12/23/2023 0 Comments Movie about lighthouse keepersHe simply doesn’t share the genre’s worldview, lacking its corrosive social pessimism or its interest in the city. But it’s not just the lack of hindsight that means Rozier gets the genre interestingly wrong. Rozier is attempting to make a film noir here, and unlike Malle, Truffaut or Godard he’s making it at the same time as the American noirs. 56 rue Pigalle’s flaws are genuinely revealing. It’s in this context that 56 rue Pigalle, despite being presented as the B-feature in this set, is most interesting.īoth Manina and 56 rue Pigalle are flawed films, but Manina’s flaws are simply flaws impediments that stop the movie achieving its potential. (Not that this angle is new – on its American release the picture was retitled The Girl in the Bikini) What sort of director was Rozier? I’ve read no biographical information on him, but watching his films and his fencing I began to build up a picture of what he must have been like. Today, Rozier’s name is little-known in English-language cinephile circles, and the marketing for this reissue focuses instead on the 18-year-old ingenue who plays the titular Manina – one Brigitte Bardot, in her first substantial role. The incident brought Rozier a lot of publicity, enough to ensure that later films like 1952’s Manina were substantial hits. It’s a weirdly charming sight – certainly more gentlemanly than Uwe Boll and Joe Swanberg’s adventures in the field of critic-attacking. And that’s what Eureka have included here five minutes of newsreel footage of the critic and the director fencing with each other. Although it was a commercial hit on its release in 1949, 56 rue Pigalle received poor reviews, so poor that Rozier challenged one of the reviewers, François Chalais, to a duel. It actually pertains not to the title feature, but to another Rozier film included as a bonus, the romantic noir 56 rue Pigalle. Let’s get the big issue out of the way first: Eureka’s new Blu-ray release of Manina, the Lighthouse-Keeper’s Daughter by Willy Rozier boasts the most unexpected and delightful extra feature of the year.
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