Week 37

Breathless (1960)

http://efas.livedrive.com/item/b983b868ed6a40fd92bb199f34a62ba9

http://efas.livedrive.com/item/b1e6f8fbbfa74d4c82709a3396414014 (subs)

Jean-Luc Godard's seminal film, famously referred to as the "yardstick of celluloid cool", is one of the most influential films ever made, ushering new waves of cinema throughout the world in the 1960s. It employs every cinematic trick which helped define the Nouvelle Vague: jump cuts, location shooting, hand-held camerawork, direct sound, in-jokes and visual references to the films and actors which influenced Godard.





Viridiana (1961)
                                             http://efas.livedrive.com/item/f6489b9be3714ccd9b33eaaa9295dcf8

http://efas.livedrive.com/item/434d24d4139c405197faace81e756bfb (subs)

Luis Buñuel is arguably cinema's most famous provocateur, and despite getting the permission from Franco's uncomprehending censors to make this film, he proved yet again to be a Trojan horse for them. Franco's government would ban it as soon as it was finished and the Vatican denounced it as an insult to Christianity, but this story of Viridiana the young nun, covering Buñuel's scathing attack on the hypocrisy of the Church and the moral depravity of Francoist society, would still go on to win the Palme d'Or at Cannes. 
This film will be preceded by a screening of Buñuel's 45 minute long film Simon of the Desert, available on youtube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f095qP00Hxo

Note: neither film this week has any cruelty or abuse to donkeys :hatoff: