One Hundred and One Nights

Last updated

One Hundred and One Nights
AHundredAndOneNights1995Poster.jpg
French film poster
Directed by Agnès Varda
Written byAgnès Varda
Produced byDominique Vignet
Starring Michel Piccoli
Marcello Mastroianni
Cinematography Eric Gautier
Edited byHugues Darmois
Production
companies
Distributed byCiné-Tamaris
Release date
  • 25 January 1995 (1995-01-25)
Running time
101 minutes
CountryFrance
LanguageFrench
Box office$294,900 [1]
49,150 admissions (France) [2]

One Hundred and One Nights (French : Les cent et une nuits de Simon Cinéma) is a 1995 French comedy film directed by Agnès Varda. [3] A light-hearted look at 100 years of commercial cinema, it celebrates in vision and sound favourite films from France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the USA. It was entered into the 45th Berlin International Film Festival. [4]

Contents

Plot

With his hundredth birthday approaching and his memory failing, Simon Cinéma hires Camille, a bright young film student, to visit him in his isolated mansion outside Paris for 101 days and relive for him the history of the cinema in which he has been involved all his life. In his opulent seclusion, he models himself on Norma Desmond and his butler on Erich von Stroheim.

They watch clips from his collection, listen to snatches of dialogue and music, and discuss (not too deeply) famous films, directors, and characters. Actors from many countries drop in to visit him, in person or as memories: Marcello Mastroianni, Gérard Depardieu, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Alain Delon, Jeanne Moreau (to whom he was once married), Hanna Schygulla (another former wife), Catherine Deneuve, Robert De Niro, Sandrine Bonnaire, Anouk Aimée, Fanny Ardant, Gina Lollobrigida, and Jane Birkin.

A subplot involves Camille's boyfriend Mica, who is trying with friends to make his first film and decides that the wealthy old man should help finance it. He persuades Vincent, who has been in India for years, to pose as Simon's long-lost grandson and heir. That plan is foiled by Elizabeth Taylor (played by a double), who gets Simon to leave everything for medical research. With Camille, Simon attends the Cannes festival and makes a triumphant return trip to Hollywood. Finally, he agrees to act as a Mafia chief in Mica's film.

Cast

Reviews

Janet Maslin wrote a favorable review in The New York Times published on 16 April 1999: "Catherine Deneuve, Alain Delon, Robert De Niro and Gerard Depardieu all make brief guest appearances in Agnes Varda's 1995 film.... And those are just the Ds. For this delirious birthday party in honor of filmmaking's first century, Ms. Varda has made every grand allusion she can manage and drawn upon every droppable name and celebrity connection. She creates a whirl of film's greatest hits, an overripe variety show that plays like the ultimate round of Trivial Pursuit....What makes her film as engaging as it is excessive is the obvious affection with which Ms. Varda has collected these memories. The vast array of film clips that surface here have been chosen for their quirkiness or emotional impact rather than for academic reasons. And the loose talk that links otherwise unrelated sequences tends to be playful, despite the ample opportunities for pomposity that this format provides." [5]

Variety's Lisa Nesselson gave a mixed review: "Agnes Varda, who has been making movies for 40 of the 100 years that motion pictures have existed, has put everything she knows about filmmaking and much of what she loves about the cinema into A Hundred and One Nights [sic]. But despite a star-decked cast and manifest good intentions, Varda's self-described 'divertimento' soars in only a few spots." [6]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gérard Depardieu</span> French actor (born 1948)

Gérard Xavier Marcel Depardieu, CQ is a French actor, filmmaker, businessman and vineyard owner since 1989 who is one of the most prolific thespians in film history having completed over 250 films since 1967 almost exclusively as a lead. Depardieu has worked with over 150 film directors whose most notable collaborations include Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Maurice Pialat, Alain Resnais, Claude Chabrol, Ridley Scott and Bernardo Bertolucci. He is the second highest grossing actor in the history of French Cinema behind Louis de Funès. As of January 2022, his body of work also include countless television productions, 18 theatre plays, 16 records and 9 books. He is mostly known as a character actor and for having portrayed numerous leading historical and fictitious figures of the Western world including Georges Danton, Joseph Stalin, Honoré de Balzac, Alexandre Dumas, Auguste Rodin, Cyrano de Bergerac, Jean Valjean, Edmond Dantès, Christopher Columbus, Obélix, and Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jean-Paul Belmondo</span> French actor (1933–2021)

