Une visite au Louvre

For their tour of the Louvre, Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub chose the words of Paul Cézanne as their guide, compiled by the art critic Joachim Gasquet. The commentary, via a female voice-off by Julie Koltaï, in a discourse that is as irate as it is curt, ends in the assertive statement, ‘I am Cézanne!’
The camera focuses on fourteen paintings, all with their own frames, and a sculpture, the ‘Victory of Samothrace’. Still shots, cuts, few details and few movements. Ingres, David, Véronèse, Titien, Delacroix, Murillo, Géricault, Tintoret, Courbet, etc. The artists are from all origins, and from all periods.
The film covers three timeframes. Firstly, the Pont du Carrousel bridge standing opposite the museum, then the Seine as seen from the museum and, finally, far from Paris, a river running through a wooded undergrowth. In and out, cinema without intermediates, cinema without compromise

Hervé Gauville
Writer and critic