Jacques Rozier‘s French New Wave legacy will now be available on the big screen for modern audiences.
Rozier directed five feature films and a slew of short films across his career. Rozier made his directorial debut in 1962 with “Adieu Philippine,” which was critically acclaimed by the iconic Cahiers du Cinéma. Rozier’s works are rarely shown in the U.S., and now courtesy of Film at Lincoln Center and Janus Films, a retrospective festival celebrating the auteur will take place at FLC from August 16 through August 22.
Titled “Jacques Rozier: Chronicler of Summer,” the program will premiere several new restorations of Rozier’s signature works, including 4K restorations of “Near Orouët” (1971) and “Maine-Océan Express” (1986).
Rozier was born in Paris in 1926 and was at the forefront of the French New Wave movement of the late 1950s and 1960s. He was considered one of the last living contemporaries of that time until his death in 2023. His fifth and final film, “Fifi Martingale,” premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2001.
Per the official release, Rozier “distinguished himself from his peers through his fixation on the idea of vacations as theatrical staging grounds upon which his magnetic actors could play and simply be, making him something like a more lighthearted (though no less complex) counterpart to his fellow New Waver, Jacques Rivette. It is remarkable that Rozier’s influence has been so profoundly felt considering how rarely his singular films have screened outside of France.”
Richard Linklater especially has praised late filmmaker Rozier for being an inspiration for his own filmography.
“I was lucky and so excited to discover ‘Adieu Philippine’ earlier this year in France, because it is very little known and not available in the U.S. It’s my new favorite French New Wave film,” Linklater said, as included by the release.
Linklater is depicting the French New Wave in his upcoming film “Nouvelle Vague,” which tells the story of Jean-Luc Godard making his filmmaking debut with “Breathless” after working as a film critic at the Cahiers du Cinema. Guillaume Marbeck is portraying Godard with Zoey Deutch as Jean Seberg.
The festival is organized by Florence Almozini and Dan Sullivan, and presented in collaboration with Janus Films.
Check out the full lineup below.
New 2K Restoration
Adieu Philippine
Jacques Rozier, 1962, France, 110m
French with English subtitles
In his bold yet playful feature debut—an overlooked gem of the French New Wave—Jacques Rozier satirizes several major cultural currents of early-1960s France: political blindness, romantic escapism, and commercial corruption. Young Michel (Jean-Claude Aimini) works as a camera technician for a television studio, where he meets two would-be actresses, Liliane (Yveline Céry) and Juliette (Stefania Sabatini). The duo’s demeaning work in advertising allows them to connect Michel with an unscrupulous director (Vittorio Caprioli), who subsequently stiffs him on a job. Fed up with their exploitative industry, Michel, Liliane, and Juliette head to Corsica for a holiday and to track down the director—all while a developing love triangle strains the girls’ friendship. With confidence and panache, Rozier expertly employs documentary-style shooting, improvisational acting (among a mostly nonprofessional cast), and kinetic montage sequences to capture the disparity between blithe youth and the societal pressures—especially Michel’s imminent military service in Algeria—that threaten its innocence. A Janus Films release.
Friday, August 16 at 6:00pm
Saturday, August 17 at 2:00pm
Sunday, August 18 at 8:15pm
Monday, August 19 at 3:30pm
Tuesday, August 20 at 9:00pm
Wednesday, August 21 at 6:00pm
Thursday, August 22 at 4:15pm
New 4K Restoration
Near Orouët / Du côté d’Orouët
Jacques Rozier, 1971, France, 160m
French with English subtitles
In early September, three young Parisians—Caroline (Caroline Cartier), her cousin Kareen (Françoise Guégan), and Joëlle (Danièle Croisy)—travel to the sparsely populated oceanside town of Orouët for a carefree holiday. At the house of Caroline’s mother, the trio soon take in Joëlle’s boss Gilbert (Bernard Ménez), and romantic complications inevitably ensue: ever the schlemiel, Gilbert suffers subtle humiliations at the women’s hands in order to remain close to Joëlle, his crush, while Joëlle develops feelings for Patrick (Patrick Verde), a handsome, sporty neighbor who in turn flirts with Kareen. Rozier constructs his love triangle (or, rather, square) without an ounce of melodrama, focusing as much on the vacation’s languorous atmosphere—and its giddy effect on the friends’ inside jokes and childish slapstick—as on the slow-burn plot. Perfectly capturing both the liberating promise and the melancholic effervescence of summer, Near Orouët is a minor masterpiece of the post–New Wave era and a beautiful meditation on the fleeting nature of youth, love, and time. A Janus Films release.
