Advertising executive Teddy Brown is given the job of coming up with a campaign to use sex to sell frozen porridge on tv. He is told that he must go home and do nothing else but ‘think sex’. Unaware of this, his wife Liz has joined ‘England Clean, England Strong’, a morality campaign that wants to clean up England’s airwaves of smut. When Liz decides it would be best not to continuing having sexual relations with Teddy in reflecting the virtues she is trying to promote, both the resulting frustration and his creative endeavours combine to send him off into a series of bizarre fantasies.
Mollberg’s chef d’oeuvre is this remarkable three-hours-plus adaptation of Väino Linna’s The Unknown Soldier, a monumental best-selling novel that has been called the Finnish equivalent of Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front or Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead. An earlier screen version, directed by Edvin Laine and released in 1955, is considered one of the great classics of the Finnish cinema, and was for decades the most commercially successful Finnish film ever made; Mollberg’s version, co- scripted by novelist Linna himself, was twice as expensive as any Finnish feature before it, and was a major critical and commercial success in Finland and elsewhere in Scandinavia.
“The Unknown Soldier tells of a single machinegun platoon’s bloody way through Finland’s so-called Continuation War (1941-44) with Russia over the Karelia province, which the Finns had already once, in the winter of 1939-40, fought for valiantly. They lost both rounds, but while the Winter War made the Finns heroes in the eyes of the world, they fought the follow-up in the shadows of not only World War II, but burdened with the ignominy of suddenly finding themselves allied with Hitler’s Germany. . . In classic war movie style, we follow a little flock through induction and training into ferocious action . . . [The film] is staunchly anti-war in its impact, but it is also a soberly honest, straight goods piece of entertainment. . . [It] competes favourably with both book and Laine’s work by bringing viewpoints and technical credits handsomely up to date” (Variety).
Quote: The success of The River Fuefuki encouraged Kinoshita to return to period filmmaking once again with this “epic” chamber drama about a geisha mother and her daughter. Based on the popular novel by Ariyoshi Sawako, the story begins as Ikuyo (Nobuko Otowa) is forced into prostitution from poverty; she soon becomes known as a woman who will agree to her clients’ basest desires. Although shielded from her mother’s profession, her daughter Tomoko (Mariko Okada) is deeply ashamed by her mother’s degradation—while still accepting her financial support. But when Mariko attracts the attention of a boy from a well-to-do family, the danger arises that he might discover Mariko’s secret. Kinoshita ventures into Mizoguchi territory here, with a decided difference: he never shies away from showing the harshness of a prostitute’s life. The two leads work beautifully together, capturing the closeness that still exists even in the most troubled relationship between a mother and her daughter.
Quote: Told as a film within the film, the story concerns an aging actress. Ewa is a flamboyant, pushy actress whose career and love life have come to a dead end. She lives in a faceless housing development. She is totally engrossed in herself and dreams of making a comeback as a singer. But her overbearing personality time after time sets her into conflict with those she tries to work with in the theater and her bedroom
Quote: Shortly after the premiere, “Immoral Story” triggered a wave of discussion and polemics. Some critics criticized the director for being too self-totally intrusive in their opinion. “Such a film can be made privately on video and shown in a circle of friends. – it was written. Indeed, the film is far more uncompromising than Andrzej Wajda’s “Wszystko na sprzedaż” (“Everything for Sale”), which is also auto-thematic. Barbara Sass does not shy away from drastic or intimate matters, not to say embarrassing, she speaks loudly and bluntly. The protagonist, played with bravado by Dorota Stalinska, is an egotistical woman, striving for domination over her surroundings, ambitious and aggressive, though not devoid of sensitivity. However, the director does not stop at analysing the personality of her protagonist. She also touches upon the problem of manipulation of one artist by another. How far can you go here? What are the moral boundaries of such behaviour? Can art exist without playing with each other’s feelings and privacy? The provocative title of the film additionally emphasizes the importance of these questions. “Immoral Story” is an extremely honest, even intimate film. It is a story of a turbulent relationship between two women, a director and an actress. And the idea was taken by Barbara Sass from her own and Dorota Stalinska’s experiences. The “Immoral Story” contains some facts from the biographies of both of them.
Synopsis: This first film by documentary filmmaker Omar Amiralay follows the construction of a dam on the Euphrates river that is supposed to bring tremendous improvement in the lives of villages around it.
Based on Ivan Turgeyev’s novella, Erste Liebe is about two young lovers in czarist Russia. One is a 21-year-old woman, the other a young man of sixteen. Things take a tragic turn as the girl (Dominique Sanda as Sanaida) falls in love with the boy’s father (Maximilian Schell). This film was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film in 1970’s Academy Awards. Written by Reece Lloyd
The DVD also unearths the group’s entire 26 minute in-session appearance on “Robert Herridge Theatre: The Sound of Miles Davis,” a CBS television program recorded in 1959 and broadcast in 1960.
Quote: The father of a son living on the fringes of a village believes that working is a fools game, for the lord takes what little the workers make. When a young woman enters their home tensions begin to rise and their idle life is threatened.
