Chris Marker - Le joli mai (1963)

[Thorkell A. Ottarsson]

This is a some kind of city film. Not in the classical form of filming
life and buildings with an arc that spans sunrise to sunset. Here
Chris Marker films one month in the life of Parisians. The focus is on
faces and spoken words. The city is only in the background. How do
people use their freedom? Are people socially conscious? What is
important in their life? Sadly most of them are rather hooked up on
materialism or Utopian ideas.

As often with Chris Marker, the film really starts to get interesting
in the last 30 min. Before that we mostly have interviews with people
who live a very uninteresting life. Many not interested in anything
that is happening around them. There are some communists there with
high hopes and dreams which we know now where rather childish. Marker
often cuts a picture of a cat rolling its eyes at those intellectuals
:)

The most interesting parts are the interviews with the outsiders. The
Algerian labourer, the African immigrant the woman in prison and the
family who got a new apartment. They had something like 9 children and
just got an apartment with 3 bed rooms. The mother says, I don't know
what I'm going to do with all that space :)

Thorkell