Trans-Europ Express

Discuss releases by the BFI and the films on them.

Moderator: MichaelB

Message
Author
User avatar
antnield
Joined: Tue Jun 28, 2005 1:59 pm
Location: Cheltenham, England

Trans-Europ Express

#1 Post by antnield » Fri May 03, 2013 11:53 am

Dual-format edition due 23rd September.

User avatar
knives
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2008 6:49 pm

Re: Trans-Europ Express

#2 Post by knives » Fri May 03, 2013 3:06 pm

This makes up grandly for the US mess that happened with this film.
Last edited by knives on Fri May 03, 2013 4:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.

User avatar
Ozu Teapot
Joined: Fri Jul 16, 2010 11:33 am
Location: UK
Contact:

Re: Trans-Europ Express

#3 Post by Ozu Teapot » Fri May 03, 2013 4:28 pm

Great news! Trans-Europ Express is one of my favourites.

I wasn't aware it'd been released in the US. I remember trying to find it a couple of years ago and could only find an Italian DVD release with only Italian subtitles, so a nice BFI Blu is very welcome!

User avatar
knives
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2008 6:49 pm

Re: Trans-Europ Express

#4 Post by knives » Fri May 03, 2013 4:37 pm

No, it hasn't been released in the US, but recently a company was planning on releasing it and other of his films in the US only to have rights issues plug up the works so to speak. The bad news is discussed here.

User avatar
antnield
Joined: Tue Jun 28, 2005 1:59 pm
Location: Cheltenham, England

Re: Trans-Europ Express

#5 Post by antnield » Wed May 08, 2013 2:27 pm

TRANS-EUROP-EXPRESS (DVD + Blu-ray)

A film by Alain Robbe Grillet

This stylish, cult 1966 erotic thriller stars French new wave icons Jean-Louis Trintigant (Amour, The Conformist) and Marie-France Pisier (Stolen Kisses, Bed and Breakfast).

Trintignant plays a drug courier smuggling a stash of cocaine from Paris to Antwerp on the Trans-Europ-Express. Matters are complicated by surreal encounters with police, three filmmakers who are also on the train making a film about drug-traffickers and erotic-fantasy sequences featuring Pisier being bound and subjected to Trintignant's will.

Originally banned by the BBC for scenes of sexual sadism and bondage, Trans-Europ-Express was written and directed by ground-breaking and daring filmmaker Alain Robbe Grillet, best known for his experimental novels and for writing Alain Resnais' Last Year in Marienbad.

This is one of the first releases by the BFI in a series making many of Robbe-Grillet's films available in the UK for the first time and on Blu-ray for the first time worldwide.

Special Features

- Presented in both High Definition and Standard Definition
- Extensive booklet with essay by Ben Hervey and full film credits
- Other extras to be confirmed

yoshimori
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 2:03 am
Location: LA CA

Re: Trans-Europ Express

#6 Post by yoshimori » Wed May 08, 2013 9:19 pm

Just wanted to highlight this:

"This is one of the first releases by the BFI in a series making many of Robbe-Grillet's films available in the UK for the first time and on Blu-ray for the first time worldwide."

User avatar
What A Disgrace
Joined: Sun Nov 07, 2004 10:34 pm
Contact:

Re: Trans-Europ Express

#7 Post by What A Disgrace » Thu May 09, 2013 5:24 am

Sadism and bondage? Sold!

User avatar
feckless boy
Joined: Wed Jan 03, 2007 4:38 pm
Location: Stockholm

Re: Trans-Europ Express

#8 Post by feckless boy » Thu May 09, 2013 9:41 am

yoshimori wrote:Just wanted to highlight this:
"This is one of the first releases by the BFI in a series making many of Robbe-Grillet's films available in the UK for the first time and on Blu-ray for the first time worldwide."
Hopefully that means L'Eden et après and N. a pris les dés... on blu as well.

User avatar
Cronenfly
Joined: Thu Jul 19, 2007 12:04 pm

Re: Trans-Europ Express

#9 Post by Cronenfly » Thu May 09, 2013 3:18 pm

Has anyone seen these/can comment on them? I'm guessing BFI will be doing at least the 4 titles Mondo Macabro was supposed to handle in the thread linked to by knives above (TRANS EUROPE EXPRESS, THE MAN WHO LIES, EDEN AND AFTER [along with its rare alternate version N TAKES THE DICE] and SLOW SLIDINGS OF PLEASURE), and, never really having heard anything about them before myself, good or bad, it would be nice to have some sense of what to expect.

