Monday 2 March 2009

Déjeuner sur l’Herbe
[Picnic on the Grass]
(1959)

RATING:80%
FORMAT:DVD

Perhaps Jean Renoir was always going to make this film: The impressionistic cinematography being highly reminiscent of his father’s (Auguste Renoir’s) paintings. And the actors shot in natural surroundings amounts to a hymn to, and love for, the nature he feels the genetic engineering story-line inevitably betrays.

A dialectic of many contrasts: Artificial insemination/sexual love; emotion/reason & repression; western civilization/anarchy; life/death; men/women; science/humanism & religion; etc. All false dichotomies satirized by Renoir in saying that “All is explicable to science” is a fascist attempt to reduce “All” to science.

This is bucolic anti-science-fiction in which the delightful Catherine ROUVEL is the Junoesque exemplar of the director’s vision of untamable humanity who convinces the cold scientist to warm up.

Copyright © 2009 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.
Posted by Frank TALKER™ at 17:26
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Science:



No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power.



Jacob Bronowski… (1908 - 74), British scientist, author. Encounter (London, July 1971).


Sleep of Reason:



The dream of reason produces monsters. Imagination deserted by reason creates impossible, useless thoughts. United with reason, imagination is the mother of all art and the source of all its beauty.



Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes… (1746-1828), Spanish painter. Caption to Caprichos, number 43, a series of eighty etchings completed in 1798, satirical and grotesque in form.


Humans & Aliens:



I am human and let nothing human be alien to me.



Terence… (circa 190-159 BC), Roman dramatist. Chremes, in The Self-Tormentor [Heauton Timorumenos], act 1, scene 1.


Führerprinzip:



One leader, one people, signifies one master and millions of slaves… There is no organ of conciliation or mediation interposed between the leader and the people, nothing in fact but the apparatus - in other words, the party - which is the emanation of the leader and the tool of his will to oppress. In this way the first and sole principle of this degraded form of mysticism is born, the Führerprinzip, which restores idolatry and a debased deity to the world of nihilism.



Albert Camus… (1913-60), French-Algerian writer & philosopher. The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt: New York: Vintage Books, (1984; page 182.)