The Sieges of Alcazar and The Man of the Badlands bookend the fascinating career of Luc Moullet. 

Though he may be one of the less-decorated foot soldiers of the French New Wave, Luc Moullet is an integral member of that legendary legion of artists. His decade spanning career was hatched in the classic incubator of the French New Wave, Cahiers du Cinema, where Moullet wrote criticism that angered Françoise Truffuat and impressed a young Jean-Luc Goddard. At the start of his directorial career, his politically charged shorts failed to rustle up much attention, but he continued to release films at a steady rate from 1966 onwards. 

His films are stamped with a signature primitive aesthetic that often adds to the non-mainstream ambience of his work, but at other times simply embellishes the absurdity of the final product. The crumbling cinema in The Sieges of Alcazar (1989) is a brilliant display of the former, while the intentionally awful English post-dub in A Girl is a Gun (1971) is a classic example of the latter. “They call me,” he proudly informs the audience in 2000’s Moullet-centric documentary, The Man of the Badlands, “Shoestring Moullet.” 

The best part of watching Gérard Courant’s documentary and The Sieges of Alcazar back-to-back is the glorious sense that they represent bookends of a career. The creative philosophy that Moullet expounds upon in The Man of The Badlands lives in every frame of his comedic short film. It also helps that The Sieges of Alcazar is a love-letter to the early days of the French New Wave and the film’s protagonist, Guy, is a clear stand-in for a younger version of the director. 

Like Moullet, Guy writes for Cahiers du Cinema and is parsimonious to the point where he sits in the front row of the theater typically reserved for children rather than pay full price. (In the documentary, Moullet reveals he once registered his production company in an abandoned village to avoid paying taxes). He’s a supercilious cinephile who loves to love what others hate or ignore.  When he fears that he may be attracted to a rival critic–in a nod to the real-world rivalry, the critic in question writes for Positif–he’s horrified that he might be attracted to a woman who disparages his favorite director. 

The Sieges of Alcazar may have entered production when the French New Wave was no longer new, but it contains all the trappings of a typical film of that era. Characters gleefully speak directly to the audience, and though Moullet broadcasts their thoughts for us to hear, their true motivations remain inscrutable. Viewers looking for closure on any plot point may well be wary. Like his modernist contemporaries, Moullet insists on driving his plots off-road or parking before he reaches the expected destination. 

In Man of The Badlands, Director Gérard Courant travels with Moullet to the landscapes and locations that form the backdrop of his career. As Moullet chats about the significance of every meadow and mountain, he occasionally diverts the conversation to include on-set stories, his family history, and brief snippets of his artistic philosophy. In a river gorge where he shot a pivotal love scene in A Girl is a Gun, he remarks that the scene was difficult to film because the actors were cold and wet. 

However, in the gorge alongside his actors, Moullet never recalls the chill. He claims to have never felt it. 

Directors, according to Moullet, should be too busy to feel the cold, too involved to experience exhaustion, and too preoccupied to consider sitting down for a meal. Directing a narrative, he tells us, should be accompanied by a significant loss of weight. 

If successful directing is dependent on the filmmaker putting all his attention toward the film and nothing else, one wonders what that says about the critics and audiences depicted in The Siege of Alcazar. 

These characters are so preoccupied with the ever-present sounds of snacking and the theater’s extreme temperatures that they ignore the film they paid to see. If spectators do not stoop to join in on some bizarre game of musical chairs, they spend their time at the cinema fidgeting in their places. 

Could this be Moullet’s subtle criticism of the young man he once was? He claims the ideal director is immune to distraction, yet Guy latches on to every opportunity to skip off to some alternate mental plane. Perhaps, the auteur is commenting on the self-superiority of film critics who have not, at least in his film, attained the enlightenment of filmmakers during production. 

When he earns his official critics’ pass to view films for free, Guy feels like his cinematic career has reached its apex. It’s easy to picture the older Moullet telling his younger self that he’s barely reached the foot of the mountain. 

After all, he hasn’t even made his own film. 

The Films of Luc Moullet  is available on DVD through Facets on April 29th. You can buy your copy here. 

Author: Ora Damelin is a freshman film student at Columbia College Chicago. She loves to share her opinions on film and is delighted-and slightly befuddled-that those opinions are now published online.