Short Films

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Cinemania

THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE
LA MAMAN ET LA PUTAIN

• Director: Jean Eustache
• FRANCE / 1973 / DCP / B&W / 220’ / French; Turkish, English s.t.

• Screenplay: Jean Eustache
• Director of Photography: Pierre Lhomme
• Editing: Jean Eustache, Denise de Casabianca
• Music: Jacques Offenbach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Fréhel, Zarah Leander, Damia, Marlene Dietrich, Edith Piaf
• Cast: Jean-Pierre Léaud, Bernadette Lafont, Françoise Lebrun, Isabelle Weingarten, Jacques Renard, Jean-Noël Picq, Jean-Claude Biette, Pierre Cottrell, Jean Douchet
• Producer: Pierre Cottrell, Bob Rafelson, Alain Coiffier
• Production Co.: Elite Films, Ciné Qua Non, Les Films du Losange, Simar Films, V.M. Productions
• World Sales: Les Films du Losange

1973 Cannes Grand Prix, FIPRESCI Prize

Considered his masterpiece, the first feature film by Jean Eustache is a classic of French cinema and a seminal work of the post-nouvelle vague era. Tender, passionate, romantic, intimate, and youthful, The Mother and the Whore follows the philosophical conversations and monologues on love and sex of three characters involved in an unusual love triangle: the aimless Alexandre, his girlfriend Marie, and Veronika, a casual encounter who becomes his lover. At the Cannes Film Festival, where the film won the Grand Prix, many critics saw the film as immoral, obscene, or, ‘an insult to the nation’ as seen by Le Figaro, but these negative reviews did not hinder it from becoming one of the most praised French films of all times. ‘The films I made are as autobiographical as fiction can be,’ had said Eustache, who described The Mother and the Whore as a ‘narrative of certain seemingly innocuous acts. It could be the narrative of entirely different acts, in other places. What happens, the places where the action unfolds, have no importance.’

This film was a Meetings on the Bridge participant.