Synopsis: A large family meet at the family estate for the reading of their father’s will. Each expects to be the recipient of a tidy sum, but apart from the local constable and a few other small awards to the help, the entire estate goes to the favourite daughter…
Plot: One war played out in front of the cameras, another raged behind them. Entangled in studio controversy during production and severely reedited for numerous reasons before release, The Red Badge of Courage intrigues with what it might have been. Yet half a century later, this National Board of Review 10 Best Films of 1951 selection still remains one of the movies’ most memorable portraits of men at war.
Promotional film for war loans and bonds. Mother Froehlich sells her clock and sends the money to her son fighting in war. Then they get attacked and someone else finds the lucky coin… (themoviedb.org)
IMDB: A personal interpretation of Oscar Wilde Salome from three basic elements: the light, the color and the projection speed.
“Ce film n’est pas l’illustration d’un récit historique ou d’une pièce de théâtre mais il est structuré par sa dynamique propre et trois éléments basiques: la lumière, la couleur et la vitesse de projection. Par leur interaction il vise le regard du spectateur. Le film propose un questionnement sur: 1) ce qu’il génère c’est-à-dire sa propre histoire; 2) l’imaginaire du spectateur et son regard; 3) le seul dehors questionné: le devenir de l’image qui est sa seule possibilité d’être. (…) La musique utilisée n’illustre pas le film, mais elle propose un contrepoint à l’image et développe un parcours parallèle, parcours qui trouve par moments les points de suture, qui sont des cristallisations de chaînes de motivations provoquant et montrant la possibilité infinie d’interprétations d’une image.(…)”
Quote: The outskirts of New York: Cedrik Errol, 8 years old, lives in miserable conditions with his widowed mother. Refined features, charming demeanour, and always neatly dressed, he earns the nickname “The Little Lord.” One day a lawyer comes saying he is the grandson (and only heir) of Lord Fauntleroy. Cedric travels to England and quickly gets friendly with the grumpy old gentleman.
Adolf Fauler asks Elsa out in a letter. Mr Braun, Elsa’s father, finds the letter and finds the pair in flagranti in the park. Next day Adolf visits the father who gives him his blessings and even a job…
This classic of Portuguese cinema depicts the friendships and rivalries of the inhabitants of a square in downtown Lisbon, where exists a spirit of familiarity between neighbors. (from IMDB)
Synopsis: Shortly after a violent encounter with magician Maximilian (Vincent Price), Joe Adams (Henry Fonda) is shot by police. As he lies dying in his apartment, he reflects on his past. The flashbacks follow Joe as he falls in love with young Jo Ann (Barbara Bel Geddes), who is also being courted by Maximilian. Jo Ann begins to favor the compassionate Joe over the possessive magician, and Maximilian heads to Joe’s apartment intending to kill him, resulting in a dramatic standoff.
Buster Keaton plays a young lawyer who will inherit $7 million at 7 o’clock on his 27th birthday–provided he is married. Long before discovering this, Keaton has pursued a lifelong courtship of Ruth Dwyer, whose refusals have become ritualistic over the years (the passage of time is amusingly conveyed by showing a puppy grow to adulthood). He proposes again, but this time she turns him down because she thinks (mistakenly) that he wants her only so that he can claim his inheritance. The doleful Keaton is thus obliged to spend the few hours left before the 7 PM deadline in search of a bride–any bride. He has no luck whatsoever until his pal T. Roy Barnes prints the story of Keaton’s incoming legacy in the local newspaper. As a result, literally hundreds of women, bedecked in veils and bearing bouquets, chase Keaton through the busy streets of Los Angeles. When Keaton’s producer Joseph M. Schenck bought the film rights to the Roi Cooper Megrue stage play Seven Chances, Keaton opted to forego most of the play’s plot complications, devoting his energies to the bride-hunting vignettes and the climactic slapstick chase. The final scenes originally laid an egg with preview audiences–until the sequence was saved by “three little rocks.” During the closing moments of the chase, Buster accidentally dislodged three small stones in the ground, which rolled after him as he escaped the thundering herd of would-be brides. The audience laughed immoderately at the tiny rocks, thereby inspiring Keaton to reshoot the ending, utilizing scores of huge, rolling boulders. The extra effort worked beautifully; while not his best silent feature, Seven Chances contains one of Keaton’s most hilarious finales. Watch for Jean Arthur in a bit as a receptionist.
Quote: As a young girl in Japan, Nagiko’s father paints characters on her face, and her aunt reads to her from “The Pillow Book”, the diary of a 10th-century lady-in-waiting. Nagiko grows up, obsessed with books, papers, and writing on bodies, and her sexual odyssey (and the creation of her own Pillow Book) is a “parfait mélange” of classical Japanese, modern Chinese, and Western film images.
Quote: Considering that his life is a failure, a man records himself leaving a video-message to his loved ones. After this message, which tackles, in funny and sad ways, a lot of issues, both personal and social, he shoots himself in the head. But he fails. And what follows is the a ridiculous and horrific agony, that probably changes the characters’ vision about life… A film done basically in one single shot.
A chief police inspector investigates the disappearance of a 25-year-old, intellectually disabled woman, the daughter of a lonely widower. After she turns up dead, the cops race to find the killers before the grieving father does.
