by
Julien Faddoul
Foreign Correspondent (1940) ***
As war threatens Europe in 1938, an American journalist arrives to report on the situation but is caught up in a spy ring.
Electric, thoroughly typical Hitchcock adventure – his second Hollywood film – with a rambling script (and a rather wishy-washy central romance) which builds up into brilliantly managed suspense sequences: an assassination, a windmill, an attempted murder in Westminster Cathedral, a plane crash at sea. If I can’t quite place into the pantheon of Hitch’s top tier, the two main reasons are 1) my usual aversion to McCrea, from whom I’ve never been able to extract any modicum of nuance and 2) the tacky final speech, forced upon Hitch by Walter Wanger, which was an attempt to encourage Americans into WWII. Upon seeing the film, Joseph Goebbels called it “A Masterpiece of propaganda, which no doubt will make a certain impression upon the broad masses of the people in enemy countries.”
d – Alfred Hitchcock
w – James Hilton, Robert Benchley, Charles Bennett, Joan Harrison (Based on the Novel by Vincent Sheean)
ph РRudolph Mat̩
pd – Alexander Golitzen, William Cameron Menzies
m – Alfred Newman
ed – Dorothy Spencer
p – Walter Wanger
Cast: Joel McCrea, Laraine Day, Herbert Marshall, George Sanders, Albert Basserman, Edmund Gwen, Eduardo Ciannelli, Robert Benchley, Harry Davenport
As the Nazis invade Poland, a troupe of actors in Warsaw are recruited to help kill a traitor.
A golden age comedy that defies classification, and one that proved hugely influential well into the 21st century. A marvellous free-wheeling entertainment, the film shifts poise and tone unlike anything before or since. Accused of bad taste at the time, it later came to be seen as an outstanding example of both Hollywood moonshine and cinematic artistry, kept alight through sheer talent, expertise and the Lubitsch touch.
d – Ernst Lubitsch
w – Melchior Lengyel, Edwin Justus Mayer, Ernst Lubitsch
ph РRudolph Mat̩
pd – Vincent Korda
m – Werner R. Heymann
ed – Dorothy Spencer
cos – Irene Maud Lentz
p – Ernst Lubitsch
Cast: Carole Lombard, Jack Benny, Robert Stack, Felix Bressart, Lionel Atwill, Stanley Ridges, Sig Ruman, Tom Dugan, Charles Halton, Henry Victor
Pather Panchali (1955) ****
In a small Bengal village, Apu, the son of a would-be writer, grows up in hardship and adversity before setting off with what remains of the family to seek a living in Benares.
Most human beings live the bulk of their lives in a secluded culture and thus have a tendency to confuse things. The confusion people make that bugs me the most are with the words "poverty" and "misery". I have known many impoverished people in my life and very few would I describe as miserable. What makes Ray's film so absorbing is that despite the tragedy that consistently befalls Apu's family, it is the delicacy and simple beauty of life that keeps them going. A beautiful, remarkable first film from India’s leading humanist, showing that people throughout the world are much the same though the details of their lives might differ. Slow-paced, episodic and reflective. Upon seeing the film for the first time, Akira Kurosawa reflected: “To exist in a world without having seen Ray’s films is to exist in a world without having seen the sun or the moon.”
wd – Satyajit Ray (Based on the Novel by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay)
ph – Subrata Mitra
pd – Bansi Chandragupta
m – Ravi Shankar
ed – Dulal Dutta
p – Satyajit Ray
Cast: Subir Banerjee, Kanu Banerjee, Karuna Banerjee, Uma Dasgupta, Chunibala Devi, Tulsi Chakraborty
Chimes at Midnight (1965) ***
Prince Hal becomes King Henry V and rejects his old friend Falstaff.
Unusual adaptation of Shakespeare with incandescent flashes (particularly the Uccello-like Battle of Shrewsbury) and the typical Welles improvidence of hasty production, poor synchronization and recording etc. of his European period. It has an elegiac quality, a lament for a simpler, better, lost England. Jean-Luc Godard, writing about Orson Welles: “May we be accursed if we ever forget for one second that he alone with DW Griffith, one in silent days and one in sound, was able to start up that marvelous electric train. To him, we owe everything.”
wd – Orson Welles (Based on the Falstaff Character Created by William Shakespeare)
ph – Edmond Richard
pd – Gustavo Quintano
m – Angelo Francesco Lavagnino
ed – Fritz Mueller
p – Alessandro Tasca
Cast: Orson Welles, Keith Baxter, John Gielgud, Margaret Rutherford, Jeanne Moreau, Norman Rodway, Alan Webb, Fernando Rey
Claire’s Knee (1970) ***
A 35-year-old diplomat who is about to be married, confides to a female friend that he is attracted to a 16-year-old girl and her 17-year-old half-sister.
The 5th of Rohmer’s “6 Moral Tales” and probably the wittiest and most perceptive of his conversation pieces; his characters here are all absorbed in their own lives in a way that illuminates the lives of others. No one explored the ambiguities of love and desire with a more acute precision.
wd – Eric Rohmer
ph РN̩stor Almendros
ed РC̩cile Decugis
p – Pierre Cottrell, Barbet Schroeder
Cast: Jean-Claude Brialy, Aurora Cornu, Béatrice Romand, Laurence de Monaghan
What’s Up, Doc? (1972) ****
In San Francisco, an absent-minded young musicologist is troubled by the attention of a dotty girl who gets him involved with crooks and a series of accidents.
