Providence

Director: Alain Resnais

1977 / 110min / DCP

“Misunderstood and underrated when it came out in 1977, Resnais’s first English-speaking film is a provocative meditation on time, memory, and the fiction-making process. John Gielgud plays Clive, a dying novelist who is busy working on a new book based on his vindictive vision of his family: his wife, Sonia (Ellen Burstyn); his illegitimate son, Kevin (David Warner); and his son, Claude (Dirk Bogarde). When they all show up for a family meal, we learn their true natures. Featuring a sumptuous Hollywood-style score by Miklós Rózsa, Resnais’s sensitive take on David Mercer's ferocious screenplay creates a dark, surreal tale of pure cinema that explores identity, memory, and imagination, where the past and the future dissolve into a totally haunting present tense.”—Adeline Monzier

“In the 1960s, the literary movement of the ‘Nouveau Roman’ did not define itself anymore as the writing of an adventure but as the adventure of the writing process. And a decade before, Cocteau said of cinema that it was death at work, death in the present moment. In Providence, Resnais navigates between these two movements: like an Orpheus with tightly closed eyes, his creative path becomes a ‘nouveau roman’ filmed by Cocteau.”—Christophe Honoré

Q&A with Christophe Honoré and Professor Joseph McElhaney Saturday, March 11