Tag Archives: Paris Belongs to Us

When the Ordinary Becomes Extraordinary

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Simone (Cox Habbema) and Freek (Hugo Metsers) are pulled into a labyrinth of mysterious happenings in THE ARRIVAL OF JOACHIM STILLER (De Komst van Joachim Stiller), a 1976 Belgium film by Harry Kumel.

Most people have a daily routine from the time they get up in the morning to the time they go to bed at night. For many of us that would involve a considerable amount of time spent at work, whether at an office or at home, and this would also include the daily repetition of uneventful tasks like taking the trash out, opening the mail or brushing your teeth. But when the daily routine gets disrupted or something odd or peculiar occurs, it usually results in a more memorable day. It could also be just the beginning of a series of occurrences that change your life and the way you look at the world. This is what happens to Freek Groenevelt (yes, it’s a weird name), the protagonist of De Komst van Joachim Stiller (English title: The Arrival of Joachim Stiller), a magical realism fantasy based on a novel by Belgium writer Hupert Lampo and adapted to film by Harry Kumel. 

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A City or a Labyrinth?

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Whether by accident or design, French filmmaker Jacques Rivette is probably the least known member of the influential Nouvelle Vague movement of the late fifties though, like Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, Eric Rohmer, and Claude Chabrol, he too was a former writer and film critic for Cashiers du Cinema. He even started production on his first feature length film, Paris Belongs to Us (French title: Paris Nous Appartient), in 1957, before Chabrol, Truffaut and Godard began work on what would become their universally acclaimed debuts of, respectively, Le Beau Serge (1958), The 400 Blows (1959) and Breathless (1960). Yet, despite the artistic and liberating impact the latter three films had on world cinema, Paris Belongs to Us might be the most ambitious, challenging and intellectually provocative film of the whole movement. It is also the darkest, waltzing toward an imagined or possibly real oblivion. The Homeland Security System would give it a code orange classification.       

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Disconnected and Lost in Capri

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When did alienation in modern society become a favorite thematic concern in the culture and the arts, particularly in the cinema? Certainly the films of Michelangelo Antonioni addressed the inability of people to connect, feel or relate to each other in a post-industrial age world as early as 1957 in Il Grido. But by the early sixties, it seemed as if every major film director in the world was addressing the topic on some level. A general sense of malaise was in the air as if the modern world was having a counterproductive effect on humanity, creating a sense of futility, amorality or complete apathy. You could see aspects of this reflected in Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1960), Ingmar Bergman’s Through a Glass Darkly (1961), Alain Resnais’s Last Year at Marienbad (1961), Luis Bunuel’s The Exterminating Angel (1961) and Jean-Luc Godard’s My Life to Live (1962). All of these are considered cinematic masterworks of the 20th century but there are also many worthy and lesser-known contributions to the pantheon of alienation cinema and one of the most strikingly is Il Mare (The Sea), the 1963 directorial debut of Giuseppe Patroni Griffi.    Continue reading →