Alain Cavalier

Alain Cavalier (of his true name Alain Fraissé ) is a Cinéaste born the September 14th 1931 with Vendôme (Loir-et-Cher).

After studies of History, it enters to IDHEC then becomes assistant of Louis Malle ( Ascenseur for the scaffold , the Lovers ). It begins the realization with short-measuring an American (1958). Then it is made known with two political, subtle and rigorous feature films, which attract the lightnings of the censure to him: the Combat in the island (1961) and the unsubmissive person (1964), both treating more or less directly War of Algeria. In spite of the presence of actors known in these films (Romy Schneider, Jean-Louis Trintignant, or Alain Delon), they are commercial failures and Alain Cavalier tests himself with a more traditional cinema. He is then his first successes with the whodunnit Mise with bag (1967), and especially the drama middle-class the Chamade (adapted homonymous book of Francoise Sagan). But it is at the time when it is found more in sight that it chooses to move away.

Eight years later, it returns to the cinema with the full one with super (1976), vivifying road-movie Co-writing with the actors starting from their own experiments, then Martin and Lea (1978), where the couple incarnated with the screen is a true couple in the life. In " documentarisant" thus the actors (professional or not, in any case little known), Alain Cavalier gradually refines his new manner of making films. Reducing its engineering teams, renonçant gradually with any traditional dramatic action, he aspires more and more to film closest to the beings, which will inevitably bring it towards the documentary one.

After This responder does not take messages (1979), unclassable performance where Cavalier met in scene its own sentimental intimacy, and after a strange voyage , (1980, price Louis-Delluc 1981) where he films his daughter to tell his life, a capital stage in its work method will be crossed with Therese (1986). Simple and radical, the film is a pure moment of grace. Narcotic of delicacy and vitality, it questions holiness through the life of the young Carmelite nun Therese de Lisieux. The film is ovationné with the Cannes festival with a Price of the jury, then voted by plebiscite with the César S with six rewards, of which those of the better film and the better realizer.

The realizer further pushes still the diagram with Libera me (1993), film without dialogs which reconsiders with force the topics of its first films (oppression and Torture). In parallel, it launches out in a series of twenty-four portraits epiphanic women exerting to Paris of the trades in the process of disappearance (matelassière, cordonnière…).

Lives (2000) mark a new projection. To nearest to the artisanal gasoline of its art, Cavalier absolutely only turns from now on thanks to camera FD; the lightness of the tool finally allowing him to film ideally “closest to its experiment. ” He says more not to be a one scenario writer, but a " filmeur". In 2002 it fiction Miss and reality in Rene , where one of his/her friends actor of 155 kilos is committed losing weight.

In 2004 precisely leaves the filmor , diary filmed in video on more than ten years. This méditatif kaleidoscope on the escape of time marks how much the cinema Alain Cavalier became the achievement of its interior course (it appears as commentator-actor of a history that it saw and rebuilds at the same time).

Humble franc-tireur of the French cinema, Alain Cavalier continuous to build an astonishing work, which without seeming to touch there very takes us along far…

Catalog of films

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