Sightlines · a viewing thread

Adrift in the Modern World

Watch these when you want to drift through postwar Rome and Paris alongside people who have everything and feel nothing — they rhyme on beautiful boredom, aimless days, and a search for meaning that modern comfort keeps failing to supply.

The beating heart of the art-house canon — mostly beloved and approachable (Cléo, La Dolce Vita) with a couple of slow, demanding modernist works (L'Eclisse) — rewarding but asking for patience with mood over plot.

  • La Dolce Vita (1960)
  • L'Eclisse (1962)
  • Pierrot le Fou (1965)
  • Juliet of the Spirits (1965)
  • I Vitelloni (1953)
  • Masculin Féminin (1966)
  • Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962)
  • La Notte (1961) — The Antonioni you kept meaning to finish — the sibling of L'Eclisse where a burnt-out novelist and his wife drift through one Milanese day and night discovering they've quietly run out of reasons; if L'Eclisse's mood held you, this is the essential one to finally pull down.
  • Vivre Sa Vie (1962) — The Godard on your list that rhymes with Cléo and Masculin Féminin — Nana adrift through Paris in twelve cool, numbered episodes, a shopgirl searching for a life that never quite arrives.
  • The Green Ray (1986) — The overlooked Rohmer that carries Cléo's spirit into a lonely 1980s summer — Delphine drifting through July too restless to settle, waiting for a sign, the quiet under-seen gem to recollect if that search-for-meaning mood is what you love here.
  • Band of Outsiders (1964) — The under-seen New Wave charmer beside Pierrot le Fou and Masculin Féminin — two movie-mad Parisian slackers filling aimless days with a half-hearted heist, all restless youth and beautiful boredom.
  • The Mother and the Whore (1973) — The long, talky post-New-Wave one to finally sit with — an unemployed Parisian dandy drifting through cafés and love affairs, the burnt-out end of this thread's aimlessness turned raw and devastating.
  • Nouvelle Vague (2025) — If Godard's Band of Outsiders and Pierrot le Fou landed for you, this is the recent film to pull down next — Linklater's loving recreation of 1959 Paris shows the young Godard willing the French New Wave into being on a shoestring, the origin story of half this thread.