Détruire dit-elle + Barry Lyndon

Marking the 30th anniversary of the death of Serge Daney (1944-1992), one of the greatest critics in the history of cinema, let us reread him and find his “cinécriture”. At Teatro Rivoli, on October 18th, with Détruire dit-elle, a masterpiece by Marguerite Duras, also a friend of hers and with whom she recorded many conversations about cinema, and Stanley Kubrick's “siderante” Barry Lyndon. 

19:00 — Détruire dit-elle (1969)
by Marguerite Duras

“Duras knows how to talk to people during their sleep, knows how to blow their dreams.” — Serge Daney

A mansion, a garden where you can rest in the shade, with umbrellas, tables and chaises-longues where guests, vacationers (some sick?) rest. A melancholy and solitary woman, lying in silence for hours at a time, intrigues two of this hotel's guests: Stein and Max Thor, intellectuals and voyeurs who unfold their confidences. And there is still a fourth element, another woman, Alissa, almost the opposite of the first, hard, sensual and free. A revolutionary film, “dedicated to youth”. Duras says: “il faut détruire dit-elle, pour aimer à nouveau”.

21:00 — Barry Lyndon (1975)
by Stanley Kubrick

“Film characters like Barry Lyndon suddenly benefit from an opacity that causes such a strong commotion that it makes them, in my view, 'movie' characters.” — Serge Daney

Adapted from Thackeray's masterpiece, The Vanity Fair, this is the story of a 19th-century adventurer. XVIII that seeks social ascension at any cost, through sex, through war, through gambling. A film where “realism” is fantastic, with fabulous decors and costumes (which won Oscars) and a prodigious photography by John Alcott, who with perfected Zeiss lenses reproduced the light of that time in candlelit interiors, just like the we see in the great painters of the time.