Directed by Nico Papatakis • 1963 • France
Starring Francine Bergé, Colette Bergé, Pascale de Boysson
Inspired by the notorious case of Christine and Léa Papin—French sisters working as maids who murdered their employer’s wife and daughter in 1933—Nico Papatakis’s debut feature was a succès de scandale that was boycotted by Cannes’s selection committee in 1963. A furiously anarchic, expressionistically heightened dissection of class relations, LES ABYSSES unfolds in a country home where domestic servants Michèle and Marie-Louise (played by real-life sisters Francine and Colette Bergé) are cruelly exploited by the family they work for. When their abusive employers push them too far, it provokes a shocking rebellion that doubles as a provocative metaphor for Algerian resistance against French colonialism.
Up Next in Directed by Nico Papatakis
-
The Shepherds of Calamity
Directed by Nico Papatakis • 1967 • Greece
Starring Olga Karlatos, George Dialegmenos, Lambros TsagasNico Papatakis’s caustic political allegory—made in the wake of the 1967 Greek coup d’état that led to the establishment of a right-wing military junta—takes the form of a deliriously unhinged r...
-
Gloria Mundi
Directed by Nico Papatakis • 1976 • France
Starring Olga Karlatos, Roland Bertin, Philippe AdrienOne of the most shocking and transgressive films of the 1970s, this incendiary political parable centers on Galai (the fearless Olga Karlatos), an actress starring as an Arab terrorist in a film abo...
-
The Photograph
Directed by Nico Papatakis • 1986 • France, Greece
Starring Hristos Tsagas, Aris Retsos, Zozo ZarpaNico Papatakis brilliantly dissects the soul of modern Greece in this darkly comic, cuttingly perceptive exile’s tale. Fleeing political turmoil in Greece, Ilias (Aris Retsos) travels to Paris and...
