What a Flash! (1972) Directed by Jean-Michel Barjol
Comedy / Fantasy
Film Synopsis
The Beatnik movement was at its height when the filmmaker Jean-Michel Barjol
conceived his wildest idea for a film - to bring together two hundred people
from the performing arts and force them two spend three whole days together
in a film studio. In what is so obviously the forerunner to today's
reality television, Barjol's experimental film sees actors, musicians, painters
and other artists acting out 72 hours in their lives in the presence of fifteen
cameras. Amidst this ferment of talent we glimpse some familiar faces
- Bernadette Lafont, Tonie Marshall and Jean-Claude Dreyfus - but for the
most part it resembles a zany collage of humanity that vividly evokes the
essence of the May 68 protests and the hippy movement...
Continental Films, quality cinema under the Nazi Occupation
At the time of the Nazi Occupation of France during WWII, the German-run company Continental produced some of the finest films made in France in the 1940s.
In the 1940s, the shadowy, skewed visual style of 1920s German expressionism was taken up by directors of American thrillers and psychological dramas, creating that distinctive film noir look.