"Sidelights"

Nelly Kaplan began her career as a journalist for various newspapers in Argentina. Upon meeting Abel Gance, the French filmmaker and pioneer of wide-screen techniques, she moved to France and became his assistant, collaborating closely with him for the next ten years. Known today as much for her directing as for her script-writing, Kaplan started by directing short documentary films on art. She gained her first international recognition with a one-hour documentary, Le Regard-Picasso, which won the Golden Lion Award at the 1967 Venice Film Festival. In 1969 she wrote, with Claude Makovski, a full-length feature film, La Fiancée du pirate, which she also directed. The film has been shown under the titles Dirty Mary and A Very Curious Girl. A caustically humorous movie, it appealed to both critics and audiences, enjoyed great success in France, and made the circuit of international film festivals.

Kaplan came to the attention of art-film critics in the United States for her work on Charles et Lucie, released in 1979 and shown in the United States as Charles and Lucie, starring Daniel Ceccaldi and Ginette Garcin. Kaplan wrote the script with Jean Chabot and Makovski, directed the film, and coedited it. The story involves a middle-aged couple whose poverty is magically transformed into wealth (or so they think) by the death of a remote relative who presumably has left Lucie a magnificent villa in the South of France. In a futile effort to secure her inheritance, Lucie...