ANATOMY OF A MURDER
***BEN-HUR
***
THE
BRIDGE
***½
Germany
Bernhard Wicki's account of an overlooked battle in the closing days of
WWII, which resulted in the senseless deaths of seven schoolboy soldiers.
The first hour, charting the psychological state of rural Germany in April
1945, is undermined by weak acting. But the battle scene that takes up the
closing half-hour is vivid, confronting, shattering.
dir: Bernhard Wicki
cast: Folker Bohnet, Fritz Wepper, Michael Hinz, Frank Glaubrecht,
Karl Michael Balzer, Volker Lechtenbrink, Günther Hoffmann
THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK
*** EYES
WITHOUT A FACE
****
France
Georges Franju takes a ludicrously Gothic set-up - a mad scientist kidnaps
and kills young women in order to transplant their facial skin grafts onto
his once-beautiful now-disfigured daughter - and takes it to the streets
of Paris. What brings this essentially B-grade horror its enduring, artsy
allure is the way that things like overripe plotting, stilted acting and
expository theatrical asides are matched with location shooting,
expressive use of silence and, above all, detailed, eerily clinical scenes
of medical gore. Franju also employs a playfully self-conscious
broken-down merry-go-round score, though he regularly bypasses music
during his mood build-ups, relying instead on evocative atmos tracks and
sound effects, such as the incessant barking of the crazed dogs the doctor
keeps locked up in the basement (guess what happens with them in the end).
dir: Georges Franju
ph: Eugene Schuftan
m: Maurice Jarre
cast: Pierre Brasseur, Alida Valli, Edith Scob, François
Guerin, Juliette Mayniel, Beatrice Altariba, Alexandre Rignault
THE FOUR-HUNDRED BLOWS
*****
France
The picture that began Antoine Doinel's battle against a casually cruel
world and introduced to said world the offhanded poetry and delicate,
invigorating sensibility of François Truffaut. It's probably cinema's
least pretentious portrayal of the struggle of The Outsider and one of the
most enduring and intimately affecting tales of maturing into teendom.
dir: François Truffaut
wr: François Truffaut, Marcel Moussy
ph: Henri Decaë
ed: Marie-Josèphe Yoyotte
m: Jean Constantin
cast: Jean-Pierre Léaud, Claire Maurier, Albert Rémy,
Guy Decomble, Georges Flamant, Patrick Auffay, Jeanne Moreau HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR
*****
France/Japan
Alain Resnais was commissioned to produce a short documentary detailing
the tragedy of the 1945 bombing of Hiroshima and its aftermath. After
months of filming, he decided following up on the premise and holding on
to his personal ethics was impossible.
The project gradually evolved into a fictional exploration of
a rather banal love affair between a French actress working on a 'peace'
film and a depressed Japanese architect. The 24 hours they spend together
conjure up memories from the woman's traumatic past. Time's corrosive
effect on memory becomes the primary focus of the film.
1958 Hiroshima essentially forms the backdrop. It
was a conscious decision on Resnais’ part that rather than attempting to
present the unpresentable reality of Hiroshima and the atomic bomb, he would
seek to evoke it
indirectly. In this sense, we are able to conceive of the full impact of
the tragedy, without attempting to grasping it - which would be a silly
thing to do. Despite what internationally commissioned 'peace' films will
tell you, the full impact of the tragedy isn't graspable. Some
people have ironically mistaken this approach for equating the trauma of
the Hiroshima tragedy with that of a teenage girl's tragic wartime
romance.
Before Resnais, no one had ever thought of jump
cutting to and from flashbacks to suggest involuntary memories. Several
people have since copied this technique, but without nearing this film's
emotional impact.
dir: Alain Resnais
wr: Marguerite Duras
ph: Michio Takahashi, Sacha Vierny
ed: Jasmine Chasney, Henri Colpi, Anne Sarraute
m: Georges Delerue, Giovanni Fusco
cast: Emmanuelle Riva, Eiji Okada, Stella Dassas, Pierre
Barbaud, Bernard Fresson
IMITATION OF LIFE
***
USA
As a struggling actress
acquires stardom, her black housekeeper has troubles with her daughter who
passes for white and would rather have it so.
