We’re delighted to host a special holiday presentation of Alain Tanner’s La Salamandre — a rarely-seen and newly restored film by the Swiss master — that will play until January 9. A film about the elusiveness of truth and the allure of riddles, as much as it is about inescapable facts and the charms of fiction, La Salamandre is a slippery film in a constant state of unravelling.

Tanner, who co-wrote the film’s script with the British art critic and novelist John Berger, said he drew his inspiration from working in television — a field riddled with “the problem of objectivity” where the relating of facts is always at odds with the possibilities of imaginative storytelling. In the film, two writers — Pierre (Jean Luc-Bideau, Sorcerer and State of Siege), a detestable foreign correspondent, and Paul (Jacques Denis, Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000), a sweet-tempered novelist — are hired to write a screenplay about a young woman — the beautiful and quixotic Rosemonde (Bulle Ogier, having just starred in Jacques Rivette’s L’amour fou and Out 1) — who may or may not have shot her uncle.

“The starting point, if you want, was a feminine character — someone who was completely rebellious, but without any kind of intellectual articulation about the revolt. A revolt that was a little wild and a little psychological. It was the revolt of someone who does not accept that they are made to work on the assembly line, to be exploited, to be paid unfairly, to be treated badly.” ALAIN TANNER

Ogier, whom Tanner cast because “she had something crazy in her eyes” and Vincent Canby described as “beyond mortal comprehension” in his review for The New York Times, is the real stand-out of the film. She operates with a supreme wiliness, imbuing the enigmatic depths of her character with her inimitable confidence as a performer. Much like a black hole, she pulls the viewer into an unforeseen dimension through sheer force of gravity.

Alain Tanner (1929 – 2022) was a Swiss-French filmmaker whose work explored generational strife, psychological turmoil, and community life. His feature debut, Charles, Dead or Alive (1969), won the Golden Leopard at Locarno. His follow-up, La Salamandre, kicked off a series of fiction films he worked on with John Berger, whom he’d met while living in London. Tanner also spent time in Paris, where he met many of the directors associated with the French New Wave. He took inspiration from both Free Cinema in Britain and the French New Wave, although the cutthroat environment of the latter scene displeased him. In 1962, he co-founded “Groupe Cinque” — a trailblazing collective of independent Swiss filmmakers. His oeuvre encompasses several decades, films, and genres — it is evidence of a filmmaker whose resolute questioning of societal and cinematic norms was unceasing and remains inspiring.

Text written by Nicolas Pedrero-Setzer. Special thanks to Association Alain Tanner.