La belle captive (France, 1983)

La belle captive (France, 1983)

Director: Alain Robbe-Grillet. Stars: Daniel Mesguich, Cyrielle Clair, Daniel Emilfork, Gabrielle Lazure, Arielle Dombasle...

80s-style music video style and I can't say that there's much substance. Anyway, the main character walks into a café and we spot a Genie  (Gottlieb, 1979) pinball machine...

La balance (France, 1982)

La balance (France, 1982).
Director: Bob Swaim. Stars: Nathalie Baye, Philippe Léotard, Richard Berry, Tchéky Karyo...

A gritty crime story in a rough Parisian neighbourhood. After one of the cop's major informants ("balance" in French) is murdered, they go after the crime boss who is responsible and stop at nothing. They put pressure on a streetwalker (Baye) and her boyfriend (Léotard) who used be her pimp and work for the boss, and try to get them to inform on the boss.

We can spot a Devil's Dare (Gottlieb, 1982) through the window as the cops give Baye a hard time...

Later in a café we can see a bit of a Barcrest "Amabassadeur" slot machine with the boss' henchman/psycho Tchéky Karyo about to get nasty...

In one scene, five cops drag Léotard into a noisy busy arcade and work on him a bit. The camera pans by a row of machines and punks... we can spot Devil's Dare (Gottlieb, 1982), Black Hole (Gottlieb, 1981) (European model with no infinity mirror lights in backbox)...

... Mars God of War (Gottlieb, 1981), Spectrum (Bally, 1982), Rocky (Gottlieb, 1982), Haunted House (Gottlieb, 1982)...

The camera pans along, passing a 1970s Kasco Clay Shooting rifle game...

Finally the camera finds where the gang of cops have Léotard cornered, where we can spot a bunch of video games including Namco/Midway's Galaxian (or its sequel, Galaga), King Kong, and Pac-Man, and he's got his back against an Armor Attack (Cinematronics, 1980)...

The scene closes with the camera zooming in on the CRT to show an explosion...

Here in this café, we can spot a Rock-Ola 463 jukebox (1976) on the left, and a glimpse of a Barcrest Ambassadeur slot machine...

Bonus connections:
At the police station, there are a few movie posters, one of which is for The Enforcer (1976) with Clint Eastwood, which has a brief pinballspotting (see this post).

Also in the streets outside of a movie theatre, there's a poster of The Hunter (1980), which also had some pinballspottings (see this post).

In Tchao Pantin (1983), another French film set in a gritty part of town around the same time period, we also saw a Barcrest Ambassadeur slot machine as well as a Devil's Dare pinball machine... see this post.

More (France, 1969)

More (France, 1969)

Director: Barbet Schroeder. Stars: Mimsy Farmer, Klaus Grünberg, Heinz Engelmann...

A young German fresh out of college hitch-hikes to Paris and meets up with a lovely American girl, who he ends up following to Ibiza, where they live a hedonistic lifestyle in the sun and eventually become heroin addicts. Of course, the main reason I watched this was because Pink Floyd did the music for it.

Anyway, before meeting the girl, he befriends a guy in a café, who plays a few games of Ship-Mates (Gottlieb, 1964)...

Tchao Pantin (France, 1983)

Tchao Pantin (France, 1983). Director: Claude Berri. Stars: Coluche, Richard Anconina, Agnès Soral, Philippe Léotard...

Coluche was a famous stand-up comedian in France, and this was one of his few dramatic roles (for which he won a César award for best actor). Here he plays a sad, middle-aged, solitary gas-station attendant on the night shift, with a bottle for company. The atmosphere is dark and often rainy, in a working-class neighborhood in North Paris. He strikes up an unlikely friendship with a young small-time drug dealer (Anconina) who comes into his station one night.

The latter hangs out in cafés and bars, and in one of them, we can spot a couple of pinball machines, Devil’s Dare (Gottlieb, 1982) and Pink Panther (Gottlieb, 1981)...

In a later scene, we can spot a Mr. & Mrs. Pac-Man Pinball (Bally, 1982)...

Bonus: Anconina playing a Barcrest “Ambassadeur 2000” slot machine...

Diva (France, 1981)

Diva (France, 1981). Director: Jean-Jacques Beineix. Stars: Wilhelmenia Fernandez, Frédéric Andréi, Richard Bohringer...

When I saw this ages ago, I never understood why this movie was big. Rewatching it recently, I still don’t understand it, nor how one can make a pristine bootleg recording of a concert with no microphone, nor how a young man working as a mailman even owns a Nagra taperecorder. The bootleg drives the “plot”.

Very stylish, very 80s, but at least back then there were arcades... the bootlegger dives into one, trying to shake the bad guys... we can spot a Space Mission (Williams, 1976)...

