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With her ravishingly sensual take on Herman Melville's "Billy Budd, Sailor," Claire Denis firmly established herself as one of the great visual tone poets of our time. Amid the azure waters and sunbaked desert landscapes of Djibouti, a French Foreign Legion sergeant (Denis Lavant) sow...

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Bibliographic Details
Corporate Authors: Sept/Arte (Firm), Centre national de la cinématographie (France)
Other Authors: Denis, Claire, 1946- (Screenwriter), Fargeau, Jean-Pol (Screenwriter), Lavant, Denis, 1961- (Actor), Colin, Grégoire (Actor), Subor, Michel, 1935-2022 (Actor), Courcet, Richard (Actor), Godard, Agnès (director of photography.), Tzur, Eran (composer (expression)), Pierrefeu, Charles Henri de (composer (expression)), Britten, Benjamin, 1913-1976 (composer (expression)), Melville, Herman, 1819-1891
Format: Video
Language:French
Language Notes:In French with English subtitles.
Published: [San Francisco, California, USA] : Kanopy Streaming, 2021.
[New York, N.Y.] : The Criterion Collection
Subjects:
France. > Armée. > Légion étrangère > Drama.
Soldiers > France > Drama.
Soldiers > Djibouti > Drama.
Garrisons > Djibouti > History.
France > Armed Forces > Djibouti > Drama.
Military films.
Film adaptations.
Feature films.
Fiction films.
Online Access:Connect to this streaming video (Kanopy)
Description
Summary:With her ravishingly sensual take on Herman Melville's "Billy Budd, Sailor," Claire Denis firmly established herself as one of the great visual tone poets of our time. Amid the azure waters and sunbaked desert landscapes of Djibouti, a French Foreign Legion sergeant (Denis Lavant) sows the seeds of his own ruin as his obsession with a striking young recruit (Grégoire Colin) plays out to the thunderous, operatic strains of Benjamin Britten. Denis and cinematographer Agnès Godard fold military and masculine codes of honor, colonialism's legacy, destructive jealousy, and repressed desire into shimmering, hypnotic images that ultimately explode in one of the most startling and unforgettable endings in all of modern cinema.
Item Description:Title from title frames.
Physical Description:1 online resource (streaming video file) (93 min.) : .flv file, sound, color
Production Credits:Cinematography by Agnès Godard ; editor, Nelly Quettier ; original music, Eran Tzur and Charles Henri de Pierrefeu; includes excerpts from Benjamin Britten's opera Billy Budd.