Title of French New Wave film B/W about suicide 1960's-70's Snowflakes
between scenes?

macsandwich --

I am confident that the film that interests you is "L'amour a mort"
(english title:  "Love unto death") and the director is Alain Resnais,
one of the master's of the New Wave.  But it is *not* from the 1960's
period that marked the height of New Wave cinema; it was a later film
by Resnais, from 1984.

Here is a link to the listing of the film on the Internet Movie Database:
IMDb: L'amour a mort
http://imdb.com/title/tt0086890/


Additional Information: 

Here is an excerpt from  a review of the film that refers to the ?snowflake? motif:

"[T]his haunting and rarely seen 1984 feature, [Resnais?s] third and
final collaboration with screenwriter Jean Gruault, is one of his
boldest experiments in musical form. Resnais commissioned avant-garde
composer Hans Werner Henze, who previously wrote the score to Muriel,
to write a chamber piece consisting of 52 discontinuous short
sections; until the film's final shot, when this music is finally
combined with the action, it is performed exclusively between scenes,
over a black background that is most often traversed by drifting motes
resembling snowflakes.

Chicago Reader: Love Unto Death
http://65.201.198.5/movies/capsules/19555_LOVE_UNTO_DEATH


Here is another description of the film that refers to the telltale snowflakes:
   
"The film is relentlessly bleak and sombre in tone ? there is no
let-up from the dark and morbid reflections on death and suicide. Love
itself is examined, but only under the shadow of death - love unto
death, love beyond death, as the films title implies. The tone of the
film is influenced strongly by the music which appears in fragments
between scenes, set against a dark background with occasional images
of falling snow. Between this, the anguish of Simon and Elisabeth and
the philosophical meditations on love and death from Judith and
Jérôme, this is not easy viewing and offers no easy answers."

DVD Times
http://www.dvdtimes.co.uk/content.php?contentid=5334


Search Strategy:

I thought I would get a quick and authoritative answer to a question
like this if I e-mailed it to my son?s fiancé who is a doctoral
student in film theory with an encyclopedic knowledge of European
films (and films generally).  I was right.  After receiving her quick
and authoritative response, I reviewed the links she provided and
conducted some Google searches to make sure that there was no other
film that meets your description completely.  Here is one example of
such search:

film french snow OR snowflakes ?new wave?
://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&q=film+french+snow+OR+snowflakes+%22new+wave%22+suicide&btnG=Search



I am confident that this is the information you are seeking.  If
anything is unclear, please ask for clarification before rating the
answer.


markj-ga

---

Clarification of Answer by markj-ga on 19 Sep 2004 07:07 PDT

Please pardon the typos in the first paragraph of my answer.  Here is
a corrected version:

I am confident that the film that interests you is "L'amour a mort"
(English title:  "Love Unto Death"). The director is Alain Resnais,
one of the masters of the New Wave, but it is *not* from the 1960s
period that marked the height of New Wave cinema; it was a later film
by Resnais, from 1984.

markj-ga

Spot on sorry I gave wrong dates-thank you markj