“Marcel Hanoun is the strongest, surest and subtlest of young filmmakers now working in France. The writing, direction, photography and editing of these films are the work of one man, exemplifying a radically personal vision and working method unique within the contemporary European context”--Annette Michelson, P. Adams Sitney.
Marcel Hanoun (born 1929 in Tunis) emerged with the filmmakers of the French New Wave in the late Fifties and early Sixties, and at the time surpassed even the most radical of these directors - Resnais and Godard - in his exploration of the filmic possibilities for abstract narration - comparable, as Noel Burch pointed out at the time, to work being done in contemporary painting and music.
With Une Simple Histoire, Hanoun was compared most frequently with Robert Bresson among his French predecessors; Jonas Mekas elaborates: “...to the qualities which we associate with Bresson - such as the total control of image, precision, exactness and almost puritan seriousness - Hanoun has added sensuousness, lyricism of image, structural concern, and the eye and hand of the cameraman.... There are moments in his films, sudden explosions of images, which belong to the most ecstatic moments of film art.”
Hanoun has remained a radical figure in filmmaking since Une Simple Histoire; La Nuit Claire is his most recent film available in a subtitled print. In addition to his 11 features, Hanoun has made several films for French television; he continues to make short films, two of which are included in tonight's program.
