Décembre 1979 (1980)

The Radar read

A quieter title still finding its audience, though the rating rests on a thin sample, so treat it as provisional.

Synopsis

“Breaking in. Patrice Kirchhofer’s Anorexie 4 continues on the path of the narrated narrative (a short story by Chandler) and Décembre 79 on the path of photography. At the end of these two journeys, the film becomes the subject and the trace of the same act of breaking in. In Anorexie 4 the voice shapes the images (the play of chess and of light) and in Décembre 79, shot in the same abandoned mining region, the photos shape the film: chemical deposits, fossils instantaneously striped and imprinted by signs of life and haunted by their ghostly presence. A space of dreary grey, of desolation, which is in a never-ending process of dying because the place, even before being filmed, already went through a vampire-like depletion. In accepting the invitation of these tracking shots of abandoned factories, the spectator is summoned to riverbanks similar to those of Dreyer’s Vampyr and Murnau’s Nosferatu.” Charles TESSON. Festival de Digne. Cahiers du Cinéma n° 314 – Juillet–Août 1980.

Synopsis and metadata sourced from The Movie Database (TMDB).

Radar blends quality, momentum and freshness into one “what to watch now” number — so a great older film can sit lower than a rising new release. The Quality signal above is the time-neutral rating, which is why an acclaimed classic keeps a high quality score even when its Radar number is lower. Radar outputs are editorial algorithmic recommendations, not objective facts, and may change as signals update. A Radar score is not the same as a TMDB, IMDb or critic rating. How scoring works (v3.0).