What with a full retrospective at Centre Pompidou in Paris and at Cinémathèque Française in Toulouse (not to mention Angers Film Festival), the DVD release of the delirious Je t’aime je t’aime and the publishing of The Harry Dickson Adventures screenplay -which never was adapted on-screen but became legendary instead (Henri Langlois used to say the existence of this movie would have changed the course of French cinema), 2008 appears to be the year of Alain Resnais.
While there is no doubt Alain Resnais’s works are essential in cinema history, it seems he has few ‘inheriters’. By comparison, those of Renoir, Pialat or Truffaut are numerous. Maybe because Resnais has always confronted cinema to other worlds, science, history of art, structuralism, comics or pop music. The publishing of a screenplay by Frédéric de Towarnicki -who just died at the age of 87-, Harry Dickson’s Adventures, an ambitious three-hour movie project that Resnais has never been able to shoot even though it kept him busy for almost a decade, shows the filmmaker’s interest for popular forms like serials -Resnais has always been very attentive to cinema and television. If Resnais has few inheriters, it’s maybe also because of his very personal way to submit those popular forms to experimentation. Let’s hope the retrospective organized at Centre Pompidou from January 16 to March 3, at Toulouse Cinémathèque and at Angers’ Premiers Plans Film Festival until January 31 will enable Alain Resnais’ cinema to shine and contaminate future cinema.

The retrospective at Centre Pompidou

The retrospective at Angers Premiers Plans Film Festival
The retrospective at Toulouse French Cinematheque