Wednesday, May 5, 2010

William Lubtchansky: 1937-2010

William Lubtchansky looked through the lens of French cinema for four and a half decades. He died Tuesday, leaving a rich body of work that includes collaborations with such giants as Agnes Varda, Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette, Philippe Garrel and François Truffaut. Here are a few of his finest moments:

Garrel said this of he and Lubtchansky's sublime work in "Regular Lovers:"
William and I belong to the same generation, as does my editor, Françoise Collin. This film truly is a generational movie. We all identified strongly with this story. So we decided to exchange ideas often. And since we all have definitely reached the second half of our working lives, it depended very much on who was most awake at a given morning, and who liked to direct things. At our age we tend to group together more easily than we used to do. So in the film there are camera positions that are typically mine, and other framings that are more characteristic of William. We worked together like musicians, really: we had dialogues, like a jazz band that keeps improvising on what had been written. Whoever felt like playing, played first.















(From top to bottom: "Shoah," "Va Savoir," "The Creatures," "Nouvelle Vague," "Regular Lovers")
[bxA]

1 comment: