Six in Paris / Paris vu par
France , 1965.

Directed by: Claude Chabrol, Jean Douchet, Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Daniel Pollet, Eric Rohmer, Jean Rouch
Script: Claude Chabrol, Jean Douchet, Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Daniel Pollet, Eric Rohmer, Jean Rouch, Georges Keller
Producer: Barbet Schroeder
Production company: Les Filmes du Cyprès
Cinematography: Néstor Almendros, Étienne Becker, Alain, Albert Maysles, Jean Rabier
Editing: Jackie Raynal, Dominique Villain
Cast: Jean-Pierre Andréani, Stéphane Audran, Nadine Ballot, Claude Chabrol, Jean-François Chappey, Gilles Chusseau, Serge Davri, Micheline Dax, Marcel Gallon, Philippe Hiquilly, Claude Melki, Gilles Quéant

Format: 35mm
Running time: 95'

Synopsis
A sextet of French filmmakers collaborated on 'Six in Paris' shorts with the central theme being city of Paris.


Saint Germain-des-Pres, directed by: Jean Douchet
Jean Douchet directed the film's first episode, ‘Saint Germain-des-Pres,’ the story of the up-and-down relationship between a male model (Jean-Francois Chappey) and an American coed (Barbara Wilkin).

Gare du Nord, directed by: Jean Rouch
Jean Rouch's ‘Gare du Nord’ is a haunting twist-of-fate tale involving a suicidal handsome stranger (Gilles Queant).

Rue Saint-Denis, directed by: Jean-Daniel Pollet
Written and directed by Jean-Daniel Pollet, ‘Rue Saint-Denis’ unites an experienced prostitute (Micheline Dax) with a garrulous customer (Claude Melki).

Place de l'Etoile, directed by: Eric Rohmer
‘Place de l'Etoile,’ a Chekhovian guilt trip involving salesman Jean-Michael Rouziere and shabby, supposedly dead street person Marcel Gallon, was Eric Rohmer's contribution.

Montparnasse-Levallois, directed by: Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard's ‘Montparnasse-Levallois,’ photography by American documentary filmmaker Albert Maysles, finds Joanne Shimkus in an imaginary menage a trois.

La Muette, directed by: Claude Chabrol
'Six in Paris' is topped off by Claude Chabrol's ‘La Muette,’ wherein a family man (played by Chabrol himself) comes to grief when he purchases a pair of earplugs.

Directors Biography
Jean Douchet, who began his career with legendary Cahiers du Cinéma critics-cum-filmmakers Truffaut, Godard, and Rivette, has for several decades worked all aspects of the film world, from director to actor to critic to historian. He recently published one of the most comprehensive studies to date on the French New Wave (Nouvelle Vague, F. Hazan, 2004), and continues to contribute a monthly column to Cahiers on new DVD releases. His most impressive accomplishment remains the two longstanding film clubs that he holds down each month at the Cinéma du Panthéon (Paris 5) and the Cinémathèque Française (Paris 12).

French ethnographer-turned-filmmaker Jean Rouch is one of the fathers of modern cinéma vérité. His work has had great influence on French New Wave filmmakers. Rouch had degrees in literature and engineering before he became fascinated by African cultures in the early '40s. The results were provocative documentaries such as 'Initiation to Possession Dancing' (1949). In 1958, Rouch released his innovative chronicle of an Abidjan stevedore, 'Moi, Un Noir'. The film 'Chronicle of a Summer' (1961) is considered seminal in the development of the cinéma vérité movement. Over his long career, Rouch made over 90 such films. Between 1987 and 1991, he served as the president of the Cinémathique Française. At 86-years-old in March of 2004, Rouch was killed in a car crash.

Jean-Daniel Pollet (1936-2004) is a French film director and screenwriter who was most active in the 1960s and 1970s. His film career started in 1958, when he did a short film set in Paris called Pourvu qu'on ait l'ivresse..., in which Pollet filmed the movements of dancers' silhouettes. Pollet built on the images and themes from this first film in many of his later works, by incorporating elements of popular comedies imbued with both burlesque and melancholic elements. In the early 1960s, Pollet began exploring another approach to filmmaking with the film 'Méditerranée', which he made over two years with Volker Schlöndorff. Pollet tried to create a form of poetic film, using texts and commentaries by writers such as Philippe Sollers, Jean Thibeaudeau, and Francis Ponge.

Eric Rohmer is born December 1, 1920, in Nancy, France. He Rohmer relocated to Paris, where he worked variously as a newspaper reporter and a literature teacher. At the end of the 1940s, he began moving away from reporting to focus on film criticism, becoming a fixture of Henri Langlois' Cinematheque Francais alongside the likes of fellow movie buffs Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, Jacques Rivette, and Claude Chabrol. Rohmer made his name crafting talky, feather-light romantic comedies and chamber dramas distinguished by economical camerawork, a warmly ironic tone, an affection for youth, and a fascination with place and time.

Jean-Luc Godard was born in Paris on December 3, 1930. He studied ethnology at the Sorbonne, but spent the vast majority of his days at the Cine-Club du Quartier Latin, where he first met fellow film fanatics Francois Truffaut and Jacques Rivette. Godard was arguably the most influential filmmaker of the postwar era. Beginning with his groundbreaking 1959 feature debut 'A Bout de Souffle', Godard revolutionized the motion picture form, freeing the medium from the shackles of its long-accepted cinematic language by rewriting the rules of narrative, continuity, sound, and camera work. Later in his career, he also challenged the common means of feature production, distribution, and exhibition, all in an effort to subvert the conventions of the Hollywood formula to create a new kind of film.

Claude Chabrol is born in Paris on June 24, 1930. He was educated at the University of Paris and at the Ecole Libre des Sciences Politiques. He developed an interest in the cinema and worked for a brief time in the publicity department of 20th Century Fox's French headquarters. Chabrol's true film career began during the 1950s, when he became one of a legendary group of critics for Cahiers du cinéma. Widely credited as the founding father of the French Nouvelle Vague movement, Claude Chabrol is master of the suspense thriller. Inherent in all of his thrillers is the observation of the clash between bourgeois value and barely-contained, oftentimes violent passion.

Location and screening schedule: Tuškanac Cinema, Tuesday, October 20th at 21.00