A proudly artificial tearjerker. The subplot of the black
maid and the daughter disdainful of her color is far more compelling than
the blonde and frigid central mother-daughter team and that's where the
eventual wallop is packed.
dir: Douglas Sirk
cast: Lana Turner, Juanita Moore, John Gavin, Susan Kohner,
Sandra Dee, Dan O'Herlihy, Robert Alda
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LES
LIAISONS DANGEREUSES
***½
France
Roger Vadim transfers Choderlos de Laclos' 18th-century novel to
modern times, strips it off its social commentary and turns it into a
chic, sleazy soap opera, which, on its chic, sleazy terms, is quite
watchable.
In this version, Valmont and Juliette are married (to each other) and
played by Gérard Philipe and Jeanne Moreau. Philipe sleeps with a couple
of interchangeable cushion-lipped blonde bunnies and whenever Moreau is on
screen, you wonder how he could ever bring himself to pull away from her
in the first place. She was rarely more ravishing than she is here.
A cool jazzy score and some attractive lighting set-ups are there to give
off the impression of style.
dir: Roger Vadim
wr: Roger Vadim, Roger Vailland, Claude Brule
ph: Marcel Grignon
m: Thelonius Monk
cast: Gérard Philipe, Jeanne Moreau, Annette Vadim, Jeanne
Valérie, Simone Renant, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Nicolas Vogel
NORTH BY NORTHWEST
****½
THE NUN'S STORY
****
ON THE
BEACH
**½
USA
A radioactive wave is sweeping across the planet, wiping out all species.
So a bunch of Americans, stranded in Melbourne for variously plausible
reasons, have nothing to do but wait patiently for the wave to reach the
southern hemisphere. The notion of a humanity awaiting the apocalypse is a
dark and morbidly enthralling one, and it’s utterly wasted in the hands of
Stanley Kramer. Solemn and brutally stretched out as it is, the picture’s
only memorable stretches are its images of big city streets empty of
traffic at peak hour.
dir: Stanley Kramer
cast: Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire, Anthony Perkins,
Donna Anderson, John Tate, Harp McGuire, Lola Brooks PILLOW TALK
**½
USA
A New York playboy poses as a
naive Texan to seduce an interior decorator he shares a party line with.
A tedious romantic comedy, with a lot of innuendo and split-screen
going on. In many ways
the quintessential of the Hudson-Day pairings, this is the one where he
plays a straight man pretending to be a gay man in order to win the girl.
She, on the other hand, spends the picture straining hard to be modern and
bubbly but still safe and wholesome. The whole thing was very effectively
parodied in "Down with Love" (2003).
dir: Michael Gordon
cast: Rock Hudson, Doris Day, Tony Randall, Thelma Ritter, Nick
Adams, Marcel Dalio, Lee Patrick
PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE
***
USA
Not necessarily the worst film of all time - it's too entertaining to be
that. But it's probably the least competently
acted, edited, conceived and executed. Also, one of cinema's most powerful
reminders of the value of a sense of humour.
RIO BRAVO
*****
SLEEPING BEAUTY
**½
USA
Even Walt Disney lost interest by the time this pastel photocopy of his
earlier, better efforts was finished. Only occasionally does it spring to
life, when the villainous Maleficent - herself a re-draft of Snow White's
evil queen stepmother - shows up.
SOME LIKE IT HOT
*****
THE WORLD OF APU
****½
India
A fitting and deeply affecting conclusion to Satyajit Ray's Apu Trilogy,
as tender, humanist and reflective as its predecessors but all the more
sophisticated in its crafting.
wr/dir: Satyajit Ray
ph: Subrata Mitra
m: Ravi Shankar
cast: Soumitra Chatterjee, Sharmila Tagore, Swapan Mukherjee, Alok
Chakravarty
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