Photos: Classiq Journal
The new year starts in September. Doesn’t it make sense? School starts in September, and, with it, the enthusiasm of a new beginning, of new discoveries, of growing wings, of greater horizons. And it all comes naturally. As adults, we consider ourselves lucky if we feel that sustained enthusiasm in what we do, for such a long stretch of time as that amassed by the school years.
Hogwarts. That name and that place have such a special meaning. I love watching the Harry Potter films at the beginning of autumn. It’s like meeting up with old friends again, and a little like going back to school again. I have watched all the Harry Potter films as an adult, but I like to imagine how it would have been to discover them when I was a child. Because I like to imagine that all the school children believe they can perform anything. It’s a lot like believing they can perform magic.
Viewing
Paris, Texas
Wim Wenders
I remember how photographer Laura Wilson described in our interview the story behind a photo of Harry Dean Stanton on the set of The Wendell Baker Story: “In this moment, Harry Dean Stanton, oblivious to the heat, waited near a beautiful aluminum Beech 18 for the next scene in The Wendell Baker Story. He sang one of his favorite tunes, Canción Mixteca, the story of a man filled with sadness and longing for his home in Oaxaca, Mexico. With almost 200 films over 50 Hollywood years, Harry Dean is known on movie sets to regularly serenade actors and crews with Mexican Ranchera music. He has the same strong, haunting voice he had nearly a quarter-century ago when he sang Canción Mixteca for Wim Wenders in Paris Texas and, before that, the gospel song A Closer Walk with Thee for the soundtrack of Cool Hand Luke“. I would watch Paris Texas over and over again just to watch and hear Harry Dean Stanton, this incredible character actor who simply fills the screen. He doesn’t just act, he exists in his films. He doesn’t just talk, he makes you listen. Paris Texas is definitely a great road movie and Harry Dean Stanton is such a big part of it. And although his scenes with Nastassja Kinski are a defining point in the story, it’s his scenes with the little boy, his son in the film, that carry more weight for me. Those, and that finale embrace between mother and son.
And as long as I am on the subject of Harry Dean Stanton, I just have to bring up his role in Pretty in Pink, as Andie’s (Molly Ringwald) father: simply one of the best father characters we have seen on screen. I like to keep him in mind, his way of listening and giving advice, in those moments that call for a parent’s advice.
La French, 2014
Cédric Jimenez
I watched BAC Nord, the latest film of Cédric Jimenez, in 2020 when it was released. Based on a true story, a major police scandal in the Northern suburbs of Marseille, from 2012, when several polices officers from the anti-crime unit were arrested for extortion and drug theft as part of an organized gang, the film follows the story without judging or taking sides. “Whether they’re guilty or innocent, what I’m really interested in is the person caught up in this kind of crisis,” said Jimenez, a Marseille native who grew up in those same suburbs, in an interview at the Cannes Film Festival where the film premiered. It is this human quality that makes the film very powerful. I just watched La French, from 2014, the director’s second film, the other night and I realised this human quality felt in his films is one of the director’s traits.
La French. Based on a true story. Marseilles, 1975. The drug war is led by a single man. Pierre Michel (Jean Dujardin) is named police magistrate after being promoted from juvenile judge and he dedicates his job to cracking a heroin ring (la French) mastermind, Gaëtan Zampa (Gilles Lellouche). Dujardin and Lellouche recounted that they turned to the films of Sautet, those performed in the past by Montand or Piccoli (as stated in Jean Ollé-Laprune’s book, Le cinéma policier français) in preparation for their roles. I am not surprised. Claude Sautet was the kind of director who inverted the moral dilemma of the crime film and showed both criminals and lawmen with strengths and fragilities, seeking out those constant trials and errors that anchor an individual in his singularity, character study prevailing crime genre. And about their scene confronting each other, Lellouche confessed: “Jean and I understood what was at stake. That day, we weren’t friends at all.”
Where Danger Lives (1950)
John Farrow
Robert Mitchum (Jeff Cameron) knows all along that it’s not love that draws him to Faith Domergue (Margo Lannington), but he can not escape it until it’s almost too late – and that’s what’s wrong with the film, because no matter what he does from the moment he meets her, it should have been too late to escape his fate. The French poetic realism in Faith Domergue’s performance calls for a sealed fate for both characters. That’s just the way it is. That’s just the way it should have been left at.
Reading
Noir City magazine. Some of the best writing on film available today. Personal, engaging, putting you right in the middle of the films I love the most.
Listening
The soundtrack: Ry Cooder’s score for Paris, Texas. “Seldom has any artist captured that ineffable ‘high, lonesome sound’ quite as beautifully as Ry Cooder did on his landmark soundtrack to Wim Wenders’ 1984 film Paris, Texas. Not quite blues, not quite bluegrass, not quite ambient, Cooder’s haunting, evocative score mirrors the existential journey of Harry Dean Stanton’s Travis Henderson as he wanders through the empty Texas prairie landscape in pursuit of his irretrievable past.” (Real Gone Music)
The album: The Head and the Heart, Signs of Light.
Making
I am forever in love with the printed page and with writing on paper. It has to do with an appreciation of the finer things in life, with the never-fading beauty of the tangible, with taking the time to sit down with a paper book or magazine that speaks with you, with the intentional act of writing with your own hands. Zuriell is the notebook I swear by. I have tried countless notebooks, from Moleskine to my very own custom-made cloth-bound notebook. Zuriell is simply above everything else. The most beautiful design, the finest paper. For dreamers, travellers, artists, thinkers and scribblers alike.
Exploring
Children’s books in rhymes. Some classics: The Cat in the Hat and the books of Nina Cassian. They are fantastic for children, and for adults as well. As Ian Worboys, the author of the wonderful Crush series, told me in our interview: “I loved the humour and illustrations of Dr. Seuss’ The Cat in The Hat, as the books made me laugh.” That’s the magic word for everyone.
The regulars: The interviews, newsletters and podcasts I turn to every week and/or every month because they are that good. Craig Mod’s newsletters: Roden and Ridgeline. Soundtracking, with Edith Bowman. Alicia Kennedy’s newsletter. The Racquet magazine newsletter. The Adventure Podcast: Terra Incognita. The print magazines Monocle and Sirene.
Film poster for “La French”, 2014, directed by Cédric Jimenez
