A mysterious man, whose head is completely covered in bandages, wants a room. The proprietors of the pub aren't used to making their house an inn during the winter months, but the man insists. They soon come to regret their decision. The man quickly runs out of money, and he has a violent temper besides. Worse still, he seems to be some kind of chemist and has filled his room with messy chemicals, test tubes, beakers and the like.
Eisenstein drew on history, Russian folk narratives, and the techniques of Walt Disney to create this broadly painted epic of Russian resilience. This story of Teutonic knights vanquished by Prince Alexander Nevsky’s tactical brilliance resonated deeply with a Soviet Union concerned with the rise of Nazi Germany. Widely imitated—most notably by Laurence Olivier’s Battle of Agincourt re-creation for Henry V —the Battle on the Ice scene remains one of the most famous audio-visual experiments in film history, perfectly blending action with the rousing score of Sergei Prokofiev.
When the Czechoslovak writer and director Pavel Jurácek died, in 1989, he was 53 years old and hadn?t made a film in 20 years. The film industry is tough on its unique talents, and when a filmmaker labors under the restrictions of a repressive state, it?s even tougher. Czechoslovak Communism fell the year of Jurácek?s death. The playwright Václav Havel (who acted in one of Jurácek?s films) became his country?s first non-Communist president in 41 years, and Jurácek?s 1969 masterpiece Case for a Rookie Hangman, which had been suppressed by the Communists the year it was made, could finally be shown. It was too late for Jurácek. Havel was elected in December; Jurácek had died in August.
Forbidden Planet is a combination of science, romance, comedy, and horror. The basic story involves a space rescue to a distant alien world, in search of a long-missing, previous expedition. They discover an eccentric scientist, his beautiful daughter, a powerful robot, and a horrible secret.
This suspenseful screenplay, that is way ahead of its time, by Cyril Hume, (story by Irving Black and Allen Adler), was a VERY LOOSE adaptation of Shakespeare's "The Tempest," mixed with elements from Freudian psychology.
Orson Welles called it the best movie he ever made. No, it's not Citizen Kane (1941), it's The Trial (1962), which has finally been released on an essential DVD. Welles always claimed that Kane was the only film over which he had complete control, but The Trial came close. He had control over every aspect except the music, which to my ears, turned out great.
Roderick Usher is obsessed with painting a portrait of his dying wife Madeline, aware that as his work progresses, so his wife's condition deteriorates. She eventually dies, but returns from the grave to save Roderick from the blaze that destroys the house of Usher after it's been struck by lightning.
Although it's far from being a faithful adaptation of Poe, this remains a quite remarkable and creepy film, full of marvellous visual invention though missing the opportunity to explore the complex character relations that were evident in the novel - Roderick and Madeline are now man and wife, for example, and not brother and sister. But as an exercise in pure cinematic style it's still hard to beat.
In just a three-year period in the 1940s, producer Val Lewton created some of the most influential and intelligent psychological horror films ever made, bringing a depth to the 'B' movie that would influence any number of independent-minded Hollywood filmmakers in later years. Lewton's first, and probably best, effort was Cat People. It was directed by first-timer Jacques Tourneur, who went on to helm another of Lewton's best films (I Walked With a Zombie), a classic noir mystery (Out of the Past), and one of the great horror films of all time (Curse of the Demon).
The first feature film directed by Jean-Luc Godard and one of the seminal films of the French New Wave, Breathless is story of the love between Michel Poiccard, a small-time hood wanted for killing a cop, and Patricia Franchini, an American who sells the International Herald Tribune along the boulevards of Paris. Their relationship develops as Michel hides out from a dragnet. Breathless uses the famous techniques of the French New Wave: location shooting, improvised dialogue, and a loose narrative form. In addition Godard uses his characteristic jump cuts, deliberate "mismatches" between shots, and references to the history of cinema, art, and music. Much of the film's vigor comes from collisions between popular and high culture: Godard shows us pinups and portraits of women by Picasso and Renoir, and the soundtrack includes both Mozart's clarinet concerto and snippets of French pop radio. When Breathless was first released, audiences and critics responded to the burst of energy it gave the French cinema; it won numerous international awards and became an unexpected box-office sensation.
