" Tours 1959 " is a modest – not to say awkward – film exercise by a group of film students of the IDHEC film school. The result, in pure cinematic terms, is indeed just passable but time has gone by and their little film has not only got better with age but has even blossomed into a priceless historical document. For by covering the 1959 Tours Short Film Festival, these young people were given the opportunity (and give it to us in return) to fix on film important personalities the way they were in December '59. Just by watching this unpretentious documentary, you will meet important people who have passed away for long but are present here in the flesh (or almost so). You will recognize actress Betsy Blair displaying her usual unsophisticated charm, novelist Louise de Vilmorin making a very modern statement against the cultural dictatorship of Paris, playwright Eugène Ionesco telling about his participation in a short, writer Marguerite Duras debating during the jury's deliberation, Jules Romains of the Académie Française expressing himself as President of the jury, Czech animation director Jiri Trnka visiting the festival... and many others. Of course you sometimes take a mere glimpse of some of the guests. Knowing for instance that Agnès Varda met her future husband Jacques Demy on this occasion, it is a pity that of both directors only Varda can be seen and for no longer than a fraction of a second. But it would be unfair to indulge in nitpicking: there is enough here to get our teeth into and complaining would be inappropriate. What really leaves to be desired in "Tours 1959" is the clumsy attempt to bring some fiction into what would have been better as pure documentary. The thread of the movie (a bored school student decides to skip school to attend the festival)is artificial and defies credibility : not knowing how to go about being admitted to the theater where the projections take place, the boy miraculously comes across Betsy Blair who arranges for him to be part of the festival. A few minutes later, another chance meeting with a journalist providentially enables him to rub elbows with V.I.Ps. A bit naive, for sure, but it does not matter in the end, for, once again by virtue of the passing of time, this defect becomes a quality: as a matter of fact, in showing the student wandering about the town, Guy Cavagnac finally makes... another good documentary, this time about the town of Tours as it was at the end of the nineteen fifties. So, film researchers, film historians, documentary-lovers, ignore the fact that this is not the best movie ever made and feel free to devote half an hour of your time to this unique short film: as its (real) virtues downright outweigh its (minor) sins you just will not be let down.
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