The Lorry

In this most talky and personal of films, director Marguerite Duras and actor Gerard Depardieu do an on-camera read-through of a movie script. Occasionally, the director comments about the characters or their motivations, and sometimes the actor does. That's all -- there is no action, there are no location shots, no one pretends to be anything else. The script itself tells about an encounter between a blank-slate of a woman hitchhiker, and a communist truck driver. As the reading progresses, Duras comments bitterly about the failed ideals of...

Agatha and the Limitless Readings

A man and his sister meet at a seaside village to discuss their relationship.

Nathalie Granger

With little or no embellishment, filmmaker Marguerite Duras offers a simple, often wordless chronicle of a woman's day. She and her friend are seen doing yard work, talking about their families and receiving the occasional visitor. The brightest spot in the day is when a washing machine salesman comes to call.

Césarée

On images of the Tuileries Gardens, Marguerite Duras recalls Césarée, an ancient destroyed city.

Les Mains négatives

Duras narrates a short story while the camera travels through the streets of Paris with short interludes of solemn music.

Le Navire Night

Each night in Paris, hundreds of men and women anonymously use telephone lines that date from the German Occupation and are no longer listed to talk to each other, to love each other. These people, shipwrecked lovers, are dying to love, to escape the abyss of solitude.

L’homme atlantique

When everything was ready for my death, I began to write of what I know precisely, which you’ve never understood, knowing you would never understand … I have made a film out of your absence.

Aurélia Steiner (Melbourne)

Based on the letters of a fictitious poetess to her lover. Duras reads extracts from these letters, as the film shows a boat journey down the Seine, past familiar bridges and landmarks. – BFI

Aurélia Steiner (Vancouver)

Based on the letters of a fictitious poetess to her lover. Duras reads extracts from the letters, about the poetess’s Jewish past, while the film shows stark waves beating against the seashore. – BFI

Roman Dialogue

'The subject of this film is the conversation between a man and a woman. A couple, maybe lovers, maybe married, it doesn't matter. (...) During this conversation, we do not see but the city of Rome. I wanted to transmit that what Rome provokes in me, the feeling of an intrinsic matter, indissoluble, in difference with Paris, made of small parks and open spaces, crossed by the sky and the wind. Hand in hand with the film, the difficulty of the two lovers assumes a clearer, more explicit form. But as much as, in my opinion, it is impossible to...