“As beautiful as a Renoir.” — Louis Skorecki
 
Le Théâtre des matières, the first feature by the critic and occasional actor Jean-Claude Biette, was one of the films Diagonale was initially created to produce. It focuses on a small theatrical company based in the unfashionable outskirts of Paris, led by the eccentric Hermann (Howard Vernon), a former violinist taken to waxing lyrical about his former life in Wilhelm Furtwängler’s Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.
 
From a travel agent who dreams of treading the boards to a commis chef distracted by his line learning, the film traverses the lives of the troupe inside and outside the theatre, and the ‘matters’ through, alongside and in spite of which art is created.
 
Enigmatic, drily funny, and by turns evoking Jacques Tourneur, John Ford and Robert Bresson, Le Théâtre des matières is a work which, in Serge Daney’s words, “confers filmic dignity on what didn't have it, trying out an image where there was nothing”.