The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, August 3-9
Graduate First (1978)
Directed by Maurice Pialat
In northern France, high school near-graduates yearn to get out of their small town but lack the skills or visionary impulse to break from the inertia of rural gravity. The opposite of a fond coming-of-age reminiscence, Graduate First is comparatively gentle in relation to Pialat’s larger work, which is to say there’s less screaming and abrasion than usual by an exponential factor. When conflict inevitably emerges, it’s almost cheering: no matter how stultifying the circumstances, life will find a way, as long as “life” means “howling shouting matches.” The subject is torpor, the result is unexpected vitality. Vadim Rizov (August 7, 5pm; August 9, 4pm at MoMA’s Gaumont series)