29 Dec 2016

Un homme qui dort (France, 1974)

Un homme qui dort (France, 1974) A.K.A. The Man Who Sleeps. Directors: Bernard Queysanne & Georges Perec. Starring: Jacques Spiesser (the man), Ludmila Mikaël (narrator)...

Thanks to my friend Marie-Douce for the tip on this one.

Pretty heavy film wherein a student in Paris decides to become indifferent to everything. No dialog, no interaction with any other characters. Relentless, almost continual second-person narration… for example (I chose some pinball-related lines)...

You light a cigarette. You cross the street, you cross the Seine, you stop, you start again. You play pinball or you don’t.

Indifference is futile. It really does not matter whether you wish or you do not wish. You can play pinball or not play pinball, someone, in any case, will come along and slip a twenty centime coin into the slot.

So far, my pinballspottings in French films have almost always been Gottlieb machines. Here we have a few made by Bally.

I could not identify this machine...

Jack in the Box  (Gottlieb, 1973)...

Space Time (Bally, 1972)...

Masquerade  (Gottlieb, 1966)...

From left to right: Masquerade  (Gottlieb, 1966), Little Joe (Bally, 1971), unknown (probably a Gottlieb)...

Playing a Masquerade  (Gottlieb, 1966), and behind is a Bali-Hi (Bally, 1970)...

Masquerade  (Gottlieb, 1966)...

Not enough to identify...

Jack in the Box  (Gottlieb, 1973) through a café window...

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