Movie review: French New Wave still is fresh in 'Six in Paris'

Article by: Kathie Smith , Special to the Star Tribune
Updated: December 4, 2008 - 6:14 PM

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Forty years before "Paris, je t'aime" came "Six in Paris," an original in the genre of omnibus films. This 1965 classic packages six short films from six leading French innovators -- Jean Douchet, Jean Rouch, Jean Daniel Pollet, Eric Rohmer, Jean-Luc Godard and Claude Chabrol -- each assigned an arrondissement to film in or about.

Fans of the French New Wave will find much to love in this film, despite its overall inconsistency. While some of the shorts feel like rushed sketches, others are true gems of the times. Rouch's one-take wonder burns with despair as an inconsolable couple project their misery on their mundane morning routine. Equally cutting is Chabrol's critique of a brutish bourgeois family destined to self-destruct.

"Six in Paris" is not without its light moments. Rohmer's quirky portrait of a mild-mannered Parisian clerk is as odd as it is funny. Pollet's sweet vignette about a gregarious prostitute and timid john breathes with life.

Godard's short seems minor, if not a little bland, in the scope of his other work. It borrows from his 1961 feature-length film "A Woman Is a Woman," in which a woman suspects that she has mixed up letters sent to her respective boyfriends. As she traipses off to repair the damage, she finds herself in a classic Catch-22.

What most ensemble films lack in cohesiveness, "Six in Paris" finds in historical context. Forty years later, it is an essential testament of the French New Wave's energy, ingenuity and aesthetic.