Director: Jackie Raynal
Year: 1969
Country: France
Language(s): French
Subtitles: French | English | Dutch | Spanish | Italian
Length: 72 mins
Format: PAL | R0
Colour: Black & White
Aspect Ratio: 16:9
Certificate: E
Synopsis
According to Noel Burch, Deux Fois is a "deliberately elementary meditation on certain primary functions of film which could be called the basis of editing and would include: expectation, exploration of the image, memory, perception, relationships between space outside of and space within the screen, all explored in a series of self-sufficient long-takes, with a perfect simplicity."
Mixed in with all of this is a questioning of surrealist, theatrical influences, which give the film a ritualistic, incantational but also very poetic aspect.
It presents an exemplary re-examination of the Hollywood codes of cinematography, and radically dismisses narration and the pretence of illusion. Jackie Raynal's film repeats each scene two times, and calls into question the "Once Upon a Time" that marks the beginning of a conventional story. This black and white film, practically a silent film, is a study of minimalism and clarity.
The scenes of Deux Fois, sometimes repeated with a touch of nonsense, accentuate the fluidity of time, and give a musical rhythm to the film. Throughout the montage of very different, improvised or minutely prepared scenes, Jackie Raynal adds a dose of irony and distance and seems, as the film unfolds, to articulate the cinematic form.
"This cinema 'au feminin' reminds us what the imperialist eye had repressed: different modes of editing impulses; what is seen and heard alters our perspective."
Serge Daney, Les Cahiers du cinema
"This film is an intentionally elementary meditation on certain primary functions of film, that could be said to be at the roots of film editing as such - expectations, exploring the picture, perceptual memory, relationships between on-screen and off-screen space - all explored in a series of free-standing sequence shots of perfect simplicity."
Noel Burch
"About thirty shots, with rarely a spoken word. But this wouldn't be worth mentioning if Deux Fois were not the film it is: one of the strongest (and I'm weighing my words in these times of verbal inflation) yet, at the same time, most enigmatic works ever seen. It took me three screenings over the course of several years to accept that I don't understand a thing about Deux Fois"
Louis Skorecki, Semaine des Cahiers
Special Features
-
Autour De Jaques Baratier (Jackie Raynal, 24 mins, with Jean-Paul Belmondo, Bernadette Lafont, Bulle Ogier)
- A 40-page booklet about the film and the Zanzibar group by Claire Renier
