New York State Writers Institute - Classic Film Series

French Classic Films

March 27, 1998 (Friday) at 7:30 p.m

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Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue
(Free and Open to the Public)

Paris Qui Dort
(The Crazy Ray)
(1924, 36 minutes, silent, black & white, 16 mm)
Directed by Réne Clair
Starring Martinelli, Henri Rollan, Albert Préjean


Réne Clair's first film, which set the tone for his subsequent career, is a fantastic comedy about a group of people wandering through a Paris which has been immobilized by a mad scientist with his ray gun.

Zero de Conduite
(Zero for Conduct)
 (1933, 44 minutes, black & white, 16 mm)
Directed by Jean Vigo
Starring Jean Dasté, Robert Le Flon, Louis Lefebre

Students in a French boarding school rebel against the tyranical headmaster and the strict regiment. A clear forerunner of Lindsay Anderson's IF, this exhilaratingly anarchistic film was banned from public exhibition until 1945.

Une Partie de Campagne
(A Day int he Country)
(1936, 40 minutes, black & white, 16 mm)
Directed by Jean Renoir
Starring Sylvia Bataille, Georges Sait-Saens, Jacques Borel

At a picnic along a river, a Parisian mother and daughter find romance while the menfolk try to fish. Nature plays a starring role in the cinematic tone poem based on a short story by Guy de Maupassant.