Mauvais Sang
by Leos Carax · film · 1986
unverified
carax's second feature, a near-future heist film shot entirely on studio sets replicating paris with a restricted color palette. co-produced by fr3, les films plain chant, soprofilms, and unite 3, the production spanned over 30 weeks using constructed sets of deserted streets and metro stations. the soundtrack includes music by sergei prokofiev, benjamin britten, and david bowie, with the bowie-scored running scene later lifted by noah baumbach for frances ha.
what shaped this
the makers, scenes, and predecessors this work came out of, grouped by how the influence reached it
the makers behind the maker
- Boy Meets Girl · Leos Carax
producer lineage · cinematographer Jean-Yves Escoffier
Escoffier shot both films, establishing continuity in Carax's visual vocabulary from his debut to his second feature. The monochrome precision of Boy Meets Girl fed directly into the restricted color palette strategy of Mauvais Sang.
“shot mainly in bold primary colours by cinematographer Jean-Yves Escoffier, who also lensed Carax's luminously…”
source ↗
scene and geography
- Boy Meets Girl · Leos Carax
in the room · cinéma du look, 1980s Paris
Both films emerged from the same moment in French cinema. Mauvais Sang arrived in 1986 within the cinéma du look movement alongside Luc Besson and Jean-Jacques Beineix, but Carax's visual artifice and studio-based rejection of naturalism marked a clear divergence from his contemporaries' commercial appetite.
“Though he emerged in the 1980s, amid French film's slick, stylish 'cinéma du look', Carax's…”
source ↗ - Cahiers du Cinéma
in the room · Paris film criticism, 1979–1980
Carax got his start writing for Cahiers du cinéma between 1979 and 1980.
“Carax—whose real name is Alex Christopher Dupont and whose professional name is an anagram of…”
source ↗
what’s downstream
later work that traces back to this one