wild, he seeks revenge on his ex-companions.

• Wednesday, July 27:

DAVEY DES GRANDS CHEMINS (1968), 1h35, Vostfr – 19h30. In Scotland, in the early nineteenth century, the young Davey Haggart is the son of the illustrious brigand who was hanged. Davey is determined to become an exceptional bandit too. However, he fails in everything he undertakes.

KEY LARGO (1948), 1h40, Vostfr – 21h30. Frank McCloud arrives in Key Largo and finds himself confronted by gangster Johnny Rocco who has taken refuge in the local hotel with several members of his gang. During a hurricane that completely isolates the hotel, the gangsters try to flee on a boat and force Franck to pilot it.

• Thursday, July 28:

LES ALEOUTIENNES (1943), 47 min, Vostfr – 20h00. In the small military base of Adak, daily life is divided between the moments of respite of the airmen and their dangerous missions on Kiska occupied by the Japanese.

THE BATTLE OF SAN PIETRO (1945), 32 min, Vostfr – 20:00. In 1943, in the village of San Pietro, Germans and Americans fought each other.

• Friday, July 29

THE MALTESE FALCON (1941), 1h40, Vosfr – 19h30. During an investigation, private investigator Sam Spade finds his business associate Miles Archer murdered. Sam suspects Brigid who had directed them to the investigation. But the latter, who fascinates Sam with his beauty and money, asks him to help her.

L'HONNEUR DES PRIZZI (1989), 2h09, Vostfr – 21h45. Charley Partanna, who works for the Prizzi family, is tasked with eliminating Marxie Heller who betrayed the clan.

• Saturday, July 30:

LE VENT DE LA PLAINE (1959), 2h05, Vostfr – 14h00. Rachel has been adopted by Zachary's family but a mysterious horseman seems to hold the secret of her origin. Soon, the chief of the Kiowas Indians comes to claim the young woman whom he declares to be Indian.

THE BARBARIAN AND THE GEISHA (1957), 1h45, Vostfr – 19h15. In 1856, Townsend Harris arrived in Japan as American consul. Governor Tamura wants him to leave as soon as possible, but Harris hopes to go to Yedo to meet the Emperor.

LET THERE BE LIGHT (1945), 58 min, Vostfr – 9.30pm. On Long Island, Mason General Hospital welcomes and treats soldiers, shocked and victims of war.

INDEPENDANCE (1975), 28 min, Vostfr – 21:30. 1774. Thanks to George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Tom Paine and Benjamin Franklin, the United States will be born and escape the British yoke.

• Sunday, July 31:

DAVEY DES GRANDS CHEMINS (1968), 1h35, Vostfr – 14h15. In Scotland, in the early nineteenth century, the young Davey Haggart is the son of the illustrious brigand who was hanged. Davey is determined to become an exceptional bandit too. However, he fails in everything he undertakes.

GOD ONLY KNOWS ( 1956), 1:46, Vostfr – 16:15. In the midst of the Pacific War, Corporal Allison approaches Tuasiva Atoll. He is discovered by Sister Angela. The two survivors seek to escape the Japanese who will soon occupy the atoll.

THE NIGHT OF THE IGUANA (1963), 2:05, Vostfr – 19:00. Larry Shannon, an alcoholic pastor suspended from his ministry, becomes a tour guide in Mexico. He then escorts a group of American teachers, but he has to face the advances of a nymphet, Charlotte Goodall.

The work of John Huston, although heterogeneous, knows a guiding thread, that of negative heroism, that is to say a pronounced taste for vain quests. Flamboyant failures that impact the very stature of the protagonists, who appear tired and decadent. The discomfort is as much moral as it is physical.

The Scary Wes Craven:

Discovered, in 1972, with one of the most trying films of his time, The Last House on the Left, Wes Craven (1939 – 2015) made a name for himself in horror cinema. A genre that he will reinvent in the years 1970 – 1980 to then better deconstruct, especially with the Scream project (1996 – 2012).

• Wednesday 27 July

   

MY SOUL TO TAKE (2008), 1h47, Vostfr – 19h00. Sixteen years after his supposed death, a serial killer returns to the small town of Riverton to kill the seven children born that same night.

PARIS, JE T'AIME : LE PERE LACHAISE (2005), 6 min, Vostfr – 21h15. Wes Craven directed the "Père-Lachaise" segment with Emily Mortimer and Rufus Sewell. A young woman breaks up with her fiancé during a visit to Père-Lachaise, but he redeems himself with the help of Oscar Wilde's ghost.

RED EYE (2004), 1h25, Vostfr – 21h15. During a night flight, a young woman finds herself at the heart of a plot and is threatened by the one next to her on the plane.

• Thursday, July 28:

FREDDY 5: THE NIGHTMARE CHILD by Stephen Hopkins (1989), 1h29, Vostfr – 19h00. Freddy finds a new way to return to perpetrate his massacres: he plans to reincarnate in the baby that Alice, the one who had confronted him in the previous episode, is waiting for.

THE END OF FREDDY: THE ULTIMATE NIGHTMARE by Rachel Talalay (1990), 1h29, Vostfr – 21h00. Maggie, a psychologist, treats John, a teenager terrorized by nightmares where Freddy Krueger, the Springwood child killer, appears. They decide to go to Springwood accompanied by three teenagers to investigate the situation.

• Friday, July 29:

FREDDY COMES OUT OF THE NIGHT  (1994), 1h52, Vostfr – 19h00. The monster with the claws of steel, Freddy Krueger, will catch up with his designers and his former victims who thought they were done with him.

THE FARM OF TERROR (1981), 1h42, Vostfr – 21h30. Following the death of her husband in mysterious circumstances, a woman witnesses unexplained phenomena while a fundamentalist religious community is installed next to her home.

• Saturday, July 30:

THE BASEMENT OF FEAR (1991), 1h42, Vostfr – 16h30. A young burglar from the Los Angeles lookout breaks into a house where no one ever dares to enter, because it is inhabited by a demonic couple.

SREAM (1996), 1h51, Vostfr – 18h45.  In the small town of Woodsboro, a murderer hiding behind a mask murders a young woman. A friend of the victims, whose own mother was killed a year earlier and who lives with her father in an isolated house, is in turn threatened.

SREAM 2 (1997), 2h, Vostfr – 21h15. Two years after the first events, a psychopath dons the mask of Ghostface and a new series of murders ensue.

• Sunday, July 31:

SREAM 3 (1999), 1h54, Vostfr – 18h30. Sidney, a survivor of the Woodsboro massacres, lives as a recluse in a safe house, while a Hollywood producer prepares a film based on her. One of the actresses is then murdered.

SREAM 4 (2010), 1h50, Vostfr – 21h00. Ten years after the horrific murders committed by Ghostface, Sydney Prescott, who recovered thanks to writing, returns with some anguish to Woodsboro for the launch of her novel.

The horror genre is often criticized for its lack of thought. The only purpose is to scare, the blood must flow in abundance. However, Wes Craven through his character, Freddy Krueger, appears as a political and conceptual filmmaker, posing the question of the self-realization of things that scare us. By dint of thinking about it, don't they end up coming?

Practical information :

Full price: 6.5 euros

Reduced price: 5.5 euros

Under 18s: 4 euros