I was channel surfing on Friday night, when I caught on TV5 Europe, a French-language cable channel, a weird and surreal Fellini type of sequence with apparently a sort of faux funeral with all sort of peculiar characters and pretty girls frolicking around in 60s pop fashion. I didn't know what the hell that was but it sure looked great. And it also seemed to have Serge Gainsbourg's music! I checked out from newspaper and found out the film was called Anna, and that they were going to re-run it on 11.20 am, Saturday, so I programmed the timer of my VCR, glad that I could check this one in its entirety.
Anna is a made-for-TV film from 1967 directed by Pierre Koralnik, featuring music by French pop's enfant terrible Serge Gainsbourg, and Monsieur Gainsbourg also acting there himself (Marianne Faithfull appears there too). Since I don't know French myself, except for some words and expressions, I only understood about the film that it was about a fashion photographer (Jean-Claude Brierly) and his obsession about a female assistant (played by Anna Karina, familiar from many Jean-Luc Godard's movies) whose blown-up photograph he sees everywhere (with traces of Antonioni's Blow-Up and Hitchcock's Vertigo, perhaps). In fact, you didn't need to know much French, since the plot was quite paper-thin, and the film being actually a musical or even a stylish-looking predecessor of modern music videos. As said, there were some great Fellini-like fantasy scenes and nice examples of 1960s fashion. Ephemeral but très cool.
Soundtrack
Credits @ IMDB
Images @ Google
Hi
ReplyDeleteI have an unsubtitled version of this film on DVD. You're so lucky to have seen the film with subs. I know it's quite easy to follow, but you never get all the subtleties unless you understand what's being said. It is a great film and it's great to see Karina and Brialy together again; have you seen Une Femme est Une Femme (A Woman is A Woman)?