Demy’s timeless, entirely sung contribution to the musical is pure romantic confection, with a radiant 20-year-old Catherine Deneuve starring in the first of her memorable roles. Michel Legrand’s music and Demy’s lyrics cast a magic spell as they tell the touching love story of Genevieve (Deneuve), the daughter of an umbrella shop owner, and Guy (Nino Castelnuovo), a garage mechanic drafted to serve in Algeria. (91 mins.)

A chilling homage to Hitchcock and a stunning portrayal of mental instability and psychosexual tension, Polanski’s first English language film stars Deneuve as an icily beautiful woman left alone in her claustrophobic apartment over a weekend. Soon, fearful fantasies of hounding men lead to horrific breakdowns, hallucinations, and unhinged violence. “One of the most intelligent horror movies ever made.”—Time Out. (105 mins.)

A luminous Catherine Deneuve stars as Séverine, the sexually unfulfilled wife of a gentle doctor who finds diversion working afternoons in a brothel. Deftly weaving fantasy and memory with reality, Buñuel creates one of his most brilliant discourses on the nature of human sexuality and the utter confusion that stems from the co-mingling of ideas about love, mortality, and eroticism. “Buñuel’s greatest and most beautiful film; the purest expression of surrealism in the history of cinema.”—Andrew Sarris. (100 mins.)

Buñuel once again employs Deneuve in a chilling surrealist horror story of individuals destroyed by the moral codes of a corrupt society. Set in Toledo in the 1920s, an innocent girl is seduced by her old guardian, whom she eventually comes to surpass in perversity. Full of Freudian imagery and dark, outrageous humor, TRISTANA is “nothing less than the quintessential Buñuel film of all time. ... Never before has Deneuve’s beauty seemed more precise and enigmatic.”—Vincent Canby, New York Times. (95 mins.)

The print for TRISTANA did not arrive on time and both screenings have been cancelled. We hope to reschedule. In its place we are screening THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG on Saturday, May 7 at 9 p.m. and THE LAST METRO on Sunday, May 8 at 2 p.m.

“Deneuve and her sister Françoise Dorléac star in this big-budget tribute to the American musical as twin sisters in a tiny seaside town who dream of romance and life in the city. Demy packs his Cinemascope canvas with energetically choreographed dance numbers and eye-popping color, while Michel Legrand contributes some of the greatest music of his career. The casting of Gene Kelly is pure genius.”—BAM Cinematheque. “Demy pays tribute to the American musical yet mixes in accoutrements of French poetic realism: dreams and reality coexist more strangely and stubbornly than in most other musicals.”—Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader. (125 mins.)

Drawing on the traditions of American noir, Truffaut’s tale of sexual obsession and betrayal is set on the lush Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean. When tobacco farmer Louis’ (Jean-Paul Belmondo) mail-order bride arrives (Deneuve), he’s unsure whether this beautiful woman is the same one he has been corresponding with by letter and only seen in photographs. Ignoring his doubts, passion consumes, and the two begin a life together—until the day the mysterious Julie disappears with a large portion of Louis’ assets. (123 mins.)

Deneuve stars as a woman who runs a theater with her new leading actor/lover (Gérard Dépardieu) while her Jewish husband goes underground to escape the Nazis. Nestor Almendros’ muted cinematography captures the color and climate of the Occupation as Truffaut thoughtfully deals with lies and artistry in crisis. “A dazzlingly subversive work. ... a gently comic, romantic meditation on love, loyalty, heroism, and history.”—Dave Kehr, Chicago Sun-Times. (131 mins.)

Winner of 10 French Césars including Best Film, Best Director, and acting awards for its leads.

“Only a fool, you suppose, would attempt to film Proust; in that case, Raoul Ruiz, the Chilean director, is a wise and delicate fool, especially since he elected to concentrate on the concluding volume of ’In Search of Lost Time.’ There’s no Swann and not much of Proust’s beloved Albertine (Chiara Mastroianni), but plenty of Odette (Catherine Deneuve), the Baron de Charlus (John Malkovich), and the haughty Saint-Loup (Pascal Greggory), plus enough of Gilberte (Emmanuelle Béart) to demonstrate why men and boys alike would throw their hearts, or their teacups, at her feet. The picture has a stately, waltz-like rhythm, as our narrator guides us through the declining fortunes of his friends under the shadow of the First World War.”—Anthony Lane, The New Yorker. (162 mins.)

Ruiz’s dark comedy is based on the case of Hermine van Hug, a 1920s psychoanalyst who believed that criminal tendencies are formed at age five, and who labeled her nephew a murderer before he reached adolescence. The nephew proved her right by strangling her. Catherine Deneuve plays Solange, a lawyer who loses every case she represents and nevertheless decides to represent the young accused killer. An intelligent meditation on family, free will, and the nature of the criminal mind. “A droll mock-philosophical inquiry that refuses to take itself too seriously while finding a hundred different ways to ask, ‘What if?’ ”—Stephen Holden, New York Times. (103 mins.)

“Working from Robert Thomas’ stage play and channeling Agatha Christie and Vicente Minnelli, Ozon directed this whodunit/who’s-who of French leading actresses as a genre mash-up of a musical comedy/murder mystery. Deneuve stars alongside Huppert, Ardant, Beart, Darrieaux, Ledoyen, and more as the titular ladies/suspects who gather in a country house at Christmastime in the 1950s, only to find the master of the house murdered. A sumptuous and rigorous derangement of plausibility, coherence, and proper taste ... is also pure—that is to say, innocent and uncorrupted—fun.”—A.O. Scott, New York Times. (111 mins.)

“A history professor and her young daughter embark in Lisbon on a cruise with stops at the places that fill the historian’s imagination, from Pompeii to the pyramids at Giza. At each, they talk of myths and other truths, the inquisitive youngster in every sense following in her mother’s footsteps. Meanwhile, a trio of twentieth century goddesses, Delphine (Catherine Deneuve), Aphrodite (Stefania Sandrelli), and Helena (Irene Papas), are guests at ship captain John Malkovich’s table, where they share fin-de-siècle regrets, both cultural and personal. But while they talk and talk, other things are happening on the wine-dark seas; another world is rising to the surface, implies Oliveira, who is in a fin-du-monde mood.”—Pacific Film Archive. (96 mins.)

“Desplechin brings a burst of fresh vitality to the holiday family film chestnut as the Vuillards gather for Christmas under the snowy shroud of the matriarch’s (Deneuve) recent revelation of her leukemia. Dazzlingly alive—full of humor, emotion, unpredictability, love, magic, and even a potent draught of holiday cheer—the film confirms Desplechin’s status as contemporary French cinema’s greatest humanist.”—BAM Cinematheque. (150 mins.)