User avatar
jsteffe
Joined: Sat Mar 31, 2007 9:00 am
Location: Atlanta, GA

Re: Trans-Europ Express

#10 Post by jsteffe » Thu May 09, 2013 4:27 pm

Personally I would start with TRANS-EUROP EXPRESS and especially THE MAN WHO LIES. If you like LAST YEAR AT MARIENABAD you would probably enjoy them. They have playful, metafictional elements and Jean-Louis Trintignant is always interesting to watch. EDEN AND AFTER pushes deeper into the territory of softcore SM pornography while serializing the narrative structure even further than the earlier films. (He openly structured his films using serial composition techniques along the lines of composers such as Pierre Boulez.) I found EDEN AND AFTER almost laughably pretentious, if atmospherically photographed. I warmed up to it more on a second viewing and definitely plan to pick up the BFI Blu-ray whenever it gets released. I've had a hard time connecting with SLOW SLIDINGS OF PLEASURE, though the title at least sounds wonderful in French: Glissements progressifs du plaisir. But even if I never get to really like that film, I'll probably purchase the Blu-ray for the color cinematography.

On the other hand, I really *hated* LA BELLE CAPTIVE. It struck me as flat-out incompetent, even though it was photographed by Henri Alekan. Maybe I'm missing something?

Robbe-Grillet is not a "great" filmmaker by any means but his career is interesting to follow, and he always worked with excellent cinematographers and editors. I would say that his films have a close affinity with his novels from that period, which combine narrative experimentation with pulp SM erotica. His earlier novels such as THE VOYEUR, JEALOUSY and IN THE LABYRINTH were the best things he created. When he visited Emory a number of years ago, I asked him to autograph my Les Éditions de Minuit copy of Dans le labyrinthe and his comments suggested that he was still very proud of that work. And rightfully so!
Last edited by jsteffe on Thu May 09, 2013 4:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.

User avatar
MichaelB
Joined: Fri Aug 11, 2006 6:20 pm
Location: Worthing
Contact:

Re: Trans-Europ Express

#11 Post by MichaelB » Thu May 09, 2013 4:31 pm

I dimly recalled reviewing a Robbe-Grillet film a few years back, which turned out to be La Belle Captive (1983):
The DVD box makes much of the superficial resemblance between this film and the later work of David Lynch (it could just as easily have cited Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut), but this is actually Alain Robbe-Grillet's most explicit tribute to the original French Surrealist movement. Directly inspired by the eponymous René Magritte painting, the film begins with a familiar noir-style encounter between a possibly state-sponsored assassin (Daniel Mesguich) and an unnamed blonde temptress (Gabrielle Lazure), but Robbe-Grillet constantly undermines narrative, temporal and spatial expectations at every turn while teasing the viewer with iconography drawn from Magritte, American thrillers, Murnau's Nosferatu and much else. It's tempting to assume that the somewhat vacant lead performances are absolutely as intended, the better to offset Daniel Emilfork's grotesque police investigator, smirking at knowledge that he's withholding from everyone else.

User avatar
zedz
Joined: Sun Nov 07, 2004 7:24 pm

Re: Trans-Europ Express

#12 Post by zedz » Thu May 09, 2013 6:46 pm

I know for sure that I've seen three Robbe-Grillet films, but like one of his characters, I can't remember which three. I saw the DVD of La Belle Captive a couple of years ago, so that's one down (and like jsteffe I found it somewhat half-baked). Many years earlier, I saw a double feature of L'immortelle and. . . Trans Europ Express? L'homme qui ment? The films sort of coalesced in my memory, but shards of them keep coming back, so I'm very pleased to hear about the BFI's initiative.

Just as Marguerite Duras' films as director follow stylistically on from Hiroshima, mon amour, Robbe-Grillet's seem to follow on from Last Year at Marienbad (as do Chris Marker's from the early Resnais shorts he worked on) - which suggests to me that Resnais was a very special kind of collaborator who not only tailored his work to the style of his collaborators but inspired them to go on to direct their own films. So basically, if you like Marienbad you should find these films interesting, at the very least.

User avatar
knives
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2008 6:49 pm

Re: Trans-Europ Express

#13 Post by knives » Thu May 09, 2013 7:03 pm

The same could be said of Agnes Varda too (in fact I believe she's even said something along that line).

