We continue our trip to the movies with a self-lacerating satire of French film culture from the late ‘80s.

Ahead of Film at Lincoln Center’s Luc Moullet retrospective in August — made possible through Cinema Guild’s acquisition of the offbeat French New Wave director’s restored films in the U.S. — we’ve partnered with Paris’ self-run, historical theatre La Clef to present this acerbic portrait of a film critic’s misadventures at the movies. Aside from our celebration of Moullet’s work, our aim is to shine a spotlight on La Clef Revival, a collective of activists and artists whose mission to keep their theatre running sustainably in a community-run capacity with participatory programming and a pay-what-you-can ticketing ethos has led to the reopening of their cinema in October, after a five-year occupation and tireless fundraising. You can support and read more about their renovation efforts here.

Les Sièges de l’Alcazar revolves around a Cahiers du Cinéma film critic who embarks on a mission to write about the Vittorio Cottafavi film retrospective at his local cinema. That is, until he spots Jeanne, a critic from rival film publication Positif, who is planning her own hit-piece on the Italian filmmaker.

“Between 1955 and 1960 there was a conflict. In the early days, Cahiers and Positif wrote approximately from the same point of view, but after five issues of Positif the differences became greater. Positif became more interested in political films—Buñuel films, for instance. It was around this time that they wrote texts against the films of Lang, Hitchcock, Hawks, Mankiewicz, and Preminger.” LUC MOULLET

 

Moullet’s satirical look at the culture of Parisian cinephilia is influenced by his own experience. Like many of his contemporaries, he started out as a critic writing for Cahiers. Indoctrinated into the Cahiers crew since he was 18 years old, he was one of the first to write about filmmakers like Samuel Fuller, Edgar G. Ulmer, and Luis Buñuel at length. His lampooning of their idiosyncratic viewing habits and obsessions stems from his own time-worn observations. Moullet has always balanced his compulsions with comedy, and Les Sièges de l’Alcazar stands out as one of his finest works of self-parody.

Luc Moullet was born in Paris in 1937. His long, still-active career as a filmmaker began when he was 23 years old, building off his precocious career as a critic at Cahiers. His rough-hewn, anti-authoritarian brand of comedy set him apart from his peers, earning him a reputation as an unsung figure of the French New Wave. Jean-Marie Straub called him “the most important filmmaker of the French post-Godard generation.”

Text written by Nicolas Pedrero-Setzer. Special thanks to Ed McCarry and the rest of the team at Cinema Guild, as well as La Traverse and the collective members of La Clef Revival.