In this episode, I talk about Jean-Pierre Melville's 1949 film "Le silence de la mer." It's set in France in 1941 at the time of the Second World War. The Germans are occupying France, and a German soldier stays with a niece and her uncle who use their silence as a form of resistance against him. Every night, he comes to them and talks about his life, his interests, his love of France, and many other subjects, but they refuse to acknowledge him or speak to him. Over the course of the film, their feelings for him start to get more complicated. He is an occupier in their country and in their house but the intimacy of their meetings also humanizes him. This is not Melville's most famous film but it's one that I think is profoundly important because of the way it asks us to expand our ideas about what constitutes resistance and how we interact with those who we're supposed to see as monstrous or as the enemy. I talk about Melville's life, the making of the film, and much more. There are spoilers in this episode.
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Original logo by Dhiyanah Hassan
Full Show Notes
All My Sources
The Keepers, Big Little Lies, and Broadchurch
Elem Klimov's 'Come and See' (1985)
Ettore Scola's 'A Special Day' (1977)
Mathieu Amalric's 'Le Stade de Wimbledon' (2001)
Herk Harvey's 'Carnival of Souls' (1962)
Agnieszka Holland's 'The Secret Garden' (1993)
Lee Chang-dong's 'Poetry' (2010)
Andrea Arnold's 'Fish Tank' (2009)
Laura Citarella and Veronica Llinás's 'Dog Lady' (2015) and Notes on a Cinema of the Unruly Woman
Barbara Loden's 'Wanda' (1970)
Katell Quillévéré's 'Heal The Living' (2016) and Radu Jude's 'Scarred Hearts' (2016)
Vadim Perelman's 'House of Sand and Fog' (2003)
Sally Potter's 'The Tango Lesson' (1997)
Agnès Varda's 'Vagabond' (1985)
Two Made-For-TV Movies from the 1990s - Christopher Leitch's 'She Fought Alone (1995) and Marina Sargenti's 'Lying Eyes' (1996)
Alain Resnais's 'Hiroshima Mon Amour' (1959)
Abdellatif Kechiche's 'Blue is the Warmest Color' (2013)
Ken Loach's 'I, Daniel Blake' (2016)
Abbas Kiarostami's Koker Trilogy
Abbas Kiarostami's 'Where Is My Friend's House' (1987) and Mohammad-Ali Talebi's 'Willow and Wind' (2000)
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