Not a high-brow blog: Max Pecas.

Max Pexas was born in Lyon, on April, 25 1925 ; he died somewhere sometime in 2003.

« Pope of the Z serie », « Eisenstein of the trash movie »... Clichés about him abound : they are the collective voice of academic ignorance.

French TV channel M6 must be praised for introducing the director’s work to a wide audience : France is now home to legions of Max Pecas fans.

One anonymous scholar builds a strong on line case for the recognition of Mr. Pecas’s talent. Tracking the director’s thirty year career, he delineates three phases in his esthetic development : -a black, or « film noir », period,-a pink, or « sotf porn », period,-a « golden » (like the sands of Saint-Tropez, a location that inspired him as much as Monument Valley did John Ford), or comedy, period, when his artistry reached full blossom.

The casts of Mr Pecas’s films include such luminaries as Brigitte Lahaie, the once vicious daughter and now grandmother of French pornography, new wave « égérie » Bernadette Lafont, French « nanar » Great Jean Lefebvre and Almodovar muse Victoria Abril ; not bad for the « pope of the Z serie ».

Max Pecas retired in 1988 due to lack of box office success : hardly the common fate of exploitation directors ; sad conclusion rather hints at the trials of a misunderstood creator.
On line comprehensive study and in-depth analysis of the director’s work are presently only available in French, but a robust increase in foreign-language visitors may convince their author to translate them, for a start, into English.

Similarly there exist no foreign language versions of the several Max Pecas films released on DVD : a powerful barrier to the international recognition of the director’s works, as it limits the full appreciation of their witty dialogues to an audience fluent in colloquial French.

It is therefore essential that such US film mavens and fans of world cinema as Rialto Pictures principal Adrienne Halpern or film curators at the Moma join forces to initiate the production of English-subtitled versions of Mr. Pecas’s films with a view to their commercial release and a well-deserved full-fledged museum retrospective.

They can expect support from Tim Burton as the acclaimed director is reported to have said : « Max Pecas is to comedy what Ed Wood is to science-fiction. »

Calls to Mr Burton could not confirm his quote, but if the « Ed Wood » director did not utter these words, he should hurry to do so, as this is a shrewdest and very perceptive comparison.