Cinephile-Francophile

Archive for August, 2010

I love Paris, particularly seen through the lens of a camera. Enhanced, framed,  glossed over, immortalized.  Though that may be true about how I feel about most things.

Still I remember feeling rather disappointed with the collection of short features that had made up “Paris, je t’aime” (with the exception perhaps of Gena Rowlands‘ scripted segment ‘Quartier Latin’ and the brilliant bit by the Coen Brothers), and then  further disappointed with its even weaker New York corollary “New York, I love you“.

Neither conjured the  sublimating power of the city as a myth expanding a tale, a style conveying a mood, a pulse rhythming an action.

And that’s the ferocity of Paris, still.

Thankfully, I stumbled upon this article this morning which restates the evocative intensity of the city. A city without which “Casablanca”, “Breathless”, “Amélie”… would all lose their leading lady; classics, in sum,  would lose their class.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/movies/15scott.html