 |
Le Lit de la vierge (The Virgin's Bed) by Philippe Garrel (1969).
|
35 mm., Black and white, Franscope, approx. 90 minutes.
With music by: Nico and Les Jeunes rebelles. Locations: Brittany, Morocco, and Italy.
Photography: Michel Fournier. Assistant director: Isabelle Pons. Sound: Claude Jauvert.
Editor: Françoise Colin. Production: Zanzibar (Sylvina Boissonnas).
With minimal French dialogue, no subtitles.
With (principally): Pierre Clémenti and Zouzou.
And: Tina Aumont, Pierre-Richard Bré, Margareth Clémenti, Jean-Pierre Kalfon,
Babette Lamy, Didier Léon, Valérie Lagrange, Anne Moriquand,
Frédéric Pardo, Jaïmé Semprun. |
Philippe Garrel, 1991, c Axel Tilche |
It is difficult to push someone in art. It is like pushing someone in the
church of Saint Paul: one is obliged to adopt a certain asceticism. -Philippe Garrel
Philippe Garrel creates a liturgy of bodies, because he delivers them to a secret
ceremony whose only characters are Mary, Joseph, and the child, or their equivalents.
His is not however a pious cinema, although it is a cinema of revelation. -Gilles Deleuze
Pierre Clémenti and Zouzou in
Le Lit de la vierge |
Born in 1948, Philippe Garrel was the wunderkind of French cinema in the 1960s. His
fifth feature, Le Lit de la vierge is a parable of the Jesus story, set in modern times.
In May 1968, Garrel joined his friends on the barricades of Paris, and Le Lit de la vierge,
begun just a few months later, echoes with that period's rebellious spirit. Pierre Clémenti
plays a Christ reluctant to assume his earthly mission. As the Virgin Mary, Zouzou attempts
to reconcile him with his duty. Zouzou also plays Mary Magdalene. But Garrel invokes the
Christian narrative only to reject a strict retelling of that story. Made without a script
and under the influence of LSD, Le Lit de la vierge is minimally concerned with traditional
religion. With an episodic and non-chronological narrative, Garrel's film reminds us of the
contestatory attitude of the '68 generation for whom Jesus was a hippie avant la lettre. |
|
Le Lit de la vierge also suggests ways in which Garrel and his friends saw themselves
as belonging to a kind of religious sect. One memorable scene suggests a baptismal rite,
as Clémenti's Christ leads his followers through water. In the background, the filmmaker
is beat up by another member, until Clémenti comes along to "save" him, intimating Garrel's
own identification with Christ. It is a leitmotif in Garrel's cinema with its emphasis on
suffering, on poverty, and on a belief in his kingdom yet to come.
Garrel is one of the most important filmmakers of the post New Wave period. Yet despite
a retrospective of his work at Lincoln Center in 1997, his cinema remains little known and
under represented in the U.S. Le Lit de la vierge was last screened in the Northeast
in 1970, when Amos Vogel presented it at the Museum of Modern Art.
With special thanks to: Philippe Garrel, Anne-Marie Faux, John Gianvito, and The Harvard Film Archive.
Bibliography:
Philippe Garrel and Thomas Lescure, Une caméra à la place du coeur,
with prefaces By Jean-Luc Godard, Léos Carax, and Jean Douchet
(Aix-en-Provence: Admiranda/Institut de L'Image, 1992).
Kent Jones, "Sad and Proud of It: The Films of Philippe Garrel,"
Film Comment 33, no. 3 (May-June 1997): 24-30.
Text by Sally Shafto.
Back to top
|
Religion Department |
Center for the Study of Religion |
Visual Arts Department
Comments & Suggestions
|
