My American Uncle

Mon oncle d’Amérique

French surgeon, neurobiologist, writer, and philosopher Henri Laborit, uses the life stories of three people in order to examine behaviorist theories: René is a director at a fabrics factory who must confront the anxiety caused by his job; Janine is a self-taught actress who learns that her lover’s wife is dying and has to decide whether she will let him go back to her; Jean, an upstart writer and politician, finds himself at a key crossroads in his life. Human relationships perceived as a laboratory experiment, in one of the most special films by a legendary filmmaker.

Screening Schedule

No physical screenings scheduled.
Direction: Alain Resnais
Script: Jean Gruault, Henri Laborit
Cinematography: Sacha Vierny
Editing: Albert Jurgenson
Sound: Georges Prat, Jean-Pierre Ruh
Music: Arié Dzierlatka
Actors: Roger Pierre, Nicole Garcia, Gérard Depardieu, Pierre Arditi
Production: Philippe Dussart, Andrea Films, TF1
Producers: Roger Corman, Philippe Dussart, Christian Lentretien
Costumes: Catherine Leterrier
Make Up: Marie-Hélène Yastchenkoff
Format: DCP
Color: Color
Production Country: France
Production Year: 1980
Duration: 125'
Contact: mk2

Alain Resnais

Experimenting with such themes as consciousness, memory, and the imagination, Alain Resnais (1922–2014), whose career extended over more than six decades, was one of the most innovative French filmmakers of the 20th century. After training as a film editor in the mid-1940s, he went on to direct several short films which included Night and Fog (1956), an influential documentary about the Nazi concentration camps. Resnais began making feature films in the late 1950s and consolidated his early reputation with Hiroshima mon amour (1959), Last Year at Marienbad (1961), and Muriel (1963), all of which adopted unconventional narrative techniques to deal with themes of troubled memory and the imagined past. These films were contemporary with, and associated with, the French New Wave, though Resnais did not regard himself as being fully part of that movement. In the words of The Guardian’s Brian Baxter, “Resnais was a director of elegance and distinction, [and] his films were singular, instantly recognizable by their style as well as through recurring themes and preoccupations”.

Filmography

1947 Van Gogh (short doc)
1950 Guernica (short doc)
1956 Night and Fog (short doc)
1959 Hiroshima mon amour
1961 Last Year at Marienbad
1963 Muriel
1966 The War is Over
1968 Je t’aime, je t’aime
1977 Providence
1980 My American Uncle
1984 Love Unto Death
1993 Smoking/No Smoking
2006 Private Fears in Public Spaces
2009 Wild Grass
2014 Life of Riley