MARIE POUR MÉMOIRE

The films in this DVD edition comprise 3 of the films that Philippe Garrel made while he was still a teenager:  LES ENFANTS DÉSACORDÉS (1964), MARIE POUR MÉMOIRE (1967), and ACTUA 1 (1968); this constitutes the adolescent period of his filmography.  These sound motion pictures immediately preceded the films from Garrel’s silent period, among them LE RÉVÉLATEUR (1968), LE LIT DE LA VIERGE (1969), and LES HAUTES SOLITUDES (1974).  Both LES ENFANTS DÉSACORDÉS and MARIE POUR MÉMOIRE center on the trials and tribulations of youth, amidst a background of rising social consciousness and unrest.  While LES ENFANTS DÉSACORDÉS is directly related to his own life, MARIE POUR MÉMOIRE is perhaps the film most removed from Garrel’s real life, despite the presence of family members (father Maurice and brother Thierry, who both acted in the film, and another brother François, who composed the music score).

'“MARIE POUR MÉMOIRE [Garrel’s first feature-length film] represents the missing link between the New Wave filmmakers and the Zanzibar group -- an informal association of young filmmakers situated within the revolutionary movement of May 1968.”

- Nanako Tsukidate
 

"Late 60s, the golden age of Barthes, Lacan, Debord, Marx and Coca-Cola ... A child of this era but also of Langlois and Murnau, Philippe Garrel, a silent young man, directs his first long feature, MARIE POUR MÉMOIRE. Today, the film is as dated as it is oddly current. The film has lived through declamatory tirades, the distanced acting of some actors, and the 2-CVs in the streets of Paris. The film has retained all its strength and beauty in the primitive scenes of Garrel as son, the comic power of Garrel as father, the presence and the face of Zouzou, the silences and the looks, the evocation of social violence, sentimental dereliction and solitude..."

-Serge Kaganski, The Inrockuptibles, 22/09/1999

This DVD edition also includes his first short film (LES ENFANTS DÉSACORDÉS), which he directed at age 16 in three days only, with the short ends from a film sketch by Claude Berri, with whom he was a trainee. Finally, there is the famous ACTUA I. A revolutionary news film - supported by Jean-Luc Godard - on the month long barricades of May '68, finally unearthed after 47 years from the JLG film archive.

All Philippe Garrel titles distributed by GME 

 All Zanzibar titles distributed by GME