Starting today and running through the 16th, then picking back up on the 20th through the 23rd, The Modern and the Lone Star Film Society are putting on a film festival celebrating the 50th anniversary of the French New Wave with a tribute to the directors who influenced and emerged from the influential Cahiers du Cinema. Screenings include many of the most famous and pivotal, now classic films, from groundbreaking French filmmakers such as Francois Truffaut, Louis Malle, Claude Chabrol and Jean Luc Godard. Tickets are $8.50; $6.50 for Modern members and Lone Star Film Society members. Advance sales begin two hours prior to each show.

The schedule for this week’s portion of the festival is as follows:

Thursday, August 13th
6:00 PM Cocktail Reception (cash bar); Baguettes and Brie; Live music
6:45 pm Opening remarks: Christopher Kelly, author and film critic, Star Telegram
7:00 pm -
Last Year at Marienbad
L’année derniere à Marienbad
France 1961; Director Alain Resnais, with Giorgio Albertazzi and Delphine Seyrig;
94 min
Not just a defining work of the French New Wave but one of the great, lasting mysteries of modern art, Alain Resnais’ epochal Last Year at Marienbad (L’année dernière à Marienbad) has been puzzling appreciative viewers for decades. Written by radical master of the New Novel Alain Robbe-Grillet, this surreal fever dream, or nightmare, gorgeously fuses the past with the present in telling its ambiguous tale of a man and a woman (Giorgio Albertazzi and Delphine Seyrig) who may or may not have met a year ago, perhaps at the very same cathedral-like, mirror-filled château they now find themselves wandering. Unforgettable in both its confounding details (gilded ceilings, diabolical parlor games, a loaded gun) and haunting scope, Resnais’ investigation into the nature of memory is disturbing, romantic, and maybe even a ghost story.

Friday, August 14th
6:00 pm -
Elevator to the Gallows
Ascenseur pour l’échafaud
France 1957; Director Louis Malle, with Maurice Ronet, Jeanne Moreau, Lino Ventura;
89 min
A taut, free-wheeling thriller with an ingenious plot, sparkling location photography and a fantastic improvised score by the great Miles Davis, this film established Louis Malle as an exciting new voice in French cinema just as the New Wave was about to crash on to the scene. Critics have found the story contrived, but the film, if not an absolute must-view, is certainly an absolute must-listen.
8 pm-
Zazie in the Metro
Zazie dans le métro
France 1960; Director Louis Malle, with Catherine Demongeot, Phillippe Noiret; 88 min
Adapted from a comic novel by Raymond Queneau and occasionally labored in its attempts to find filmic equivalents for Queneau’s extravagant and hilarious wordplay, Zazie dans le metro is a film that succeeds in spite of itself. It is funny in its own right and mordantly perceptive in the way its unflappable and knowing pre-pubescent heroine deflates all attempts to put one over on her.

Saturday, August 15th
5:00 pm
Opening remarks: Charles Dee Mitchell, freelance author and contributing writer to the Dallas Morning News and Art in America.
Breathless
À bout de souffle
France 1960; Director Jean-Luc Goddard, with Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg;
90 min
Godard’s first feature and the film that (perhaps misleadingly) came to define the novelty of the New Wave. Petty crook and poseur Michel Poiccard kills a traffic cop and goes on the run. He takes refuge with American paper-seller and aspirant journalist, Patricia. Godard’s elliptical story-telling and the hero’s seeming amorality were equally puzzling – even shocking – to audiences at the time. Now it is a classic.

Sunday, August 16th
2:00 pm
Pickpocket
French 1959; Director Robert Bresson, with Martin LaSalle, Perreo Leymarie and Marika
Green; 75 min
Robert Bresson’s incomparable tale of crime and redemption follows Michel, a young pickpocket who spends his days working the streets, subway cars, and train stations of Paris. As his compulsion grows, however, so too does his fear that his luck is about to run out. Tautly choreographed and crafted in Bresson’s inimitable style, Pickpocket reveals a master director at the height of his powers.
“Ultimately inexplicable, this concentrated, elliptical, economical movie is an experience that never loses its strangeness.” J. Hoberman, Village Voice.
3:30 pm
Sea Change: How the French New Wave Was Part of a Changing Art World
Panel discussion with guest speakers
Dr. Robert Anderson, filmmaker, producer and professor of film studies at Tarleton State University
Dr. Frances Colpitt , Deedie Potter Rose Chair of Art History at TCU and a specialist in contemporary art, theory and criticism.
John Murphy, Jazz Studies Division Chair and Web Editor, University of North Texas
Dr. David E. Whillock, Dean of the College of Communication, Texas Christian University, and a CINE Golden Eagle award winner in 2007 for his film, My Voyage to Italy.