Death’s Glamour / Les Sièges de l'Alcazar
- This is a past program
Presented by the UCLA Film & Television Archive.
Part of the UCLA Film & Television Archive screening series Luc Moullet: A Retrospective. Learn more at cinema.ucla.edu.
Essai d'ouverture (1988)
Luc Moullet comically explodes the trivial frustration of consumer packaging into a full-tilt critique of capitalism as a man (Moullet himself) struggles to open a bottle of Coca-Cola.
DCP, color, in French with English subtitles, 15 min. Director: Luc Moullet. Screenwriter: Luc Moullet. With: Luc Moullet, Richard Copans, Françoise Buraux.
Death’s Glamour (Le Prestige de la mort, 2005)
After failing to raise funds for his latest film, an obscure filmmaker (Luc Moullet, as himself in an outrageous toupee and fake beard) takes solace in location scouting only to discover a corpse on the hiking trail. Quickly swapping identities with the deceased, he hopes his death will arouse interest in his work — and maybe a sale of his catalog to French television. His plan goes horribly wrong when an actually famous director dies and he’s arrested for his own murder. A wry reworking of Cecil B. DeMille’s The Whispering Chorus (1918), Moullet’s satire of fame, ego and artistic legacy abounds with movie references and cinephilic in-jokes.
DCP, color, in French with English subtitles, 75 min. Director: Luc Moullet. Screenwriter: Luc Moullet. With: Luc Moullet, Antonietta Pizzorno, Claire Bouanich.
Les Sièges de l'Alcazar (1989)
The legendary feud between French film journals Cahiers du Cinéma and Positif is the object of Luc Moullet’s droll satire — along with cinephilia itself. Cahiers critic Guy Moscardo (Olivier Maltinti) happily extols the virtues of his favorite theater, the Alcazar, until Jeanne (Elizabeth Moreau), a Positif critic, turns up during a Vittorio Cottafavi retrospective and he’s faced with a double bill of rivalry and potential romance. Incidents and episodes in and around the theater — uncomfortable seats, skipped reels and passionate auteurist quibbles — will bring a tear of recognition to art house denizens.
DCP, color, in French with English subtitles, 57 min. Director: Luc Moullet. Screenwriter: Luc Moullet. With: Olivier Maltinti, Jacqueline Moreau, Sabine Haudepin.
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