While Jean-Luc Godard is primarily known for his groundbreaking French New Wave era pictures, and his bold, contemporary cinematic experiments, there is a whole swath of films from the ’80s that don’t always get their due. However, an obscurity from that time period has been restored and is making its way out into the world again.
1986’s “Grandeur et décadence d’un petit commerce de cinéma” finds Godard going meta, with the picture starring Jean-Pierre Léaud as a director who runs into no shortage of professional and personal problems in trying to mount his next film. Here’s the official synopsis:
It was said that cinema was a dream factory… Speaking of dreams, there’s a director, Gaspard Bazin who is preparing his film and doing screen tests to recruit extras. Speaking of factories, there’s Jean Almereyda, the producer, who’s had his hour of glory and is finding it increasingly difficult to raise the finance for his projects. Between them, there’s Eurydice, Almereyda’s wife, who would like to be an actress. While Almereyda tries to find money to round off the film’s budget, and this at the risk of his own life, for the money promised to him comes from very fishy sources, Gaspard does screen tests with Eurydice. Cinema is as much the art of finding a beautiful face to capture on film as it is the art of finding money to pay for the film. Grandeur and decadence is about this. It’s also the portrait of these extras, technicians, all these people who work in the dark of the cinema, and also for television.
First made for television, “Grandeur et décadence d’un petit commerce de cinéma” hit the big screen this month at the Locarno Film Festival. Hopefully one of the boutique, arthouse labels stateside will pick it up and bring it to cinemas here.
