Cannes Director Spotlight: Alain Resnais

Alain Resnais
New Film: You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet
Country: France
Age: 89
Best Known for: A 60-plus year career, during which he's made a number of undeniable classics, including Night and Fog, Last Year at Marienbad, and Hiroshima Mon Amour

Cannes History
If Ken Loach is the King of Cannes, Alain Resnais is its prince (even at the ripe old age of 89). He's had four films in the Competition: Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959), Stavisky... (1974), Mon oncle d'Amerique (1980), and Wild Grass (2009). No Palmes, but Mon oncle d'Amerique won him the Grand Prix and a FIPRESCI prize, and in 2009, he was awarded a special award for a lifetime of achievement.

His Resume
As far as feature narratives go, it all started with 1959's Hiroshima Mon Amour, which is, ironically, still perhaps Resnais' most admired picture. But Night and Fog, his 1955 documentary short about Nazi concentration camps, would definitely give Hiroshima a run for its money on that front. Combined, the two films marked the arrival of a brilliant new French talent, who, unlike many of his compatriots, enjoyed working outside the framework of the style known as French New Wave. Instead, he was a charter member of what's known as the "Left Bank" school of film, which shares a number of similarities with FNW, but focused more on politics and cinema's connection to other forms of artistic expression.

Last Year at Marienbad was Resnais next landmark achievement. The film came out in 1961, and focused on the confounding story of a man and woman spending time at a chateau who may or may not have met each other before. Like Hiroshima, its screenplay was nominated for an Oscar, and it also won Resnais his only Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival.

He's earned Cesar Award after Cesar Award for himself, his films, and his actors over the next few decades. And though, like I said, he probably hasn't made anything during that time that measures up to the extremely high bar he set early in his career, films like 1980's Mon oncle d'Amerique, 2009's Wild Grass, and 1997's Same Old Song prove Resnais still has as much energy, creativity, and passion as any working director out there.

Resnais On-Demand
Hulu Plus: Night and Fog, Mon oncle d'Amérique
iTunes: Wild Grass
Netflix Instant: Private Fears in Public Places
Vudu: Wild Grass

You Ain’t Seen Nothin' Yet
"A French-language film loosely based on the 1941 Jean Anouilh play Eurydice, [it] depicts a gathering of actors who meet to read the final will of a deceased playwright." —Movie City News

Here's your Palme favorite, folks. There's obviously a decent chance this is Resnais' final film, as grim as that prognostication is, but that'll probably be weighing heavy on the jury's collective heart as it watches and judges the film. So if the quality is there, it might finally be Resnais' time.

Of course, that's a big "if". He hasn't directed anything that would be uniformly considered a masterpiece since the sixties, and if you put recent Resnais up against some of the more recent Palme winners, the man sticks out like a sore thumb. Still, the cast is just loaded with some of the best European cinema has to offer—Mathieu Amalric (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), Lambert Wilson (Of Gods and Men), Sabine Azéma (a Resnais regular), Anne Consigny (A Christmas Tale), and Michel Picolli, who just owned Jury President Nanni Morreti's We Have a Pope.

Behind the scenes, things are also quite promising. Eric Gautier (Into the Wild) is the film's DP, and handling editing duties is Resnais (and Polanski) regular Herve de Luze. Resnais, for the second straight film, has co-ownership of the screenplay with Laurent Herbiet. Overall, you won't find a film in this Competition with a bigger pedigree. Now, we must wait to see if Resnais was able to put the pieces together into something prize-winning.