Louis Malle

Zazie dans le métro

Zazie dans le métro

A brash and precocious ten-year-old (Catherine Demongeot) comes to Paris for a whirlwind weekend with her rakish uncle (Philippe Noiret); he and the viewer get more than they bargained for, however, in this anarchic comedy from Louis Malle, which rides roughshod over the City of Light. Based on a popular novel by Raymond Queneau that had been considered unadaptable, Malle’s audacious Zazie dans le métro, made with flair on the cusp of the French New Wave, is a bit of stream-of-consciousness slapstick, wall-to-wall with visual gags, editing tricks, and effects.

Film Info

  • France
  • 1960
  • 92 minutes
  • Color
  • 1.33:1
  • French
  • Spine #570

Special Features

  • New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
  • Archival video interviews with director Louis Malle, novelist Raymond Queneau, actress Catherine Demongeot, and screenwriter Jean-Paul Rappeneau
  • New audio interview with director and photographer William Klein, artistic consultant on the film
  • Le Paris de Zazie, a 2005 video piece featuring assistant director Philippe Collin
  • Original theatrical trailer
  • New and improved English subtitle translation
  • PLUS: A new essay by film scholar Ginette Vincendeau

    New cover by Yann Legendre

Purchase Options

Special Features

  • New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
  • Archival video interviews with director Louis Malle, novelist Raymond Queneau, actress Catherine Demongeot, and screenwriter Jean-Paul Rappeneau
  • New audio interview with director and photographer William Klein, artistic consultant on the film
  • Le Paris de Zazie, a 2005 video piece featuring assistant director Philippe Collin
  • Original theatrical trailer
  • New and improved English subtitle translation
  • PLUS: A new essay by film scholar Ginette Vincendeau

    New cover by Yann Legendre
Zazie dans le métro
Cast
Catherine Demongeot
Zazie
Philippe Noiret
Uncle Gabriel
Hubert Deschamps
Turandot
Carla Marlier
Albertine
Annie Fratellini
Mado
Vittorio Caprioli
Trouscaillon
Jacques Dufilho
Ferdinand Grédoux
Yvonne Clech
Madame Mouaque
Antoine Roblot
Charles
Odette Piquet
Zazie’s mother
Nicolas Bataille
Fédor
Credits
Director
Louis Malle
Based on the novel by
Raymond Queneau
Adapted by
Louis Malle
Adapted by
Jean-Paul Rappeneau
Director of photography
Henri Raichi
Editing
Kenout Peltier
Music
Fiorenzo Carpi
Production design
Bernard Evein
Assistant director
Philippe Collin
Sound engineer
André Hervée
Artistic consultant
William Klein
Costumes
Marc Doelnitz
Makeup artist
Aïda Carange

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Louis Malle

Director

Louis Malle
Louis Malle

Crime dramas, comedies, romances, tragedies, fantasies, documentaries, and, of course, coming-of-age stories­—director Louis Malle did it all. This most unpredictable and eclectic of filmmakers enriched cinema over a nearly forty-year career that took him from Jacques Cousteau’s watery depths (his first film was the Cousteau-codirected Oscar winner The Silent World) to the peripheries of the French New Wave (Zazie dans le métro, The Fire Within) to the vanguard of American moviemaking (My Dinner with André). Malle had an intellectually curious nature that led him to approach film from a variety of angles; he was as comfortable making minimalist works like the wordless Humain trop humain and the talky André as phantasmagorical ones like Black Moon. He is probably best known, though, for his deeply personal films about the terrors and confusions of childhood, such as Murmur of the Heart and Au revoir les enfants. Perhaps not as well-known is his parallel career as a master of the nonfiction form—one of his many documentary achievements was the seven-part Phantom India, which would be a stunning career centerpiece for anyone else; for this director, it was simply a fascinating side project. Malle died in 1995, shortly after directing his final film, the typically experimental Vanya on 42nd Street.