Maurice Pialat, L’enfance nue and L’amour existe

Films at the Whitney and the Yale Film Archive present a very special screening of Maurice Pialat’s L’ENFANCE NUE (Naked Childhood, 1968)—a stark, lacerating study of a wayward and bitter child. A damning look at alienation, rage, and bitterness as only Pialat—often popularly regarded as “the French John Cassavetes”— could do. He swore he would do more audience-pleasing work following the commercial failure of this film upon release—an absurd promise in hindsight, given that Pialat only became more and more unpleasant, grim, and anguished in his look into the dark recesses of the human capacity for cruelty and emotional violence. The film is preceded by Pialat’s underseen, prize-winning, 20-minute short L’AMOUR EXISTE (Love Exists, 1960): a lyrical, devastating look at dead-end life in the suburbs outside of Paris.