Triple Feature: Ultra-Rare Screening! UNE FEMME DOUCE (A GENTLE WOMAN), 1969, Restored Print! LES ANGES DU PECHE, 1943, LES DAMES DU BOIS DE BOULOGNE, 1945 May 19, 2012

Saturday, May 19 – 7:30 PM
Triple Feature: Ultra-Rare Screening! UNE FEMME DOUCE (A GENTLE WOMAN), 1969, Paramount, 88 min. Based on a short story by Dostoevsky and perhaps the most secular and sensual of Bresson’s films an impression heightened by its featuring the screen debut of the ravishing Dominique Sanda (THE CONFORMIST), whom the director discovered. A balefully beautiful account of the marriage between the gentle creature of the title (Sanda) and a pawnbroker (Guy Frangin) whose introspectiveness masks his sadistic nature. Bresson’s femme douce can escape her domestic hell only through death - either her husband’s or her own. In French with English subtitles. [35mm]
Trailer
Restored Print! LES ANGES DU PECHE, 1943, 96 min. Adapted by Jean Giraudoux from a Diderot novel, LES ANGES DU PECHE is a thriller in both the spiritual and the more traditional suspenseful sense - as well as being a magnificent example of that little recognized subgenre, the “nun movie.” A pampered young woman (Renee Faure) enters a Dominican convent and dedicates herself to saving a bitter, self-hating delinquent with a murderous heart (Jany Holt). As with many of Bresson’s subsequent characters, the nun’s search for salvation through sacrifice becomes a kind of Calvary, ending in humiliation, death and redemption. In French with English subtitles. [35mm]
LES DAMES DU BOIS DE BOULOGNE, 1945, Janus Films, 86 min. A jealous woman (María Casares, in a piercing performance) takes revenge on the man who spurned her (Paul Bernard) by tricking him into marriage with a prostitute (Elina Labourdette). Jean Cocteau wrote the dialogue for this glistening drama of revenge, which, despite its elegantly acid language and luxe setting, is remarkably Bressonian in its emphasis on entrapment, sacrifice and redemption. In French with English subtitles. [35mm] Trailer

Official Website: http://www.americancinemathequecalendar.com/aero_theatre_events