Film series screening in conjunction with Rupert Bunny: artist in Paris. Depicting the bohemian, cosmopolitan life in Paris during the late 19th century, Australia’s most successful expatriate artist, Rupert Bunny, was a quintessential painter of the belle époque. His idyllic visions of people at leisure were widely appreciated during his lifetime – in France and England as well as Australia. This series, dedicated to the City of Light, recalls the Parisian world of the late 1800s to the beginning of World War I. Produced in France and the United States, some films depict 'real' Paris, with settings that are historically faithful, sometimes shot on location; others conjure an imaginary city, idyllic visions concocted on a sound stage; all evoke the vibrant spirit of fin-de-siècle Paris. Major sponsors  
- Wednesday 18 November 2pm & 7.15pm
Sunday 22 November 2pm
Paris 1900
Dir: Nicole Védrès 1948
80 mins 16mm B&W
English language version
Produced at the end of World War II and assembled from extracts of newsreels and other films, Paris 1900 is a unique document of this vibrant, dynamic city between the years 1900 and 1914. Narrator Claude Dauphin’s wry commentary describes great ladies, actresses and beauties, famous politicians, sportsmen and artists and the varied incidents and preoccupations of those years – from Bleriot’s flight across the channel to the shattering folly of the 1914 war. The film includes glimpses of Nellie Melba and Sarah Bernhardt, who were friends of Rupert Bunny's during this time. Hide description ↑ - Wednesday 25 November 2pm & 7.15pm
Sunday 29 November 2pm
Casque d’or (Golden Marie)
Dir: Jacques Becker 1952
96 mins 35mm B&W Rated PG
Simone Signoret, Serge Reggianni
French with English subtitles
Becker’s masterpiece is an atmospheric love story set in the underworld of pimps, prostitutes and petty criminals of late 19th-century Paris. Becker had worked as director Jean Renoir’s assistant and the visual poetry of Casque d’or is reminiscent of the dark, fatalistic mood of Renoir’s poetic realist films such as A day in the country. Hide description ↑ - Wednesday 2 December 2pm & 7.15pm
Sunday 6 December 2pm
Madame de…
Dir: Max Ophuls 1953
102 mins 35mm B&W Rated G
Danielle Darrieux, Charles Boyer
French with English subtitles
The fin-de-siècle Paris of Madame de... is a world of director Max Ophuls’ imagining: artificial, filled with extraordinary objects, ruled by a strict code of decorum and lived through ritual gestures and ingrained manners. His penultimate film, it is based on an adaptation of Louise de Vilmorin’s novel. The story concerns a young woman, Madame de, and her adulterous affair with an Italian diplomat. As her innocent infatuation grows, it becomes an emotion Madame de… can’t control. Ophuls’ famously restless camera swirls through sumptuous décor of ballrooms and opera houses of Paris, tracing a journey from a world of bright, enchanting surfaces to the dim recesses of the soul. Hide description ↑ - Wednesday 9 December 2pm & 7.15pm
Sunday 13 December 2pm
Pot-bouille (House of lovers)
Dir: Julien Duvivier 1957
120 mins 35mm B&W Rated PG
Gerard Philippe, Danielle Darrieux
French with English subtitles
Penniless Octave Mouret arrives in Paris at the turn of the century to take up a job as an assistant in a draper’s shop run by Madame Hedouin. She takes a fancy to him, as do two girls in the house where he lodges. In this adaptation of a Zola novel, director Duvivier is less interested in Octave than in the life of the building, a melting pot of the vices of the 19th-century Paris bourgeoisie. Hide description ↑ - Wednesday 16 December 2pm & 7.15pm
Sunday 20 December 2pm
Le rideau cramoisi (The crimson curtain)
Dir: Alexandre Astruc 1952
43 mins 35mm B&W Rated PG
Anouk Aimée, Jean-Claude Pascal
French with English subtitles
A young officer is billeted with a bourgeois couple and their beautiful daughter. To his astonishment, the girl makes advances to him and they commence silent nocturnal meetings. Hide description ↑ - Wednesday 6 January 1.30pm & 6pm (Note: earlier screening times)
Sunday 10 January 1.30pm (Note: earlier screening time)
Camille Claudel
Dir: Bruno Nuytten 1988
174 mins 35mm Colour Rated PG
