"Elephant Man" is not an elephant, but it generates enthusiasm

• Popularized during confinement, the “old films” of heritage have a card to play this summer with the reopening of theaters.
• This is what hope the distribution company Carlotta, which comes out "Elephant Man" this week, or the Pathé Foundation which has spent five years restoring "La Roue", masterpiece of the silent signed Abel Gance.
• The first results, in terms of attendance, are promising.

He may repeat "I am not an elephant, I am a human being", it is his physical aspect that attracts attention, but also the empathy that we can feel towards destiny outside standard of John Merrick, better known as Elephant Man.

With 1,200 admissions recorded on Monday June 22, David Lynch's 40th birthday film took sixth place among the almost fifty films released. A success that should amplify this weekend, because many theaters that scheduled it had not yet reopened on Monday. "Even if it means going back to the cinema, you might as well mark it off with a masterpiece," Damien said, leaving UGC Normandie in Paris. A film, half-realistic, because inspired by a true story, half-fantastic, produced in black and white which regains its metallic appearance thanks to its recent restoration in 4K.

"Before being a heritage film, it is an accessible and fairly unifying author's film, explains Vincent Paul-Boncourt, the boss of Carlotta who distributes the film in theaters. It is also an emblematic film of the 1980s , which the oldest are keen to introduce to the youngest. "

This success helping, Carlotta already dreams of repeating the feat during the summer by bringing out Crash by David Cronenberg or with Les Fleurs de Shanghai by the Taiwanese Hou Hsiao-hsien… “There is a real appetite for cinema in the 1990s ", Underlines Vincent Paul-Boncourt. For the cinema of the 2000s also because, in the only UGC Ciné-Cité Les Halles, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind by Michel Gondry was a hit on Monday for the reopening of the room.

"This phenomenon is not a surprise," says Sophie Seydoux, president of the Pathé-Jérôme Seydoux Foundation. The recent period of confinement has probably increased demand, says this specialist in the restoration of silent masterpieces. But it has been around for fifteen years, thanks to the policy of the CNC which helps films to go from film to digital, if possible in versions restored in high definition. This is the case of  La Roue , a 1923 film that required five years of work for an unexpected and breathtaking result. Captioned "modern day tragedy" by its author, Abel Gance, this seven-hour film which tells the story of a brother and a sister who ignore their real kinship, was first designed to to be a serial (the ancestor of series) before becoming a great film full of twists and turns, where the wheel of a train intervenes, like a leitmotif, as the symbol of a destiny, of a fatality that crushes individuals ...

THE WHEEL / LA ROUE (1923, Abel Gance) pic.twitter.com/SOzkcNSNQo

La Roue is  coming out this week in a superb DVD box set in a limited edition, before dreaming of itself on the big screen ... "This is a film that is made to be screened in large rooms capable of hosting a philharmonic orchestra", agrees Sophie Seydoux . The score is in fact signed by young composers of the time: Claude Debussy, Darius Milhaud, Arthur Honegger ... Screenings last year at the Berlin Festival or at the Lumière Festival in Lyon marked those who were lucky enough to be there assist. Other dates are planned. "Lausanne contacted us", while the Parisians would see it well programmed at the Philharmonie ...

While waiting for Abel Gance and LA ROUE ... @ FestLumiere @Auditorium_ONL @fondation_pathe pic.twitter.com/jhdCcMWzKF

Another big DVD release made following a successful release in theaters:  The Rumor  of William Wyler, with Shirley MacLaine and Audrey Hepburn, on the bad buzz that fuels the relationship between two young women. Not funny, but cruelly current. As could be Carol  of Todd Haynes in the same kind of story and with the same type of heroines embodied by Cate Blanchet and Mara Rooney.

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