UNE SALE HISTOIRE

Jean Eustache

Jean Eustache (Pessac, France, 1938 - Paris, France, 1981) spent his childhood in his hometown in the care of his maternal grandmother. This period of his life deeply influenced his filmography, which is profoundly autobiographical. In the early 1950s, he moved to Narbonne with his mother and eventually continued on to Paris, where he found work in a machine shop of the French railway. In Paris, Eustache fervidly frequented film clubs and the editorial offices of “Cahiers du cinéma,” where he came into contact with the protagonists of the Nouvelle Vague. The short La soirée (1963) was his first movie but his true directing debut was Les mauvaises fréquentations (1963-1964), a short film about two young Parisian crooks spending a Sunday together. The film was distributed in cinemas in 1967 along with Eustache’s second movie, Le Père Noël a les yeux bleus (1965-1966).  During the pivotal year of student protests, the director returned to his hometown to shoot La Rosière de Pessac (1968), an example of the “intimate” representation of reality which also characterizes Le cochon (1970) and, above all, Numéro zéro (1971), dedicated to his beloved grandmother, who is recorded by her grandson as she tells the story of her life. Film as a re-elaboration of one’s own life is also the basis of his best-known masterpiece, La maman et la putain (1973), a film which captured the spirit of disillusionment of the post-1968 generation. The relative success of the movie, which won the Grand Prize of the  Jury at Cannes, allowed the director to shoot his second feature film, Mes petites amoureuses (1974), a coming-of-age film which, once again, was inspired by his personal experiences. The movie was a flop. His final years were marked by experimentation for television and numerous uncompleted projects, but also by existential problems which led to his isolation. Eustache committed suicide at forty-two years of age, when he shot himself  in the heart in his apartment in Paris.

FILMOGRAFIA

La soirée (cm, 1963), Les mauvaises fréquentations (mm, 1963-1964), Le Père Noël a les yeux bleus (mm, 1965-1966), La Rosière de Pessac (I) (doc., 1968), Le dernier des hommes: postface (cm, doc., tv, 1968), La petite marchande d’allumettes: postface (cm, doc., tv, 1969), Le cochon (coregia/codirector Jean-Michel Barjon, mm, doc., 1970), Numéro zero (doc., 1971), La maman et la putain (id., 1972-1973), Mes petites amoureuses (1974), Une sale histoire (mm, 1977), La Rosière de Pessac (II) (doc., tv, 1979), Le jardin des délices de Jérome Bosch (mm, doc., tv, 1979), Les photos d’Alix (cm, doc., 1980), Offre d’emploi (cm, tv, 1980).