The Smugglers
(Les Contrabandieres)

Screening on Film
Directed by Luc Moullet.
With Françoise Vatel, Monique Thiriet, Johnny Monteilhet.
France, 1967, 35mm, black & white, 81 min.
French with English subtitles.

The Smugglers is a defiantly amateurish non-adventure adventure film concerning three people off in the wilds with no skills whatsoever, made in advance of May ’68. In its terminally digressive, aggressively slapsticky way, the film manages to encapsulate an entire era. Called by Jean-Marie Straub “maybe the best film not made by Godard,” and by Moullet himself as, “the best film of Robbe-Grillet,” this movie about borders and barriers sports a cameo appearance by the director, who is listed in the credits as “pompous fool.”  

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