A nagging desire

With the screening in Cannes Classics of The Crimson Curtain, Gilles Jacob wants to pay homage to the work of Alexandre Astruc. In 1948, the director became famous with an article published in L’Ecran Français: “The birth of a new avant-garde: The camera as pen”, which had a big influence on the Nouvelle Vague. The Crimson Curtain was one of his first films.

A young officer enters the boarding house of a bourgeois family where boredom and discipline are the order of the day. The young, pretty Albertine (Anouk Aimée), daughter of the two boarding house keepers, takes his hand one evening under the table, while remain distant and icy in the eyes of her parents. She provokes a nagging desire which obsesses him.

This adaptation of the first short story of the collection Diaboliques by Barbey d’Aurevilly asks questions about the relationship between the creator and his work, while developing a conventional narrative. Alexandre Astruc claims to look for the “visual manifestations of the characters’ psychology”. Hence, he chooses to confront moments of crisis, anxious to represent the individual’s truth by placing them in situations of paroxysm. In 1952, the film won the Prix Louis Delluc, of which Gilles Jacob is currently the President.
 

N.S.

The film will be screened at 6pm, in the Salle du Soixantième, in the presence of the director and the actress Anouk Aimée.