The Mother and the Whore (1973)

If Godard and Truffaut busted down the door for a new generation of french filmmakers, Jean Eustache followed them in and stood in the corner and received little attention. After making a few docs and shorts, he finally made a bid for cinematic immortality with this first-person-epic (longer than Jeanne Dielman!), La Maman et la Putain. It stars Jean-Pierre Léaud, the avatar-du-jour for many autobiographical directors, and in this episode we compare Eustache’s film with another experimental french film featuring Léaud’s antics, Jacques Rivette’s Out 1. Why do these films now reside on the Sight and Sound Top 250? We sort out our very different reactions to the Eustache film, talk about his life and philosophy, and grapple with how alien this caustic ‘70s behavior feels today.

Next week: Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974) by Rainer Werner Fassbinder

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