The River (1951) In the aftermath of Edward Said’s “Orientalism” and Gayatri Spivak’s “Can the Subaltern Speak?” what can be said of Jean Renoir’s first Technicolor film, shot in documentary fashion on location in Bengal, with a mix of actors and local nonprofessionals? The emphasis on British colonial life through the eyes of Harriet, a … More The River (1951)
The Image Book (2018) “Man’s true condition is to compose with his hands,” Jean-Luc Godard announced from his editing table at the very start of this collage-narrative. The first half explores Western cinema; the second half explores neglected Arabian cinema. Film clips from famous and obscure movies are spliced together, bleached and washed, while a … More The Image Book (2018)
Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday/Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot (1953) For the sweetness in life and the silliness of human behavior, vacations are our nostalgic scrapbooks. Jacques Tati wrote and directed the amusing satire of middle-class people on vacation. It is a film he revised twice after the success of his original release. Shot at the Hôtel … More Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday (1953)
Baal (1970) Volker Schlöndorff recruited Rainer Werner Fassbinder and his Antitheatre troupe to perform in this television adaptation of Bertolt Brecht’s infamous play about the poet as anti-hero. When Helene Weigel, Brecht’s widow, saw this production, she was outraged and prevented its release into movie theaters. Suppressed until 2014, this birth of New German Cinema … More Baal (1970)
Fando y Lis (1968) Alejandro Jodorowsky’s first film was an adaptation of Arrabal’s play, written as part of the 1962 Panic Movement, a celebration of surreal anarchy, after the Greek God Pan. Jodorowsky fled its premiere at the Acapulco Film Festival because “People wanted to kill me. Literally kill me!” Subsequently it was banned in … More Fando y Lis (1968)
L’Argent (1983) Robert Bresson’s last film is an austere study of the bleak Eighties where obsession with money drives youths into gangs of thieves. Their passing of counterfeit money implicates one young man who winds up in jail, with his daughter dying and his wife abandoning him. That act of injustice precipitates him into senseless … More L’Argent (1983)
La Voce Della Luna (1990) In what turned out to be his last film, Fellini “crafts a parable on the whisperings of the soul that only madmen and vagabonds are capable of hearing.” Through episodic narrative, Fellini explores Jungian archetypes of lunar associations, to accommodate the manic antics of Roberto Benigni and the romantic obsessions … More La Voce Della Luna (1990)
THE TENANT (1976) Roman Polanski directed and stars in this macabre adaptation of a novel by surrealist artist Roland Topor. A timid recluse, Trelkovsky, rents a Paris apartment whose previous resident, a female Egyptologist, had attempted suicide. Others in the complex where he resides begin to accost him, and gradually he finds everyone in the … More THE TENANT (1976)
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) Raw in its documentary footage, this movie became one of the most influential horror films. “The film seemed like the pornography of hell,” the British Censorship Board ruled , cancelling its distribution in England for 23 years. Shady financing, rumored with the mob, did not help. Nevertheless, anyone … More The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
The Fabulous Baron Munchausen [aka Baron Prášil ] (1961) Czechoslovakian animator Karel Zeman combines live action with puppets and animation to create a highly stylized picture about the outrageous lies of Baron Munchausen. Influenced by the engravings of Gustave Doré, in the tradition of Ray Harryhausen, Zeman’s fantasy world revels in a childlike delight and … More The Fabulous Baron Munchausen [aka Baron Prášil ] (1961)
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