Jean Eustache

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Jean Eustache (born November 30, 1938 in Pessac , Aquitaine , France , † November 5, 1981 in Paris , France) was a French film director and film editor . Eustache made a total of twelve films from 1963 to 1980, including feature films and documentaries of various lengths. His best-known film is The Mama and the Whore (La Maman et la putain) from 1973 with Jean-Pierre Léaud .

Career

Almost ten years younger than most of the members of the Nouvelle Vague , Eustache began his career as a cineast in Paris in the late 1950s. Even if he never wrote for Les Cahiers Du Cinéma , the most important French film magazine at the time , he was often in its editorial offices and took part in the discussions there. He made his film debut in 1963 with the short film Les mauvaises fréquentations ( The bad company ). It took ten more years before, after several short and documentary films - Les photos d'Alix won the César for Best Short Film in 1972 - he made his first full-length feature film La Maman et la putain in 1972 . Its biographically inspired plot tells of a triangular relationship, the love of a man (played by Jean-Pierre Léaud ) for two women.

This film won several awards at the 1973 Cannes International Film Festival . The 220-minute film was a great success with the public and enabled Eustache to shoot another feature film shortly afterwards. In Mes petites amoureuses ( My Little Lovers ) the director worked for the first time on 35mm color film under professional conditions. This film tells the story of a pubescent boy (played by Martin Loeb ) who, after a happy life with his grandmother, returns to the sadness of the south of France, the small-town, lower-class existence of his mother. Because this film became a commercial failure, Eustache was unable to fund another feature film. His subsequent films were again made under financially precarious circumstances.

Today Jean Eustache deserves a place in French film history. He was the first important director to make his cinematographic debut after the auteur films of the Nouvelle Vague. Even before Maurice Pialat , Philippe Garrel or Jacques Doillon , he was part of a new generation of high-quality French films, the aesthetics of which still have a decisive influence on them today. Jim Jarmusch provided proof of this influence when he dedicated his film Broken Flowers to Jean Eustache in 2005 . Eustache died of suicide in November 1981 .

Filmography

As a director

  • 1963: Les mauvaises fréquentations also known as Du côté de Robinson (42 min.)
  • 1966: Le Père Noël a les yeux bleus (47 min.)
  • 1968: La Rosière de Pessac (55 min.) (Documentary)
  • 1970: Le cochon (50 min.) Together with Jean-Michel Barjol (documentary)
  • 1970: Aussi loin que mon enfance (25 min.) Together with Marilù Parolini
  • 1971: Numéro Zéro TV version as Odette Robert (107 min.) (Documentary)
  • 1973: Mama and the Whore (La Maman et la putain) (217 min.)
  • 1974: My little lovers (Mes petites amoureuses) (123 min.)
  • 1977: Une sale histoire (1977) (50 min.)
  • 1979: La Rosière de Pessac (67 min.) (Documentary)
  • 1980: Le jardin des délices de Jérôme Bosch (34 min.)
  • 1980: Offre d'emploi (19 min.) For the television film Contes modern: A propos du travail
  • 1980: Les photos d'Alix (18 min.)

As a film editor

As a performer

Web links

literature

  • Frieda Grafe: A Passionate Mirror - Jean Eustache - For the screening of some of his films in the Munich Film Museum . First published in: Süddeutsche Zeitung on December 2, 1998. In: Schriften, 3rd volume . Brinkmann & Bose Verlag, Berlin 2003. ISBN 3-922660-82-7 . Pp. 145-147.
  • Philippon, Alain, Jean Eustache, Paris: Cahiers Du Cinéma 2005
  • d'Estais, Jérôme, Jean Eustache ou la traversée des apparences, La Madeleine, LettMotif 2015
personal data
SURNAME Eustache, Jean
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French film director and film editor
DATE OF BIRTH November 30, 1938
PLACE OF BIRTH Pessac , Aquitaine , France
DATE OF DEATH 5th November 1981
Place of death Paris , France