"Les pigeons du square" or "Pigeons in the Square" is an almost 25-year-old animal documentary and it was the very last film made by genre pioneer Jean Painlevé. If you have seen some of his older stuff, you will quickly recognize that none of this documentary here looks like his early works. His style clearly adjusted to what animal documentaries usually looked like back then. You see people in here, which is also not common for his works, and the science fiction effect is entirely gone. What has stay with him till the age of 80 though is the fast spot-on narration, so you may need subtitles if you are not fluent in French. There is quite a bit of comedy in here with all the football action scenes, but we also learn at the same time about the lives, mating, procreation, flying... of pigeons. I liked this one here more than most of his other works I have seen. And that is why I recommend checking it out. Thumbs up.
2 Reviews
Sighting the Elusive Painlevé
boblipton13 September 2018
In more the than two dozen documentary shorts I have seen, Jean Painlevé is an elusive creature. We can often hear his voice speaking about some sea creature, cracking dark jokes and educating the audience about his interests. In this movie, however, he can be spotted a couple of times in a park in Paris, surrounded by youngsters like attendants, quizzing them on the subject of this movie.
It's about pigeons, their habits, their courtship rituals, their diseases and the 20-franc fine for feeding them. Like most of his movies, however, it is about more than the subject at hand; the preamble makes it clear that this movie is meant to transmit the techniques, habits and excitement of observing creatures. Science may be about observation and getting the details right, but the impulse to do so must arise from somewhere, and the subtext of this film, not particularly hidden, is that anyone can do it.
How often have we heard, particularly when we are young, that we would not understand or we're too young? You can do it! It's an important message and perhaps, after more than half a century of making these movies, perhaps his most important.
It's about pigeons, their habits, their courtship rituals, their diseases and the 20-franc fine for feeding them. Like most of his movies, however, it is about more than the subject at hand; the preamble makes it clear that this movie is meant to transmit the techniques, habits and excitement of observing creatures. Science may be about observation and getting the details right, but the impulse to do so must arise from somewhere, and the subtext of this film, not particularly hidden, is that anyone can do it.
How often have we heard, particularly when we are young, that we would not understand or we're too young? You can do it! It's an important message and perhaps, after more than half a century of making these movies, perhaps his most important.
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