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Ingrid Bergman in ELENA AND HER MEN Screens at The Classic French Film Festival This Sunday
The Classic French Film Festival celebrates St. Louis’ Gallic heritage and France’s cinematic legacy. The featured films span the decades from the 1920s through the 1980s (with a particular focus on filmmakers from the New Wave), offering a comprehensive overview of French cinema. ELENA AND HER MEN will screen as part of the festival at 1pm Sunday, June 22nd at the St. Louis Art Museum.
Set amid the military maneuvers and carnivals of turn-of-the-century France, Jean Renoir’s delirious romantic comedy “Elena and Her Men” stars a radiant Ingrid Bergman as a beautiful but impoverished Polish princess who drives men of all stations to fits of desperate love. Among her smitten admirers are handsome lover Henri (Mel Ferrer) and the wealthy boot manufacturer she’s supposed to wed. When Elena elicits the fascination of a famous general (Jean Marais), she finds herself at the center of romantic machinations and political scheming, with the hearts of several men – as well as the future of France – in her hands.
In critic Roger Ebert’s view, the plot of “Elena” is scarcely the point: “The movie is about something else – about Bergman’s rare eroticism, and the way her face seems to have an inner light on film. Was there ever a more sensuous actress in the movies? Francois Truffaut, reviewing this film, observed that ‘sex is the only focus of attention.’ Renoir’s plot is essentially a farce.… The threads of the story lead to a jolly engagement party in the manufacturer’s mansion, and here Renoir gives us the same sort of jolly, bawdy upstairs-and-downstairs business he had so much fun with in ‘The Rules of the Game.’ The house seems to be a maze of interlocking rooms, through which the manufacturer’s son chases the buxom maid, while Bergman plays hide-and-seek with the general.”
ELENA AND HER MEN will screen at 1pm Sunday, June 22nd at the St. Louis Art Museum.
With an introduction and post-film discussion by Andrew Wyatt, film critic for St. Louis Magazine’s Look/Listen arts-and-entertainment blog and the Gateway Cinephile film blog.
Admission: $12 general admission; $10 for students, Cinema St. Louis members, Saint Louis Art Museum (SLAM) members, and Alliance Française members; Webster U. screenings free for Webster U. students.
A PDF version of the Classic French Film Festival program is available to download HERE:
Check back later in the week here at We Are Movie Geeks for more information about the Classic French Film Festival
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