12
17-23 January 2014
- Louis Malle
- In English, French, German, Spanish
- 107 mins
Showing as part of Projecting the World
Louis Malle was perhaps the most commercially successful of the French directors associated with La nouvelle vague in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Not directly linked to Godard, Truffaut et al, he was able to appeal to both ‘popular’ and art cinema audiences. Viva Maria! sees him taking two major stars, Jeanne Moreau and Brigitte Bardot, to Mexico to make a kind of comedy-adventure film related to the cycle of spaghetti westerns dealing with the Mexican Revolution in the 1910s.
The film’s plot sees Bardot as the daughter of an IRA bomber fighting against the British who is forced to flee and join a circus/variety troupe travelling through an unnamed Central American country. Malle wrote the script with Jean-Claude Carrière (who had earlier worked with Luis Buñuel) and the film is full of visual jokes and commentaries on filmmaking – an intelligent, funny and sometimes silly film that is never less than entertaining.
Cast: Brigitte Bardot, Jeanne Moreau, George Hamilton
Country: France, Italy
Year: 1965
Subtitles: Partial English
Screening times
- Fri 17
Jan - Sat 18
Jan - Sun 19
Jan - Mon 20
Jan - Tue 21
Jan - Wed 22
Jan 18:30 - Thu 23
Jan