A casino in the south of France. A suicide at the blackjack table. A magician fanning a hand of cards… An ancient party, her feathered headdress vibrant against the velvet theater curtains, singing. “You came along, from out of nowhere.” Beautiful dreams, beautiful schemes from nowhere. . . . And then Viola appears, the chimerical essence of fatale.
An epicene young man, alone at a table with his glass of champagne, falls in love with the mysterious singer. She has tuberculosis. They marry. A honeymoon at various spas, where she is cured…
At his family château in Switzerland, boredom sets in… She becomes spectral, withdrawn. A year later she is dead… In the blink of an eye, a magnificent and terrible romance has blossomed and died: what we would call a great love…
LA PALOMA is a story every human person lives at least once. — Gary Indiana*
Los Angeles cinephiles are in for the rarest of treats as the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures presents the North American 4K restoration premiere of Daniel Schmid’s LA PALOMA (1974), the opera director’s “intoxicating, maddening revelation” starring Ingrid Caven, Peter Kern, Peter Chatel, Bulle Ogier, Ludmilla Tucek, and Jérôme-Oliver Nicolin. A intimate colleague of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Schmid’s œuvre is characterized by high theatricality and an aesthetic allegiance to the films of Josef von Sternberg and Douglas Sirk.
The screening will be introduced by Giona A. Nazzaro, the Artistic Director of the Locarno Film Festival. See info and link below for details.
LA PALOMA
Written and directed by Daniel Schmid
Thursday, March 28, at 7:30 pm
Ted Mann Theater — Academy Museum
6067 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles
*Gary Indiana, “Daniel Schmid: La Paloma,” Artforum XXXII, no. 1 (September 1993): 153. Copyright © Gary Indiana and Artforum.
La Paloma was restored by Cinémathèque Suisse with the support of Memoriav at L’immagine Ritrovata lab.
Daniel Schmid, La Paloma (1974), from top: Ingrid Caven; Peter Kern and Caven; Kern and Jérôme-Oliver Nicolin; Caven and Kern; Caven and Ludmilla Tucek; Caven; Daniel Schmid (center) and Bulle Ogier on set.
Images courtesy and © Cinémathèque Suisse.
