Dir. Peter Weir. Starring Helen Morse, Margaret Nelson, Rachel Roberts More than forty years later it’s nearly impossible to come to Picnic at Hanging Rock without knowing that you’ll not receive satisfaction from the movie, at least in terms of the plot. That’s not to say that some kind of satisfaction – or at the very least… Read More Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
Dir. Jacques Demy. Starring Catherine Deneuve, Anne Vernon, Nino Castelnuevo Dir. Gillo Pontecorvo. Starring Brahim Haggiag, Jean Martin, Mohamed Ben Kassen Guy (Castelnuevo) has bad news for Genevieve (Deneuve): he’s being sent to Algeria, and at sixteen she is certain that she will die waiting for him. At this moment, she has already conceived the… Read More The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) and The Battle of Algiers (1966)
Dir. Asghar Farhadi. Starring Peyman Moaadi, Sarina Farhadi, Sareh Bayat I adore the first scene of this movie, because it is so terribly frank. The room itself is bare, with gray walls and handsome, but simple, wooden chairs. Nader (Moaadi) and Simin (Leila Hatami) are a married couple in front of a judge. She wants… Read More A Separation (2011)
Dir. Carol Reed. Starring Joseph Cotten, Trevor Howard, Alida Valli The Third Man starts slow. It builds atmosphere through its people (Alida Valli vamping, Trevor Howard with a mustache, Ernst Deutsch stuttering with an accent), through its sights (Vienna – if you haven’t seen the movie, just ask John Irving about it), and of course, with… Read More The Third Man (1949)
Dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer. Starring Lisbeth Movin, Thorkild Roose, Preben Lerdorff Rye Paul Schrader describes Day of Wrath as “a schizoid work of art,” for “the first half of Day of Wrath wonders if there are such supernatural things as witches; the second asks why Anne thinks she is a witch.” That’s a fair one sentence synopsis of the… Read More Day of Wrath (1943)
Dir. Ingmar Bergman. Starring Max von Sydow, Gunnel Lindblom, Birgitta Valberg Sometimes, when I like to think modern literature or music or art is edgy, I remind myself of late medieval verse and gain some perspective. An example I’ve done some research on is the history of blood libels, expressed succinctly in “The Prioress’ Tale” from The… Read More The Virgin Spring (1960)
Dir. Ingmar Bergman. Starring Bibi Andersson, Liv Ullmann, Margaretha Krook (I definitely reserve the right to fix this one up later.) It’s interesting that Elisabet chooses silence as her escape rather than blindness. Her letter proves that she is not shy about communicating, necessarily, but more importantly it is her sight which terrifies her, forces… Read More Persona (1966)
Dir. Giuseppe De Santis. Starring Silvana Mangano, Doris Dowling, Vittorio Gassman The radio announcer in the beginning of the film tells us why the rice fields of northern Italy are manned entirely by women; they have faster, smaller hands. And so we are thrust into a world full of women, where men are interlopers, flinging chaos… Read More Bitter Rice (1949)
Dir. Ingmar Bergman. Starring Ingrid Bergman, Liv Ullmann, Halvar Bjork Bergman is still Bergman in this movie, and I have no doubt that someone else has used that line to describe Autumn Sonata before and I don’t care. Ingmar Bergman is still addicted to close-ups, still putting our cheeks to the hot stove of emotional upheaval for… Read More Autumn Sonata (1978)
Dir. Milos Forman. Starring Hana Brejchova, Vladimir Pucholt, Milada Jezkova Watch enough movies or TV, especially the recent stuff, and you start to get used to the idea of young people being played by…other young people, I guess, but people who aren’t anything like the age group they’re portraying. Jesse Eisenberg and Andrew Garfield were… Read More Loves of a Blonde (1965)
Seeing Things Secondhand 