The forgotten horror classic based on the novel "The Island of Dr Moreau" by H.G. Wells.
Charles Laughton stars as the mad scientist experimenting on a remote tropical island, accelerating the evolution of wild animals, and playing God over his half human creatures... Bela Lugosi is almost unrecognizable as their mutant leader, the Sayer of the Law.
Initially banned in many countries and some parts of the United States. British censors claimed the film was against nature (Laughton replied: "So is Mickey Mouse.") and it would not be released in England before 1959. Wells was apparently delighted with the ban. The film does miss most of the finer points of his 1896 fable, and it introduces a new sexual motive: Moreau seeks to mate his creatures with the young couple who chance upon his island...
The first official Dracula movie was directed by Tod Browning, with a screenplay based on the stage play by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston. The title role was played by Bela Lugosi. Also starring in the film were David Manners as Jonathan Harker, Helen Chandler as Mina Murray/Harker and Dwight Frye as Renfield.
Carl Laemmle Jr had originally intended the movie to be a lavish production to rival both The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Phantom of the Opera, and, like those films, Laemmle insisted it must star Lon Chaney (despite him being under contract at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). Tod Browning was then approached to direct this new Universal epic, however, a number of factors would limit Laemmle's plans: Firstly, Chaney (who had been diagnosed with throat cancer in 1928) had sadly succumbed to his terminal illness.
“Last night, I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” Rebecca’s haunting opening line conjures the entirety of Hitchcock’s romantic, suspenseful, elegant film. A young woman (Joan Fontaine) believes her every dream has come true when her whirlwind romance with the dashing Maxim de Winter culminates in marriage. But she soon realizes that Rebecca, the late first Mrs. de Winter, haunts both the temperamental, brooding Maxim and the de Winter mansion, Manderley. In order for Maxim and the new Mrs. de Winter to have a future, Rebecca’s spell must be broken and the mystery of her violent death unraveled. The first collaboration between producer David O. Selznick and Hitchcock, Rebecca was adapted from Daphne du Maurier’s popular novel and won the 1940 Academy Award for Best Picture and Cinematography (Black and White).
One of the beacon films of the European cinema of the Thirties. Celebrating the sound film as a rebirth of cinema, Treno popolare combines and harmonises, with genius, several characteristics of the cinema of the period. Talking pictures, of which it is too often said that they rendered cinema theatrical, also accentuated and stimulated realism. (...) This realism, born from sound and the possibility to make characters speak in their own langauage and with their true voices, here extends to a unanimist depiction of Italian society, and notably of the petite bourgeoisie of the time, portrayed with great veracity in its daily activity and behaviour.
One rarely associates the austere films of Alain Resnais with comedy, but in his first real hit, the director's exploration of the theories of behavioral scientist Henri Laborit is surprisingly amusing. Resnais has often dwelt on the influence of the past upon the present, and the determinism that renders freedom chimerical. Here, he returns to the theme, in following the lives of three French professionals whose lives never intersect until the latter part of the film. The doctor appears onscreen in a white lab coat explaining the vagaries of their behavior, which is illustrated by human-sized mice responding to carrot-and-stick incentives.
Red River is the most legendary of Howard Hawks' western epics. Less well known is The Big Sky, a Kirk Douglas vehicle which evokes the Western frontier of the 1830s.
In Red River, John Wayne leads the first big cattle drive, thousands of miles north to the railroad. In The Big Sky, French merchant Jourdonnais (Steven Geray) becomes the first keelboat captain to journey up the wild, unexplored Missouri river, to trade for furs with the Blackfeet Indians.
Hawks takes his time, with even a musical number or two helping to develop his characters. There are stirring action scenes, which show with convincing realism the difficulties of navigating a big keelboat upriver. Especially while being attacked by Crows on the warpath! But Hawks is equally adept at comic scenes, the most memorable of which is the drunken amputation of Deakins' crushed finger.