User avatar
zedz
Joined: Sun Nov 07, 2004 7:24 pm

Re: Trans-Europ Express

#14 Post by zedz » Thu May 09, 2013 10:41 pm

Though in that case she didn't start out working on a Resnais film but (sort of) vice versa, so any subsuming of his own personality in favour of that of his collaborator would actually be expected in an editor / director relationship. And personally, I think their relationship was more equal than that, with a lot of future Resnaisian ideas being explored in the montage of the film - which would actually put Resnais more in the Duras / Robbe-Grillet role in the collaboration (i.e. subordinate partner in collaboration has strong stylistic impact on final film and goes on to make their own films in a similar vein).

User avatar
knives
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2008 6:49 pm

Re: Trans-Europ Express

#15 Post by knives » Thu May 09, 2013 10:57 pm

I actually figured you meant, hence my bringing up Varda in the first place, that there was a strange sort of equivalence going on with Duras, Marker, and Robbe-Grillet. Both members in each case strike me as being in a mentor and a peer role simultaneously.

User avatar
FerdinandGriffon
Joined: Wed Nov 26, 2008 11:16 am

Re: Trans-Europ Express

#16 Post by FerdinandGriffon » Thu May 09, 2013 10:59 pm

What you're saying may be true of Duras, zedz, but I don't think it applies very well to Robbe-Grillet. He was a much stronger influence on the entire production of Marienbad than most screenwriters are, as the dense and complex script (or "cine-roman", as R-G called it) will attest. And though he does make a very amusing cameo in Je t'aime, je t'aime, Robbe-Grillet was sometimes less than generous in interviews when it came to his ex-collaborator's later work.

An interesting tidbit from Fragola and Smith's book of interviews with Robbe-Grillet, The Erotic Dream Machine:
"I wrote Marienbad for Resnais. In Marienbad, Resnais executed many complicated camera movements, but I wrote these movements for Resnais based on my knowledge of his short films, such as The Entire Memory of the World. By contrast, in L'Immortelle, there is no camera movement, or almost none. In Marienbad there exist some elements that you can refer to as sequences, but in L'Immortelle it is much harder to differentiate the sequences because they are mixed."

User avatar
zedz
Joined: Sun Nov 07, 2004 7:24 pm

Re: Trans-Europ Express

#17 Post by zedz » Thu May 09, 2013 11:07 pm

FerdinandGriffon wrote:What you're saying may be true of Duras, zedz, but I don't think it applies very well to Robbe-Grillet. He was a much stronger influence on the entire production of Marienbad than most screenwriters are, as the dense and complex script (or "cine-roman", as R-G called it) will attest. And though he does make a very amusing cameo in Je t'aime, je t'aime, Robbe-Grillet was sometimes less than generous in interviews when it came to his ex-collaborator's later work.
I probably should have put 'subordinate' in inverted commas, since I do think that both Robbe-Grillet and Duras leave arguably a stronger personal signature on the finished films than Resnais does - even though both films slot in perfectly with Resnais' own thematic concerns, stylistic traits and developing artistic personality. This is why I think these are such remarkable collaborations (and possibly why, in the absence of that kind of collaborative relationship, the writers would feel the need to direct their own films afterwards).

Stefan Andersson
Joined: Thu Nov 15, 2007 1:02 am

Re: Trans-Europ Express

#18 Post by Stefan Andersson » Fri May 10, 2013 2:54 am

"L´Immortelle" (1963) and "Le jeu avec le feu" (1975) might also be of interest to the BFI.

On a related note -- "La Forteresse" (The Fort), Robbe-Grillet´s unproduced screenplay for Antonioni has been published in French:
http://www.amazon.com/La-Forteresse-Sc% ... 2707320706" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

