La belle de nuit (1934)
Artforum, “something like a minicult has emerged” in France around Louis Valray, who made his directorial debut with
L’homme à la barbiche (1933), the story of two half-brothers competing for an inheritance told in forty-seven minutes. Two features followed,
La belle de nuit (1934) and
Thirteen Days of Love (1935), and more than a decade would pass before he made a final short film,
Voyantes et médiums (1947), took a job in radio, then another as a chemical engineer, and died in obscurity in 1972. In January 2020, the Museum of Modern Art screened Lobster Films’ restorations of the features as part of To Save and Project, its festival of film preservation, and now MoMA is streaming them to its members through next Thursday.