Apu is a jobless ex-student dreaming vaguely of a future as a writer. An old college friend talks him into a visit up-country to a village wedding. This changes his life, for when the bridegroom turns out to be mad, Apu's friend asks him to become the husband! After initial revulsion at the idea, Apu agrees. Apu takes his exquisite bridge, Aparna, back to Calcutta. But Aparna dies in childbirth, Apu leaves Calcutta, crazy with grief, and his son Kajal is left abandoned with his wife's parents. Only after a long period of total indifference to worldly responsibilities, does Apu become capable of returning to the world. (IMDb)
Trivia:
* In order to get the lizards to move, heaters had to be turned on full blast because
reptiles don't move in cold weather.
* When the film was released in Britain, it was heavily edited due to their strict laws
against animal cruelty.
* Originally, D.W. Griffith was supposed to direct the film. However, he quit in the middle of filming so Hal Roach and his son completed the project.
* The special effects were so good that special effect footage from this film was used in numerous other films produced well into the 1960s.
* Lon Chaney Jr. designed his own makeup for Akhoba, but couldn't use it owing to
Cosmetician's Union rules.
A rare glimpse of early Japanese sound anime and prewar Japanese culture, The Roots of Japanese Anime features the masterworks of such pioneers of Japanese animation as Noburo Ofuji, Yasuji Murata, and Kenzo Masaoka, in addition to Mitsuyo Seo’s Momotaro’s Sea Eagle, the notorious war cartoon billed as Japan’s first feature anime. These movies represent the brilliance and variety of anime, ranging from beautiful Japanese paper animation to powerful multiplane cel cartoons. They also evoke the fascinating complexity of Japan, a nation that is then both marching towards war, enlisting kids in militarist nationalism, yet also delighting in a mixture of modern popular culture, ancient folk tales, irreverent comedy, and the everyday life of prewar Japanese children.
In the 1950s, the Philippines had one of the biggest film industries in the world - right behind Hollywood and Bollywood. This is a rare chance to see one of the classic films from that period with english subtitles. A prestige production by Malay Film Productions, a subcompany of Shaw Brothers, it was directed by Philippine National Artist Lamberto Avellana and stars some of the biggest stars of the period, including Tony Santos and Rosa Rosal.
This film is a good example of how well-made the Philippine films from that period were and how they tackled very relevant questions of national identity and racial prejudice in highly entertaining films. It is next to impossible to find a film like that if you do not happen to live in Southeast Asia. In fact, even if you are there, you will still have a hard time getting it, which is a shame, because these films should be part of the treasured heritage of World Cinema.
Kazan's neglected and very hard to find beautiful, beautiful film, in a scale of Coppola-Visconti epics, which I've found a French dvd print of (wild side). short synopsis - AMG: Filmmaker Elia Kazan based America, America on the early life of his Greek-immigrant uncle. Stavros Topouzoglow is the young immigrant, whose starry-eyed impressions of America are soon compromised by reality. Despite the casual cruelties, betrayals, and career setbacks, Stavros forms strong and lasting friendships which help him weather the worst. An Oscar went to the painstakingly accurate art direction of Gene Callahan. Despite moments that are not suitable for children, America, America won a rare "bell-ringer" rating from the high-school oriented Scholastic magazines back in 1963; in the years since, it has become a stalwart of the American Movie Classics cable service.
My Fair Lady is one of the screen's joyous achievements, an elegant musical filled with adult characters who think before they speak. Exquisitely produced by Warner Bros, it represents the zenith of the movie musical as an art form and as popular entertainment. Rex Harrison leads an impeccable cast, and, yes, that's Marni Nixon singing for Audrey Hepburn, but Hepburn is perfectly cast otherwise. The major star of the film is perhaps set designer/costume designer Cecil Beaton, whose visual contributions immediately impacted European and U.S. fashion trends. One of the best-looking movies ever made, My Fair Lady took eight Oscars, including Best Picture. Hepburn failed to be nominated in the Best Actress category, which was won by Julie Andrews for Mary Poppins, in what many observers saw as backlash against Andrews' not being cast in the movie after originating the role of Eliza on stage. -- Richard Gilliam
