BEHIND THE DOOR (STOM! Silent Film Festival with live music)

La femme et le pantin Tagline Jacques de Baroncelli | 1929 | France | 115’ | Intertitles: French | Subtitles: Dutch Live accompaniment: Stéphane Orlando Op on a train ride, the aging aristocrat Don Mateo meets the young dancer Conchita and defends her during a heated argument with a fellow passenger. Soon Don Mateo falls hopelessly in love, but Conchita plays masterfully with his feelings through deceit and psychological games. La femme et le pantin stands out for the virtuosic performance of Conchita Montenegro and stylish visual language. The story, based on Pierre Louÿs’s novel of the same name, later served as inspiration for Luis Buñuels Cet obscur objet du désir (1977). At only 17 years old, Montenegro dominates the screen: playful, wild, and untamed like a man-eating tiger cub. Don Mateo doesn't stand a chance of taming her. The erotica of the film lies in Conchita's elusiveness. In a smoky back room, dancing for an audience of lustful men, Conchita Montenegro becomes the first actress in film history to appear completely naked on screen. Yet her nudity is more suggestive than explicit: a shadow on the wall, a contour behind a bead curtain, a reflection in an empty champagne bottle. Thus she becomes, literally and figuratively, \"That obscure object of desire\". In collaboration with Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé, Paris.