Jean-Paul Charles Belmondo was a French actor and producer. Initially associated with the New Wave of the 1960s, he was a major French film star for several decades from the 1960s onward. His best known credits include Breathless (1960), That Man from Rio (1964), Pierrot le Fou (1965), Borsalino (1970), and The Professional (1981). He was most notable for portraying police officers in action thriller films and became known for his unwillingness to appear in English-language films, despite being heavily courted by Hollywood. An undisputed box-office champion like Louis de Funès and Alain Delon of the same period, Belmondo attracted nearly 160 million spectators in his 50-year career. Between 1969 and 1982, he played four times in the most popular films of the year in France: The Brain (1969), Fear Over the City (1975), Animal (1977), Ace of Aces (1982), being surpassed on this point only by Louis de Funès.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alain Delon</span> French actor (born 1935)

Alain Fabien Maurice Marcel Delon is a French actor and filmmaker. He was one of Europe's most prominent actors and screen sex symbols in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. In 1985, he won the César Award for Best Actor for his performance in Notre histoire (1984). In 1991, he received France's Legion of Honour. At the 45th Berlin International Film Festival, he won the Honorary Golden Bear. At the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, he received the Honorary Palme d'Or.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henri Verneuil</span> French-Armenian playwright and filmmaker (1920–2002)

Henri Verneuil was a French-Armenian playwright and filmmaker, who made a successful career in France. He was nominated for Oscar and Palme d'Or awards, and won Locarno International Film Festival, Edgar Allan Poe Awards, French Legion of Honor, Golden Globe Award, French National Academy of Cinema and Honorary Cesar awards.

Henri Decaë gained fame as a cinematographer entering the film industry as a sound engineer and sound editor. He was a photojournalist in the French army during World War II. After the war he began making documentary shorts, directing and photographing industrial and commercial films. In 1947 he made his first feature film.

The 9th César Awards ceremony, presented by the Académie des Arts et Techniques du Cinéma, honoured the best French films of 1983 and took place on 3 March 1984 at the Théâtre de l'Empire in Paris. The ceremony was chaired by Gene Kelly and hosted by Léon Zitrone. Le Bal and À nos amours tied for the award for Best Film.

The 14th César Awards ceremony, presented by the Académie des Arts et Techniques du Cinéma, honoured the best French films of 1988 and took place on 4 March 1989 at the Théâtre de l'Empire in Paris. The ceremony was chaired by Peter Ustinov and hosted by Pierre Tchernia. Camille Claudel won the award for Best Film.

The 19th César Awards ceremony, presented by the Académie des Arts et Techniques du Cinéma, honoured the best French films of 1993 and took place on 26 February 1994 at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris. The ceremony was chaired by Gérard Depardieu and hosted by Fabrice Luchini and Clémentine Célarié. Smoking / No Smoking won the award for Best Film.

Michel Creton is a French actor.

<i>Merci la vie</i> 1991 French film

Merci la vie is a 1991 French film written and directed by Bertrand Blier. It won the César Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, and was nominated for Best Film, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, Best Director, Best Writing and Best Editing.

Véronique Silver was a French actress.

Gérard Hérold was a French actor, appearing in several films, TV series and on theatre.

<i>Day and Night</i> (1997 film) 1997 French film

Day and Night is a 1997 French drama film directed by public intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy and starring Alain Delon, Lauren Bacall, Arielle Dombasle and Francisco Rabal. The film follows a French author who fled to Mexico for a quiet life and an actress who is willing to seduce him to get a part in a film adapted from one of his books.

<i>Actors</i> (film) 2000 film

Actors is a 2000 French comedy film directed by Bertrand Blier.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Delphine Depardieu</span> French actress

Delphine Depardieu is a French actress. She is Alain Depardieu's daughter, and Gérard Depardieu's niece. After her training at the École internationale de création audiovisuelle et de réalisation (EICAR), at the Cours Simon and Jean-Laurent Cochet's course, she was rapidly drawn to the stage and the cinema. On stage, she has acted with Roland Giraud, Paul Belmondo and Alexandre Brasseur.

Maurice Barrier was a French actor and singer.

References

  1. ↑ "One Hundred and One Nights". JPbox. Retrieved 14 February 2014.
  2. ↑ Box office information for Jean Paul Belmondo films at Box Office Story
  3. ↑ Maslin, Janet (2008). "NY Times: A Hundred and One Nights". Movies & TV Dept. The New York Times . Archived from the original on 9 March 2008. Retrieved 2 April 2009.
  4. ↑ "Berlinale: 1995 Programme". berlinale.de. Retrieved 31 December 2011.
  5. ↑ "'A Hundred and One Nights': Movies' Greatest Hits, With the Great Hit Makers". archive.nytimes.com. Retrieved 23 December 2021.
  6. ↑ "'A Hundred and One Nights'". variety.com. 30 January 1995. Retrieved 29 July 2022.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.