He bleeds on a Blackout (Williams, 1980)...

Then gets blood on a girl’s white shirt, who was playing a Buck Rogers  (Gottlieb, 1980) with her friend...

One of the bad guys passes by a Genie (Gottlieb, 1979)...

Part of pinball row... from left to right: Buck Rogers (Gottlieb, 1980) , Counterforce (Gottlieb, 1980), and Panthera (Gottlieb, 1980)...

The bad guy interrupts the guy playing Panthera (Gottlieb, 1980) to inquire (with knife in hand) as to the bleeding bootlegger’s whereabouts, and we can spot The Amazing Spider-Man (Gottlieb, 1980)...

We note that Gottlieb seems to still have a large market share in France, and that this arcade had a lot of the latest pinball tables.

2 ou 3 choses que je sais d'elle (France, 1967)

2 ou 3 choses que je sais d'elle (France, 1967) A.K.A. Two or Three Things I Know About Her
Director: Jean-Luc Godard. Stars: Marina Vlady, Anny Duperey, Juliet Berto...

Apparently Godard shot this simultaneously with Made in U.S.A., which I’ve covered in this post. Hardly a narrative film, it’s more like an essay where the actors spout Godard’s observations and comments about contemporary life, social and political stuff. Stylistically experimental as well, characters would also break the 4th wall, the actors sometimes seemingly talking about themselves, not in character.

His marriage with Anna Karina on the rocks, this time we have the lovely Marina Vlady... she walks into a café to meet a friend, passing by a man playing a Masquerade (Gottlieb, 1966)...

In a later, rather long scene, the camera focuses on several different conversations going on in a restaurant/café, accompanied by the sounds of a woman playing pinball the whole time. In the conversation involving Juliet Berto, we can see the woman behind her playing a Big Chief (Williams, 1965). Behind the man is an A-Go-Go (Williams, 1966)...

A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries (France, UK, USA, 1998)

A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries (France, UK, USA, 1998). Director: James Ivory. Stars: Leelee Sobieski, Kris Kristofferson, Barbara Hershey, Jane Birkin...

Stumbled upon this movie at the library, watched it because of the actors. I’m not usually into the Merchant/Ivory productions, but you know it likely has good performances. It was ok.

The story starts in the early-mid 60s when the main-character girl is 7 years old, living in Paris. Her father takes her into a café to play a 4-player bowling-themed “300” (Gottlieb, 1975).  The story later skips to when the girl is 14, and her family is about to move back to the States, circa 1970-72. Her father again takes her to the same café to play the same game.  This is another case of pinball anachronism, since the machine was only produced a couple of years after, not to mention it being pretty unlikely that the same game would in the same place for that length of time. But hey, it added a certain symmetry to the story...

 The girl at age 7...

Seven years later...

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...

Anna (France, 1967)

Anna (France, 1967). Director: Pierre Koralnik. Starring: Anna Karina, Serge Gainsbourg, Jean-Claude Brialy, Marianne Faithfull...

It’s a Gainsbourg/Gottlieb special! Anna was a crazy musical comedy shot on 35mm color film but for TV. Gainsbourg was a friend of Koralnik’s and wrote some music for it, as well as acted in it. Of course it’s mostly about Anna Karina, and well, what more do you need?

I found some interesting background info on it in this blog post.

In a scene where Gainsbourg is hanging out with Brialy and singing, he leans on a Paradise (Gottlieb, 1965)... 

During that scene, the angle changes and we can spot a bit of a Bank-A-Ball (Gottlieb, 1965)  as well...

I found this photo by Paul Almásy of Gainsbourg playing the above-mentioned Paradise machine, no doubt during a break from shooting. I don’t know who the other person is (but it’s bad form to block a player’s view like that :-)...

Serge Gainsbourg playing pinball, photo by Paul Almásy.

In the office where Anna works, there is some pinball-themed art with neon tubes hanging on the walls, artist unknown...

Bonus Serge Gainsbourg pinball photos:
Gainsbourg and an Aloha (Gottlieb, 1961). Photo by Roger Kasparian, 1963 (also seems to exist in color, but I couldn’t find a decent-sized one)...

Serge Gainsbourg & pinball machine, photo by Roger Kasparian, 1963.

Gainsbourg playing a Tropic Isle (Gottlieb, 1962) with his daughter Charlotte (8), and Jane Birkin’s daughter Kate (12). Photo by Tony Frank, 1979...

Serge Gainsbourg playing pinball, photo by Tony Frank, 1979.

Yup, looks like Gainsbourg was no stranger to pinball, and they are all Gottlieb machines.