A Simple Story
(Une simple histoire)
With Micheline Bezançon, Elisabeth Huart.
France, 1958, 16mm, black & white, 68 min.
French with English subtitles.
Considered one of the great “lost” films and a precursor of the French New Wave, Tunisian-born director Marcel Hanoun’s first film, Une simple histoire, was co-produced by French television on a very low budget and shot in 16mm. Inspired by an item on the back page of a newspaper, the spare “plot” concerns a woman who arrives in Paris with her little girl to seek work. A series of peregrinations leave her penniless, homeless, and ultimately dependent on the kindness of strangers. The film is notable for its rigorous construction and for the intricate relationship between its first-person, voice-over commentary and the images and dialogue they comment on—subject of a famous exegesis by film theorist Noël Burch and the reason for his labeling it “one of the few genuine masterpieces in the entire history of cinema.”
