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7 unusual facts about Alain Resnais


Alain Resnais

With Providence (1977), Resnais made his first film in English, with a screenplay written by David Mercer, and a cast that included John Gielgud and Dirk Bogarde.

This led to imaginative adaptations of plays by Alan Ayckbourn, Henri Bernstein and Jean Anouilh, as well as films featuring various kinds of popular song.

Resnais, having admired the plays of Alan Ayckbourn for many years, chose to adapt what appeared the most intractable of them, Intimate Exchanges, a series of eight interlinked plays which follow the consequences of a casual choice to sixteen possible endings.

(Braunberger went on to act as producer for several of Resnais's films in the following decade.) Resnais continued to address artistic subjects in Gauguin (1950) and Guernica (1950), which examined the Picasso painting based on the 1937 bombing of the town, and presented it to the accompaniment of a text written by Paul Éluard.

Bernard Krigstein

This story was remarkable for its subject matter, since the Holocaust was rarely discussed in popular media of the 1950s, as indicated by the controversy that same year surrounding Alain Resnais's Night and Fog (1955).

Distant Past

The episode title Distant Past was taken from the title of a bit of underscoring in Stephen Sondheim's film score for Alain Resnais's Stavisky.

Spotlight on Film

This series provided an overview of the works of various filmmakers such as Michelangelo Antonioni, Shirley Clarke, Roman Polanski, Alain Resnais, John Schlesinger, Jiri Trnka, Peter Weiss and Mai Zetterling.


Astor Pictures

Astor's biggest success was undoubtedly Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita (1960), which was a huge box-office hit for the company, and allowed it to continue to release foreign films such as Michael Powell's Peeping Tom (1960), François Truffaut's Shoot the Piano Player (1960), Alain Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad (1961) and Orson Welles' The Trial (1962).

Duncan Shepherd

Favorite directors with a number of five-star films include Alain Resnais and Akira Kurosawa.

Intimate Exchanges

Alain Resnais made two French films in 1993, called Smoking/No Smoking, to reflect Celia Teasdale's initial choice of whether or not to smoke a cigarette.

In 1993, six of the eight major variations were made into the two films Smoking/No Smoking directed by Alain Resnais.

Isle of Flowers

The director himself has stated that the film was inspired by the works of Kurt Vonnegut and Alain Resnais, among others.

Sympathy in Summer

It was partly financed by Melbourne University Film Society and was heavily financed by the films of Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut and Alain Resnais.


see also

Brian Mitchell and Joseph Nixon

Mitchell and Nixon’s next play, Spy, was inspired by 1960s British spy films and TV series, including The Ipcress File, James Bond, The Saint, The Prisoner and The Avengers, with one scene echoing Alain Resnais’s Last Year in Marienbad.

Pas sur la bouche

Pas sur la bouche (2003 film), a French film directed by Alain Resnais (also known by its English title Not on the Lips).

Wild grass

Wild Grass, the English-language title of Les Herbes folles, a 2009 film directed by Alain Resnais.