Charles Aznavour

  • Ararat (2002)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, November 2021) As I’ll never get tired of pointing out, everything I’ve ever heard about the Armenian genocide has been because of Turkish militants’ attempts to pretend it didn’t happen. From the Serdar Argic Usenet spam of the mid-1990s to modern attempts to silence filmmakers tackling the topic, it’s not an exaggeration to say that I got interested in the issues because some people tried really hard to pretend it wasn’t an issue. The Promise thus begat a documentary about its shooting, and one that interviewed Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan about his troubles with Ararat — including a meticulous campaign to discredit his work accompanied by a book-sized dossier on his film’s failings. As a good Canadian cinephile, of course I had heard of Ararat — but not being much of a fan, I hadn’t sought it out. That changed after the documentary, and that’s how I ended up learning even more about the Armenian genocide. In a way, it’s good that I saw Ararat after The Promise, as the two logically flow into each other: The Promise is a historical re-creation, while Ararat plays with the making of a film much like The Promise, as it affects circa-2002 characters. It’s scattered and filled with subplots (many of them metatextual), but there’s a sense that Egoyan, himself of Armenian descent, is not trying to convince viewers as much as he’s taking the genocide as a fact and musing on its reverberations. (At least one 2002 review goes about it the other way and complains that the genocide is not given enough attention.) A good and eclectic ensemble cast includes Charles Aznavour, Christopher Plummer, Eric Bogosian, Bruce Greenwood and the lovely Arsinee Khanjian (Egoyan’s wife, in a Genie-winning performance). I found Ararat scattered but interesting, and an interesting addition to the Armenian genocide filmography in that it presents a world in which the recognition has happened, but not the reckoning. (Canada formally recognized the genocide in 2006, while the United States recognized it in 2021.)

  • Tirez sur le pianiste [Shoot the Piano Player] (1960)

    Tirez sur le pianiste [Shoot the Piano Player] (1960)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2020) Many cinephiles think the world of François Truffault’s debut feature Les 400 coups, but for me he starts hitting his marks with Tirez sur le pianiste, where (having said what he had about his childhood in his first film), he starts playing with the topics that he would then revisit over and over in his career—Hollywood homage to crime films with gangster subplots and a murder somewhere in the narrative; complex unglamorous relationships between his protagonist and women; the stylistic hallmarks (jump cuts, guerilla-style shooting, voiceovers, nonlinear storytelling) that would mark the French cinema for the next two decades. Tirez sur le pianiste explicitly looks at the United States for inspiration (film noir for style, an English-language novel for the plot) and blends it into its own execution. The mixture of crime thriller and talky French romantic drama is in line with the entirety of French cinema, from poetic realism to the impending nouvelle vague. A young Charles Aznavour (yes, him) is remarkable as the protagonist, a piano player trying to escape his dark past. Amazingly enough for French Canadian viewers, the soundtrack features some Felix Leclerc! While not flawless (it’s long, sometimes dull), Tirez sur le pianiste is generally better than many similar examples of French cinema at that time, and clearly announces Truffaut as the director he wanted to be.

  • Ein Unbekannter rechnet ab [Ten Little Indians aka And Then There Were None] (1974)

    Ein Unbekannter rechnet ab [Ten Little Indians aka And Then There Were None] (1974)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, November 2019) As murder mysteries go, And Then There Were None is one of the darkest ones and it remains one of Agatha Christie’s best-known novels. I first read it in high school, so it keeps that timeless aura that, paradoxically, makes its various film adaptations more interesting. In the case of this 1974 version (a multinational collaboration, but shot in English), the appeal here is in a very specific 1970s take on the material, not particularly faithful to the original text but interesting in its casting and audience-friendly choices. It’s obvious from the first few frames that it’s going to be a very 1970s kind of film—the fuzzy colour cinematography, the fashions of the day played up and the actors being a multinational bunch of then-celebrities. Take a look at that cast: Charles Aznavour, Elke Sommer, Gert Fröbe, Oliver Reed, Richard Attenborough and Orson Welles. But it’s in the changes to the story (many of them reprised from the 1965 version by the same producer) that the film ends up being most interesting. Dispensing with the traditional island location, this one ends up in the Iranian desert prior to the revolution—the impact still being isolation in the middle of nowhere. Thus transplanted in a sand ocean, the story largely goes about the same way until it hits its third act, at which point the plot is rejigged in most Hollywoodian fashion to allow for foiling the book’s entire plot and allowing some characters to survive the events of the film. As a Christie enthusiast, I suppose I should be aghast at the way the entire harsh point of the novel is softened into crow-pleasing pablum. But in the end, I’m not particularly bothered by the changes—I find them interesting in the way they alter the premise, and I’m never totally opposed to happy endings anyway. The original novel remains available for all to read if you want the real deal—and considering its enduring popularity either now or in the 1960s–1970s, there’s a fair case to be made that the filmmakers were able to give something new to audiences expecting a straight-up retelling of the book. Add to that the now-delicious patina of 1970s style and the 1974 version of Then There Were None remains worth a look.