User avatar
FerdinandGriffon
Joined: Wed Nov 26, 2008 11:16 am

Re: Trans-Europ Express

#19 Post by FerdinandGriffon » Sat May 11, 2013 1:04 am

zedz wrote:This is why I think these are such remarkable collaborations (and possibly why, in the absence of that kind of collaborative relationship, the writers would feel the need to direct their own films afterwards).
Absolutely, and, though it's not quite the same thing as what you're talking about, one of the most astonishing things to me about Resnais' late works is the way in which he's fruitfully returned to the collaborative mode his career started in. The Ayckbourn films are delightful and very moving, and he's developed a really remarkable relationship with a number of actors who seem to have coalesced into an informal group of "Resnais Players" with his latest. I ain't seen You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet yet, but it would seem that collaboration is the heart, soul, and subject of that project, and I'm very curious about the apparently unusual way in which he worked with his assistant directors on it.
Stefan Andersson wrote:On a related note -- "La Forteresse" (The Fort), Robbe-Grillet´s unproduced screenplay for Antonioni has been published in French:
http://www.amazon.com/La-Forteresse-Sc" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;% ... 2707320706
This is intriguing! It was my understanding that the Robbe-Grillet/Antonioni collaboration never got past the long-talks-over-dinner-and-wine phase, so I'm pleasantly surprised to hear a script actually exists. Does anyone know when it dates from? Would be curious to see if elements from it made their way into Robbe-Grillet's own films. Too bad R-G is so out of fashion in the Anglophone literary world at the moment, a translation would be nice.

User avatar
antnield
Joined: Tue Jun 28, 2005 1:59 pm
Location: Cheltenham, England

Re: Trans-Europ Express

#20 Post by antnield » Tue May 14, 2013 6:39 am

Image

User avatar
Ozu Teapot
Joined: Fri Jul 16, 2010 11:33 am
Location: UK
Contact:

Re: Trans-Europ Express

#21 Post by Ozu Teapot » Tue May 14, 2013 6:53 am

I like the cover! A nice homage to one of the original posters?

User avatar
ellipsis7
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 1:56 pm
Location: Dublin

Re: Trans-Europ Express

#22 Post by ellipsis7 » Tue May 14, 2013 7:03 am

FerdinandGriffon wrote:
Stefan Andersson wrote:On a related note -- "La Forteresse" (The Fort), Robbe-Grillet´s unproduced screenplay for Antonioni has been published in French:
http://www.amazon.com/La-Forteresse-Sc" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;% ... 2707320706
This is intriguing! It was my understanding that the Robbe-Grillet/Antonioni collaboration never got past the long-talks-over-dinner-and-wine phase, so I'm pleasantly surprised to hear a script actually exists. Does anyone know when it dates from? Would be curious to see if elements from it made their way into Robbe-Grillet's own films. Too bad R-G is so out of fashion in the Anglophone literary world at the moment, a translation would be nice.
MA & ARG met in 1988 @ Cannes when the 'Projet Antonioni' was launched by Cinecitta... ARG contributed an essay transcribed from an oral tribute he made to MA... They met again in Taormina at the Hotel San Domenica in 1992, where ideas were thrown around, while Cuban cigars were smoked, MA because of his stroke unable to reply, but tapping the table to express excitement & communicating through wife Enrica when he like the course the conversation was taking... MA later followed up with a letter to ARG, saying that he found in ARG's project LA FORTERESSE themes that he found dear and familiar, even more so that the idea was germinated in the Hotel San Domenica, scene of the ending of L'AVVENTURA...

ARG was then invited to contribute a piece ("I salute you, old comrade") to MA's book of 1970's sketches & quotes, 'A Volte si Fissa Un Punto'... ARG, while a Visiting Professor in autumn 1992 at Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri, wrote a script of some 60 pages of LA FORTERESSE, which he delivered to MA but it never approached production...

Anthony Thorne
Joined: Mon Jan 26, 2009 3:45 am

Re: Trans-Europ Express

#23 Post by Anthony Thorne » Tue May 14, 2013 8:22 am

Redemption USA just teased a photo from TRANS-EUROP EXPRESS on their Facebook page with a comment that more news would be announced shortly, so a Kino release is probably on the cards.

User avatar
FerdinandGriffon
Joined: Wed Nov 26, 2008 11:16 am

Re: Trans-Europ Express

#24 Post by FerdinandGriffon » Wed May 15, 2013 12:21 pm

Thanks for all that, ellipsis7. I had always assumed their friendship went farther back than that, I guess just because I see so many affinities between Antonioni's films and Robbe-Grillet's novels. Have you read La Forteresse?

User avatar
ellipsis7
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 1:56 pm
Location: Dublin

Re: Trans-Europ Express

#25 Post by ellipsis7 » Wed May 15, 2013 1:04 pm

I have it on my shelf, have read the introductory essay, but have yet to have a chance to study the body of the text in detail... That's a delight that still awaits me... Of course ARG & MA would have occupied similar spaces from the days of MARIENBAD on... ARG also contributes to the 1997 BBC documentary 'Dear Antonioni'/'Caro Antonioni'...

Locked