Eight films by Julien Duvivier

PostED ON 08.07.2015 AT 12:22PM

"If I was an architect and had to build a monument to the cinema, I would place a statue of Duvivier above the entrance. This great technician, this purist was a poet." Jean Renoir

    Despite a prolific career of over 60 films, punctuated by legendary works like The End of the Day, They Were Five, and other classics, despite declarations of admiration by Renoir, Ingmar Bergman or Jean Gabin, Julien Duvivier remains a lesser-regarded director among the major French filmmakers of his time. The fault surely lies in his highly eclectic filmography, where one has difficulty pinpointing a well-defined style. For Duvivier such an issue held no meaning, and this complete artist who came from the theater - a fine screenwriter, seasoned technician and precise actor's director - built a body of work of great consistency, inhabited by a dark yet lucid vision of humanity.
     The Lumière festival will restore the great filmmaker to his rightful place, naturally screening his essential classics, but also showing rarer films like Panic, or Dance Program... A selection of eight films will take us on a journey as part of Bertrand Tavernier's continuing History of French Cinema series, complemented by other tributes and a master class.
     The Julien Duvivier retrospective is made possible thanks to momentum generated by French distributors to showcase and restore heritage films. The combined efforts of Pathé, Gaumont, Tamasa, StudioCanal and TF1 will allow this year's festivalgoers to rediscover the cinema of Duvivier in beautiful digital prints