On April 29, 2022, as part of the Édition ParaSol Videothèque, UCM.ONE will release on the Artkeim² label in cooperation with moviemax will release “That Important Thing: Love“, one of the great highlights of French auteur cinema from Polish director Andrzej Żuławski and produced by Albina du Boisrouvray, as a limited Mediabook in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
The film “That Important Thing: Love” (German title: “Nachtblende“) by Andrzej Żuławski is a highlight of French auteur cinema. The film is based on the novel “La nuit americaine” by Christopher Frank, although Żuławski’s screenplay and staging depart greatly from the novel. With Romy Schneider, Fabio Testi, Klaus Kinski, the film is star-studded with greats of 70s European cinema. Romy Schneider received the César for “Best Female Lead” for her role in 1976 and was also awarded “Best Actress” at the 1975 Faro Island Filmfestíval and Taormina International Film Festival.
Storyline
The actress Nadine Chevalier (Romy Schneider) faces the low point of her career. With no serious commitment and no demand, she shoots soft porn to keep herself and her manic-depressive and impotent husband Jacques (Jacques Dutronc) afloat. During a shoot, she meets photographer Servais Mont (Fabio Testi), who immediately falls in love with the attractive actress. He decides to help her out of her professional misery and, with the help of actor Zimmer (Klaus Kinski), gets her a part in the third-rate theater production of “Richard III.” But to do so, he must also invest in the play.
To raise the money for it, Servais goes to the underworld godfather Mazelli, for whom he has previously made compromising photos for blackmail purposes. But with this he is heading more and more towards a tragic end…
The film was shot very quickly in the winter of 1974/75, the plot permitted that. Director Andrzej Żuławski included scenes that an audience in the 70s only knew from explicit soft porn flicks. There had never been anything like this done in a dramatic film before. The result was that the criticism was almost predominantly negative. There was talk of a scandalous film, a mess and porno-brutality. But there was also objective criticism. The film manages to balance the topics of money, love and difficult existential situations. It also shows that apart from money, sex and love, there must be something else worth living for.
Comments about the film
“That Important Thing: Love” is a scandalous film. Brutal, naked, obsessive and intense. A cinematic delight of the more complicated kind.” (mitternachtskino.de)
“Mixture of attempted psychogram and melodrama, staged in a baroque, garish manner. In the depiction of existential extreme situations speculative in places, but not infrequently unintentionally funny.” (Encyclopedia of International Film)
“Director Zulawski thus tells a story in which two principles not only diametrically oppose each other, but are intertwined: the principle of money and the principle of love (filmstarts.com)
“That Important Thing: Love” is without question a great film by Andrzej Żuławski, distinguished by its actors, as well as by its image of an amoral society.” (film-reviews.com)
“There is crying, screaming and suffering, for some beyond the limits of good taste. Our conclusion: an exceedingly successful drama about human passions and abysses.”(filmreporter.com)
“Zulawski confronted the characters with their own wretchedness, the author with his own superficiality, the actors with their own fragility and distilled from them pure authenticity, pure expression.” (escalating-dreams.com)
“A star hour of French cinema !” (Prisma-italo-cinema.com)
“The successful mixture of psychogram and melodrama scores with an overwhelming Romy Schneider… (filmreporter.de)
“That Important Thing: Love” is a destructive love story on the brink of madness; grueling, dreary poetry between overdrawn grotesquerie, provocative, artificial expressionism with a penchant for narrative dead ends…” (moviebreak.com)
“Zulawski’s film is intelligent cinema. A manifesto against superficiality, created for liberal and unprejudiced people who are ready to dive into the shallows and dark sides of human emotions and actions.” (shadow-lights.blogspot.com)
Equipment and technical data of the Mediabook
More Information about the movie: That Important Thing: Love
More information about the film label: Artkeim²
