A Movie Buff’s Recommendations by Marcos Uzal
Four standout movies for Marcos Uzal, Editor-in-Chief of Cahiers du cinéma
ReadCahiers du cinéma n°662 - December 2010 (2010-12)Cahiers du cinéma
Marcos Uzal's top picks
Marcos Uzal has given us four instinctive recommendations for films that made the cover of Cahiers du cinéma and made an impression on him when they were released, indicating the age at which these works affected him as a (young) viewer.
Cahiers du cinéma n°433 - juin 1990 (1990-06)Cahiers du cinéma
17 years old—Nouvelle Vague (New Wave, 1990)
This movie of the month from issue no. 433 by Jean-Luc Godard marks another break in the director's period cinema. In this dizzying movie, "everything is duplicated, such as Delon and his ghost who haunt the screen" (Thierry Jousse, issue no. 433).
Nouvelle Vague invokes, in a form that is always polysemic, the past of the actor — from the drowning in Plein Soleil (René Clément, 1960) to the evil double in William Wilson (Louis Malle, 1968) — as well as the director's, from his own personal and cinephilic memories to his inexhaustible questioning of the nature of images : "The image is, in Nouvelle Vague, what seeks to escape words, what lies beneath the act of naming, what occurs in a moment of suspense just before the name (this was already the meaning of Prénom Carmen). Res non verba, as a Latin intertitle in the film says—things, not words." (Thierry Jousse).
Cahiers du cinéma n°451 - January 1992 (1992-01)Cahiers du cinéma
18 years old—My Own Private Idaho (1992)
In this movie starring River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves, which takes the form of a road trip, Gus Van Sant deghettoizes the imagination "constantly surprising the viewer with this free intervention and taste for variegation and colorful streaks." (Thierry Jousse, issue no. 451).
Though remarkable and colorful, My Own Private Idaho is anything but garish. These curious associations glide along a delicate trajectory, unsettled here and there by a few psychotropic visions, and a few heart-pumping moments.
Cahiers du cinéma n°465 - March 1993 (1993-03)Cahiers du cinéma
19 years old—The Tree, the Mayor and the Mediatheque (1993)
Rohmer Brings Politics Alive was the title of issue no. 465 of Cahiers du cinéma. This small movie (it was only released at the Saint-Germain-des-Prés cinema in Paris, but was met with significant box office success) revolves around a media library project led by the mayor of a French village.
"Rohmer, by illustrating political discussions through his characters, also entrusts each of them with genres, cinematic methods (the real television talk through the mayor, theatricality through the teacher, the investigative documentary through the journalist, the cuts through the Editor-in-Chief …). Rohmer has always trusted the characters he has created; this is the strength of his cinema, this absolute belief in the truth of the characters, even the most devious ones." (Antoine de Baecque, issue no. 465).
Cahiers du cinéma n°499 - February 1996 (1996-02)Cahiers du cinéma
22 years old—A Comédia de Deus (God's Comedy, 1995)
The caption of A Comédia de Deus by João César Monteiro, In Memory of Serge Daney, is not the only homage paid by the movie to Cahiers du cinema. The critic Jean Douchet also features in the role of Antoine Doinel at the carnival.
But these are the only familiar aspects in this utterly unique burlesque movie, featuring the character of Jean de Dieu (played by the director), an ice-cream maker by profession, who is an esthete that collects female pubic hair in a large book called The Book of Reflections.
Cahiers du cinéma n°653 - February 2010 (2010-02)Cahiers du cinéma
Find out more
See the top picks of two other Editors-in-Chief: Fernando Ganzo and Charlotte Garson.
