Directed by Jean Eustache • 1966 • France
Starring Jean-Pierre Léaud, Gérard Zimmermann, Henri Martinez
In this early narrative short by Jean Eustache, French New Wave icon Jean-Pierre Léaud stars as Daniel, a ne’er-do-well who loafs around Paris with his friends in search of easy money and pretty women. Daniel believes a new job playing a street-greeting Santa Claus will provide him with golden opportunities to meet girls, but his own desperation continually stands in the way of success. By turns comic and melancholy, and filmed with Eustache’s signature black-and-white, documentary-style cinematography, SANTA CLAUS HAS BLUE EYES marks an important stepping stone among the director’s unsentimental explorations of awkward young men who avoid self-reflection in their pursuit of the opposite sex.
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The Virgin of Pessac
Directed by Jean Eustache • 1969 • France
As political and social tumult rocked France in May and June of 1968, Jean Eustache used his first documentary to focus on persistent tradition, in the form of a centuries-old ceremony in his hometown of Pessac. Each year, Pessac’s civic leaders choose a...
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Numéro zéro
Directed by Jean Eustache • 1971 • France
Starring Jean Eustache, Odette Robert, Boris EustacheBefore paying homage to his grandmother Odette Robert in the autobiographical MY LITTLE LOVES, Jean Eustache made NUMÉRO ZÉRO, a documentary portrait in which Robert answers questions about her diffic...
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The Pig
Directed by Jean Eustache and Jean-Michel Barjol • 1970 • France
Jean Eustache returned to his hometown, the farming community of Pessac, to create this cinema-verité record of the ritual slaughter of a pig, codirected with Jean-Michel Barjol. The documentary captures in unflinching detail—and i...
