LE RÉVÉLATEUR
In LE RÉVÉLATEUR, the first of his four Zanzibar films, Philippe Garrel (LA CONCENTRATION, LE LIT DE LA VIERGE, LA CICATRICE INTÉRIEURE) creates an elegy in simple language that follows a sinuous path enclosing its spectators in a timeless, symbolic universe that seems prone at any moment to self-destruct. The shots drip with a desperate poetry, inhabiting the realm between under- and over-exposure, between on and off-screen, day and night, waking and sleeping, and existing under the constant threat of dissolution. The title is a French pun on the chemical used to develop celluloid - it reveals images, it reveals life, but the threat of annihilation, of the loss of light, remains.
SPECIAL MENTION
"LE RÉVÉLATEUR is a silent film. A couple and their child flee in the face of an unknown, but still considerable menace. A film with neither laughter nor mutterings. In a desolate landscape, full of humidity and humiliation, we see the weakest of beings stage his revolt: a child."
– Bernadette Lafont, actor
“LE RÉVÉLATEUR is a dream-like film about what psychoanalysis calls the primal scene: how a film is born, how a child is made, the first time a child sees his parents making love.”
– Philippe Garrel
"For me, it was an absolute pleasure, at the time when Philippe Garrel had perfectly assimilated the importance of the cinematic image to the point of baptizing his film LE RÉVÉLATEUR (The Developer), allowing me the greatest liberty to improvise and to invent, with voluntarily minimal lighting in order to stimulate our imagination and an extremely sensitive film stock in order to capture the faintest glimmers or the strongest apparitions. If the photography of this little silent film borders on the amateurish, it is nonetheless one of the most beautiful in the history of cinema with its luminous and charming dreamlike manner and its reasonably fantastic narration, of remembering or of suggesting a wealth of sentiments, poetic and profound."
– Michel Fournier, cinematographer
Contents
Format: DVD-PAL / Region 0
(No Regional Code); Inquire for downloadable DSL file/s
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LE RÉVÉLATEUR
(France, 1968)
Director, Writer, Editor: Philippe Garrel
Cinematographer: Michel Fournier
Camera Operator: Philippe Rousselot
Production Company: Zanzibar Films
Cast: Stanislas Robiolles, Laurent Terzieff & Bernadette Lafont
• 62 minutes
• 16mm
• B&W
• Silent
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Total Running Time: 02:02:56
Booklet Text: Sally Shafto & Emeric de Lastens (French & English)
Published By: Re:Voir Video
Institutional Price: $250 (plus shipping), Digital File Download $500
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