Saturday, August 17 at 4:30pm
Tuesday, August 20 at 3:00pm
Wednesday, August 21 at 8:30pm
New 2K Restoration
The Castaways of Turtle Island / Les naufragés de l’île de la Tortue
Jacques Rozier, 1976, France, 140m
French with English subtitles
Having set his first two features at seaside holidays, Rozier used the third, The Castaways of Turtle Island, to mock the tourist industry and the “going native” movement, increasingly popular among first-world vacationers. Things quickly go south when travel agents Jean-Arthur (Pierre Richard) and Joël (Maurice Risch) offer a “fend for yourself” getaway on a deserted island, with their agency making them accompany clients through deep jungle and across barely charted waters to reach a destination that could give Robinson Crusoe a run for his money. Joël enlists younger brother Bernard (Jacques Villeret) to go in his place, but Jean-Arthur isn’t so lucky and soon devolves into a semi-mad purist who will settle for nothing less than the ultimate in survivalist adventure. Meanwhile, a motley crew of sightseers becomes divided over how real this shipwreck holiday should be. Far ahead of its time in its satirical targets and its mixing of disparate narrative tones, Turtle Island is a hilarious comic send-up that could only have emerged from Rozier’s puckish imagination. A Janus Films release.
Sunday, August 18 at 3:00pm
Monday, August 19 at 8:45pm
New 4K Restoration
Maine-Océan Express / Maine-Océan
Jacques Rozier, 1986, France, 130m
French, Portuguese, and Spanish with English subtitles
By land, by sea, by air… In Rozier’s quirkiest comedy, a Brazilian dancer’s (Rosa-Maria Gomes) invalid train ticket for a journey from Paris to Saint-Nazaire sparks a shaggy-dog story that encompasses the adventures of a quick-tempered boatman (Yves Afonso), his highfalutin attorney (Lydia Feld), a scheming talent agent (Pedro Armendáriz Jr.), and several other memorable characters as they converge and disperse via various modes of transportation throughout a series of unpredictable coincidences. With the boundlessness of human adaptability as its lodestar, Maine-Océan Express covers a delirious swath of narrative ground, including the roundabout path that returns a hapless train conductor (Bernard Ménez) to his duties after he joins an impromptu samba session and nearly becomes “the next Maurice Chevalier.” Applying his long-take shooting style to a plot of episodic, anarchic zaniness, Rozier once more proves himself a master of making the patently absurd appear completely realistic, and vice versa. A Janus Films release.
Saturday, August 17 at 8:00pm
Monday, August 19 at 6:00pm
Thursday, August 22 at 1:30pm
New 2K Restoration
Fifi Martingale
Jacques Rozier, 2001, France, 127m
French with English subtitles
Rozier’s final film is a joyful compendium of his major themes and strategies as well as one of the funniest depictions of the theater ever committed to celluloid. When a director (Mike Marshall) decides—out of pure superstition—to overhaul his play after a successful six-month run, he unwittingly instigates changes that appear to doom the production. Enter, by pure coincidence, Gaston (Jean Lefebvre)—a friend of the star, Fifi (Lydia Feld as Lili Vonderfeld), and the possessor of a near-perfect memory that allows him to quickly assume one of the major roles. Everything seems to fall into place until Gaston gambles his advance to raise money for his own struggling theatrical company, loses his recall abilities, and becomes the target of revenge by the man he replaced onstage (Yves Afonso). Filled to the brim with punning wordplay, theatrical allusions, and the delicious chaos of backstage maneuvering, Fifi Martingale is perhaps Rozier’s finest comedic take on the wild digressions and nick-of-time improvisations that comprise both art and life. A Janus Films release.
Sunday, August 18 at 5:45pm
Tuesday, August 20 at 6:30pm
Rozier Shorts Program
New 2K Restoration
Blue Jeans
Jacques Rozier, 1957, France, 22m
An inventive, breezy sketch that feels like a study for Rozier’s feature debut Adieu Philippine, Blue Jeans captures the flirtatious follies that ensue between four teenagers on the beaches of Cannes. A Janus Films release.
New 2K Restoration
Bardot, Godard: Le parti des choses
Jacques Rozier, 1963, France, 10m
A behind-the-scenes documentary as only Rozier could make, this film finds him tagging along with Jean-Luc Godard, Brigitte Bardot, and Michel Piccoli as they arrive in Capri to film Godard’s seminal Contempt (1963). A Janus Films release.
New 2K Restoration
Paparazzi
Jacques Rozier, 1963, France, 22m
Another look at life behind the scenes of the filming of Jean-Luc Godard’s Contempt in Capri, Paparazzi finds Rozier turning his camera on the pesky photographers who simply will not leave Brigitte Bardot alone. A Janus Films release.
In the Wind / Dans le vent
Jacques Rozier, 1963, France, 8m
Ever a chronicler of his times, In the Wind finds Rozier (and DP Willy Kurant) hitting the pavement in Paris, documenting the latest fashion trends to take hold in the City of Lights. Featuring a score by none other than Serge Gainsbourg.
Friday, August 16 at 8:30pm
Sunday, August 18 at 1:00pm