The triumphant peak of the cinema’s greatest conservator: Madcap comedy, a pastiche of several thirties originals that Bogdanovich revered, with a touch of Looney Tunes sprinkled on top. Spectacular slapstick, vigorous players and ingenious staging combine to produce an ambush of sheer joy. It remains one of the finest comedies ever assembled.
d – Peter Bogdanovich
w – Buck Henry, David Newman, Robert Benton, Peter Bogdanovich
ph – Laszlo Kovacs
pd/cos – Polly Platt
m – Artie Butler
ed – Verna Fields
p – Peter Bogdanovich
Cast: Barbra Streisand, Ryan O’Neal, Madeline Kahn, Kenneth Mars, Austin Pendleton, Michael Murphy, Phil Roth, Sorrell Booke, Stefan Gierasch, Mabel Albertson, Liam Dunn, John Hillerman, George Morfogen, Graham Jarvis, Randy Quaid
Stop Making Sense (1984) ***
A live performance by the American rock band Talking Heads.
The concert documentary by which all subsequent concert documentaries are now measured. Demme, whom Pauline Kael once called “the most generous of filmmakers”, relies purely on performance and mise-en-scène to convey the percussive exburance of the artist-audience connection. He also records for prosperity a central performance that is one of the nuttiest, sweatiest, most majestic ever captured on film.
d – Jonathan Demme
ph – Jordan Cronenweth
m – Talking Heads
ed – Lisa Day
p – Gary Goetzman
Cast: David Byrne, Tina Weymouth, Chris Frantz, Jerry Harrison, Steve Scales, Lynn Mabry, Ednah Holt, Alex Weir, Bernie Worrell
Ran (1985) ****
A Japanese King Lear, but with three sons instead of three daughters.
The grandest Japanese epic of them all; a film that is as much about the Shakespearean inspections of avarice, jealousy, human suffering and kinship, as it is about colour, movement and cinematic space. It also works as a sublime compendium of its director’s themes and aesthetic. Despite slowly going blind during its production (as well as losing his wife of 40 years), Kurosawa utilized 200 horses, 1400 extras, Noh theatrics and the location of an active volcano, all being carefully maneuvered by the master of masters at the age of 75.
d – Akira Kurosawa
w – Akira Kurosawa, Hideo Oguni, Masato Ide (Based on the Play by William Shakespeare)
ph РAsakazu Nakai, Takao Sait̫, Sh̫ji Ueda
pd РShinobu Muraki, Yoshir̫ Muraki
m РT̫ru Takemitsu
ed – Akira Kurosawa
cos – Emi Wada
p – Masato Hara, Serge Silberman
Cast: Tatsuya Nakadai, Jinpachi Nezu, Daisuke Ryû, Hisashi Igawa, Mieko Harada, Akira Terao, Yoshiko Miyazaki, Pîtâ, Masayuki Yui, Kazuo Katô, Norio Matsui, Toshiya Ito, Kenji Kodama, Mansai Nomura, Takeshi Katô, Jun Tazaki, Hitoshi Ueki
Chungking Express (1994) ***
Two melancholic Hong Kong policemen fall in love: one with a mysterious underworld figure, the other with an ethereal server at a late-night take-out he frequents.
Such a radically experimental piece of screen storytelling that it’s rather surprising that it was the film that introduced this remarkable filmmaker to the world at large. Atypical for Wong, the film had a hurried and breakneck production all while he was in post-production for his previous project Ashes of Time (1994), giving the film an unfettered, liberated quality that his later, more studied and manicured works – such as Happy Together (1997), In the Mood for Love (2000) and 2046 (2004) – would abjure from a bit. Compositions and cutting: exquisite.
wd – Wong Kar-Wai
ph – Christopher Doyle, Andrew Lau
pd – William Chang
m – Fan-Kei Chan, Michael Galasso, Roel A. GarcÃa
ed – William Chang, Kit-Wai Kai, Chi-Leung Kwong
cos – William Chang, Hui-Ming Yao
p – Yi-kan Chan, Jeffrey Lau
Cast: Brigitte Lin, Tony Leung, Faye Wong, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Valerie Chow, Piggy Chan
Taste of Cherry (1997) ****
In Tehran, a middle-aged man who plans to kill himself, seeks someone to bury him.
Breathtaking in its effortlessness, poetic implication and deceptive simplicity, Kiarostami’s masterpiece is a teasing meditation on death, the elementary joys of life and the circuitous quest for meaning, told in a series of meetings that never reach a conclusion. Cinema is used here to illustrate by example, as something that should not be analysed or interpreted, but experienced. It’s the journey not the destination, if you will.
wd – Abbas Kiarostami
ph – Homayun Payvar
ad – Hassan Yektapanah
ed – Abbas Kiarostami
p – Alain Depardieu, Abbas Kiarostami
Cast: Homayoun Ershadi, Abdolrahman Bagheri, Afshin Khorshid Bakhtiari, Safar Ali Moradi
