RYÛSUKE HAMAGUCHI, ARI ASTER, PEDRO COSTA, ROBERT EGGERS, DAVY CHOU: FIVE FILMMAKERS ON JEAN GRÉMILLON
Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, Ari Aster, Pedro Costa, Robert Eggers, Davy Chou: Five Filmmakers on Jean Grémillon
Jean Grémillon on the set of White Paws (1949)
After releasing his first fiction feature in 1928, Jean Grémillon (1902-’59) would go on to become one of the most formidable French filmmakers working—best remembered for his expressionistically shot poetic realist melodramas produced with actors such as Madeleine Renaud and Jean Gabin—and then one of its most neglected.
As our series Jean Grémillon x2 pays tribute with a duet of newly restored films, 1937’s Lady Killer and 1938’s The Strange Mister Victor, Metrograph has gathered quotes from five visionary filmmakers whose work today bears his indelible imprint and enduring influence, in the hope of introducing a new generation to a fervid and lyrical cinematic imagination.
RYûSUKE HAMAGUCHI, DIRECTOR, DRIVE MY CAR (2021)
The Strange Mister Victor (1938)
“Grémillon’s Lady Killer and The Strange Mister Victor are truly wonderful films. Grémillon is that other great ‘Jean’ in French Cinema (the more well-known one of course being Jean Renoir). Through his films, Grémillon shows that he not only knows where or how to place the camera, but that he grasps the mysteries of this world. Each of his films surprises me. The actions of his characters, for instance, can sometimes appear almost contradictory, but Grémillon imbues them with truth. I still don’t know how he accomplished this. Grémillon is as much a mystery as this world.”
ARI ASTER, DIRECTOR, BEAU IS AFRAID (2023)
Lady Killer (1937)
“One of the great, relatively unsung giants of poetic realism in French cinema. An architect of complicated human stories distinguished by their sensitivity and fascination with human behavior, Grémillon was a formalist of impeccable craft whose training as a musician gave him an especially heightened feeling for the rhythms of dramatic structure and the Melos of melodrama. Criminally neglected since his time, his name deserves a place beside Carne’s and Renoir’s.”
PEDRO COSTA, DIRECTOR, VITALENA VARELA (2019)
L'amour d'une femme (1953)
“One day, Jean-Marie Straub told me a moral tale, the story of Jean Grémillon. He told me of how tall a man he was, how serious a filmmaker he was, the finest craftsmen French cinema has ever known. He told of how this true communist was broken and prevented from making films by the ever-rotting industry, because Grémillon was interested in fragile human beings and desires and class struggles. Jean-Marie, twenty years old, just arrived in Paris, was in the queue for L'amour d'une femme, Grémillon‘s last feature. On another line, fewer people were queuing for the American The Robe. The owner of the theater went by the Grémillon crowd whispering: ’Step on over to The Robe, don‘t go see this, it‘s a movie by a drunkard!’ I urge you to go watch all the films by Jean Grémillon!“
ROBERT EGGERS, DIRECTOR, THE LIGHTHOUSE (2019)
The Lighthouse Keepers (1929)
“The nautical films of Jean Epstein and Jean Grémillon, set in Brittany, were very influential [on The Lighthouse]. We give a nod to the image in Grémillon’s The Lighthouse Keepers (1929) of the son who is bitten by the rabid dog, looking at the light. We do it as an overhead zoom shot—the one zoom in the movie. We do pay homage to that. But, on the other hand, like Béla Tarr’s wind, that is what the light does in a lighthouse. When Jarin [Blaschke] and I went to a real lighthouse with a Fresnel lens in northern California, we were just hypnotized looking at the light. It’s amazing.”
DAVY CHOU, DIRECTOR, RETURN TO SEOUL (2022)
Lady Killer (1937)
“Watching Grémillon’s films for the first time, a question came to me: what is this emotional outburst that crosses me each time? Where does it come from? What is its secret? One lesson of his cinema might be that the dialectic movement must take place within the characters themselves, rather than only from one character to another. The heroes of Grémillon are always struggling to contain contradictory telluric forces, which leads them to the verge of explosion. In his films, emancipation also causes destruction, and one can love and hate in the same motion and with the same mad intensity. These irrational tensions are what grip the heart so singularly. If we are used to thinking that in the cinema of Jean Renoir, life overflows, then in that of Grémillon, it is indeed the heart which overflows.”