Isabelle Adjani, Gerard Depardieu
French with English subtitles
Set in Paris in 1885, director Bruno Nuytten offers a darkly sensuous story of the French sculptor Camille Claudel, who studied with Rodin and became his lover. The film vividly depicts the 21-year-old Camille's single-minded hunger to express herself and intense dedication to her work as Rodin’s first female apprentice, sculpting under her master's influence and putting his revolutionary ideas into practice. Isabelle Adjani (also a producer of the film) gives an emotion-charged performance as the young artist embarking on an ultimately tragic affair. Her portrayal was rewarded with an Academy Award nomination for best actress. Hide description ↑ - Wednesday 13 January 2pm & 7.15pm
Sunday 17 January 2pm
Chéri
Dir: Stephen Frears 2009
92 mins 35mm Colour Rated M
Michelle Pfeiffer, Kathy Bates
Based on the novel by Colette, Stephen Frears’ witty drama, set in belle-époque Paris, tells the story of the scandalous Léa, the city’s most envied seductress. Léa’s plans of retirement are cut short when she is approached by a former courtesan and arch rival, the barb-throwing gossip Charlotte Peloux, who encourages Léa to teach her disaffected 19-year-old son a thing or two about women. Hide description ↑ - Wednesday 20 January 2pm & 7.15pm
Sunday 24 January 2pm
Coco avant Chanel
Dir: Anne Fontaine 2009
105 mins 35mm Colour Rated PG
Audrey Tautou, Benoît Poelvoorde
French with English subtitles
The story of Coco Chanel's rise from obscure beginnings to the heights of the fashion world. Loosely based on L'irrégulière, the biography by Edmonde Charles-Roux, the film focuses on the formative years of the great fashion designer and shows how a young, strong-willed woman of modest origins, self-taught but become a symbol of success and 'created' the modern woman. Hide description ↑ - Wednesday 27 January 2pm & 7.15pm
Sunday 31 January 2pm
French can-can
Dir: Jean Renoir 1955
93 mins 35mm Colour Rated R (unclassified)
Cast: Jean Gabin, Frantoise Arnoul
French with English subtitles
The story of a theatre producer who turns a humble washerwoman into a star at the Moulin Rouge. Jean Renoir directs this paean to the exalting power of show business using the colour palette of the post-Impressionists. Hide description ↑ - Wednesday 3 February 2pm & 7.15pm
Sunday 7 February 2pm
Moulin Rouge
Dir: John Huston 1952
123 mins 35mm Colour Rated G
Cast: Jose Ferrer, Zsa Zsa Gabor
With Paris recreated at Pinewood Studios in London, Huston’s sombre interpretation of the life of artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec features lavish Technicolor photography by Oswald Morris and Oscar-winning set designs by Paul Sheriff. A feast for the eyes, the film evokes the spirit of Paris in the Naughty Nineties and depicts the infamous dancehall culture as a romanticised, swirling mass of colour and movement. Hide description ↑ - Wednesday 10 February 2pm & 7.15pm
Sunday 14 February 2pm
Camille
Dir: George Cukor 1936
108 mins 35mm B&W Rated G
Greta Garbo, Robert Taylor
In this Hollywood re-creation of the 'gay' demi-monde of late 19th-century Paris, gentlemen meet girls at the theatre, at balls and casinos. The code is discretion, but the game is romance. Camille is the story of Marguerite Gautier, a pretty creature who sharpened her wit with champagne and flourished on the quicksands of popularity. Loosely adapted from the novel by Alexandre Dumas, this is the story Verdi took for La traviata. Hide description ↑ - Wednesday 17 February 2pm & 7.15pm
Sunday 21 February 2pm
An American in Paris
Dir: Vincente Minnelli 1951
113 mins 35mm Colour Rated G
Gene Kelly, Leslie Caron
MGM musical inspired by the 1928 orchestral composition by George Gershwin. Set in a Paris entirely recreated on the sound stages of Hollywood, the film is interspersed with show-stopping dance numbers choreographed by Gene Kelly and set to popular Gershwin tunes. The climax is The American in Paris ballet, an 18-minute dance featuring Kelly and Caron. The ballet sequence alone cost more than half a million dollars, a staggering sum at the time. Hide description ↑
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