Nadia Boulanger: Mademoiselle (1977)

This documentary is the first film ever made by Bruno Monsaingeon. It was shot in the 1960s and early 1970s in grainy black and white and only average sound, when Boulanger was in her late 80s and still fearsomely in command of her abilities. Monsaingeon re-cut the film in 1977. This film remains one of the most important documents concerning this fabled teacher. She is seen at one of her fabled 'Wednesdays', a composition lesson held weekly in her apartment for almost six decades and attended by anyone who would come. In this particular session she talks illuminatingly with students about a small portion of Schumann's 'Davidsbündertanze'. Boulanger's comments are terse, penetrating and forceful. Interweaved with the 'Wednesday' material are interview clips with Monsaingeon -- expanded in his later book 'Mademoiselle: Conversations with Nadia Boulanger' -- and, added in the late 1970s, Monsaingeon interview footage with Leonard Bernstein (in French) and the noted conductor/composer Igor Markevitch.