Cinema of the World

IMDB

Department of State courier Mike Kelly ends up in postwar hotbed Trieste after failing to collect a package from a colleague. The Military Police are happy for him to get more involved, but things get a bit tough. After all, he is just a postman.

This is one of the best of the post-war intrigue/suspense flicks. What all of these have in common is the gritty black-and-white look of cities that haven't recovered from the war, usually in ruins, to varying degrees. (Think The Third Man, The Search, Berlin Express) There are no ruins in Diplomatic Courier, but you still get that shadowy, melancholy, sinister, exotic atmosphere that marks the genre...

The story begins when a Yorkshire gentleman farmer brings home a raggedy gypsy boy, Heathcliff, and raises him as his son. The boy grows to love his stepsister Catherine, with catastrophic results. Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon were perfectly cast as the mismatched lovers, with Olivier brooding and despairing, Oberon ethereal and enchanting. This won cinematographer Gregg Toland a much-deserved Oscar for his haunting and evocative depiction of mid-19th century English moors. (Quite a trick, as this was shot in California!) Though nominated for seven other Oscars, it won none of them, as it was released in 1939, one of the best years in Hollywood history and the same year as Gone with the Wind. Interestingly, the script was written by Charles MacArthur and Ben Hecht, best known for their witty 1931 flick, The Front Page. --Rochelle O'Gorman








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Language:English
Subtitles:English & Swedish (VobSub)

Synopsis:
Inspector Gallien is investigating the rape and murder of two little girls. The only suspect is attorney Jerome Martinaud, but the evidence against him is circumstantial. As the city celebrates New Year's Eve, Gallien calls Martinaud to his office and interrogates him for hour after hour while Martinaud continues to maintain his innocence. We learn all about the evidence; we meet Martinaud's wife and learn all about the rift between the two; but will we, and Gallien, finally learn whether Martinaud is guilty?

IMDb:

Francesca, a seventeen-year-old Roman, is finally sure she has found love. Almost sure. She spends the day observing other lovers' behaviors and considering whether she is ready to jump. Her age notwithstanding, this movie is more about coming of age than about improper or illegal romantic relationships.

If Catherine Spaak, beautiful and innocent, acts with brio, the quality of the supporting cast makes the movie. From a fifty-year-old indebted socialite who is having too much fun for her daughter's taste to a jaunty gigolo who turns out to be eaten by unreciprocated love, the minor characters entertain, delight, and subtly teach valuable lessons to both Francesca and the audience.

This film's unpredictability is refreshing. Whether written or filmed, coming-of-age stories often fail to surprise or intrigue the audience. In I Dolci Inganni, most characters seem at first to be crazily entertaining walking clichés, but they later astonish the audience by revealing their depth and their inner struggles. If love is widely accepted as a common human need, it can be expressed in mysterious, unsettling, incomprehensible ways. The variety of its forms in the movie gives the spectator an opportunity to reflect on his or her own endeavors and dreams.

This movie will seem slow paced to Gen-Xers, but anybody interested in human nature should see it.

From IMDB:
Franck Poupart is a slightly neurotic door-to-door salesman in a sinister part of Paris' suburbs. He meets Mona, a teenager, who's been made a prostitute by her own aunt. Franck would like to change his life and also save Mona from her aunt. Murder is the only solution he finds to achieve his goal. A very gloomy movie, exuding despair and uneasiness, with pathetic characters.

IMDB

Plot Synopsis [AMG]
A tough but honest cop must clear his name after a corrupt colleague implicates him in a murder in this French thriller. Ferrot (Yves Montand) is a hard-as-nails police detective who is attracted to a beautiful woman named Sylvia (Stefania Sandrelli). Sylvia, however, is having an affair with Ganay (Francois Perier), who happens to be Ferrot's superior on the force; Ganay happens to be married to Therese (Simone Signoret), who is handicapped. Sylvia is found murdered, and Ferrot is assigned to investigate; Ferrot is convinced that Ganay killed Sylvia because she wanted to end their relationship, but to his dismay, Ferrot discovers that the killer has placed a number of false clues that point the blame toward Ferrot. Police Python 357's brisk cutting earned editor Marie-Josephe Yoyotte a Cesar Award (the French Oscar).

The Italian neo-realist influence that is so evident in René Clément’s Oscar-winning 1949 film Au-delà des grilles is also felt in this quirky romantic comedy, through its use of real locations (mostly in the bustling centre of London) and fluid, documentary-style photography. Along with some of his contemporaries (notably Georges Franju and Jean-Pierre Melville) René Clément had started to trail-blaze a new kind of cinema, departing from the conventions of the quality tradition that had grown stale and predictable by the early 1950s, and laying the groundwork for the French New Wave. If you did not know that Clément had directed Monsieur Ripois, you might easily mistake it for an early offering from one of the Nouvelle Vague filmmakers - Jean-Luc Godard, Eric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette, Louis Malle or François Truffaut.

IMDB

Quote:
First time i saw this film was 1947 - in Germany,synchronized into German.A few weeks ago, i was lucky to get a copy in the original, french language. It was a pleasure to see it after so many years. Young Gerard Phillipe was an ideal

Prince. Many scenes of him were silent, in big close-ups. Beautiful

photography,somehow he overshadowed all the other actors. The last, long

close-up from him is as impressive and horrible, as it was so many years

ago,when I saw it beiing only 20 years old.It is a short film - 92 minutes, but it gives the idea, how the book is. I think, there a not to many people who still read Dostoyewsky to-day. The film describes short and clear all the many characters and underlines the main events of the book. This is only one persons opinion. It is a shame, that it is so hard to get a copy of this film - it is a beautiful film.

Review by Jonathan Rosenbaum [link]
An impressive, often powerful Iranian feature (1987, 95 min.) by Mohsen Makhmalbaf--who started out as an antishah activist and fiction writer--composed of three sketches dealing with the poor in Tehran (1987). The first, freely adapted from an Alberto Moravia story, follows the appalling misadventures of an impoverished couple with four crippled children as they try to get their fifth and latest child adopted, in the hope that she won’t wind up crippled as well. The second follows the equally pathetic life of a scatterbrained, spastic Jerry Lewis type who devotes his life to caring for his aged and senile mother. (The couple from the first part reappear briefly in this episode.) The third part, shot in film noir style, is largely devoted to the grim fantasies of a clothes peddler who’s afraid of being killed by fellow traffickers. Each episode has a different cinematographer and all are shot very adroitly and fluidly, though the more self-conscious stylistics of the third part sit rather oddly with the first two episodes, which are often much closer to neorealism. According to Makhmalbaf, the film as a whole deals with the three stages of existence--birth, “journey through life,” and death. Critic Gerald Peary has compared the film to Rossellini’s Paisan, and it’s certainly true that the first episode is as wrenching as anything in that film or in Germany, Year Zero. In Farsi with subtitles.

This film is also on Rosenbaum’s top 1000 list if that matters to anyone. [link]

Plot Synopsis by Hal Erickson

Cripple Creek is an excellent example of Columbia's "A-minus/B-plus" Technicolor westerns of the 1950s. Government agent Bret Ivers (George Montgomery) goes undercover to infiltrate a gang of gold smugglers. Ivers and his two partners (Jerome Courtland and Richard Egan) face exposure and sudden death at every turn; indeed, one of the federal agents meets his demise before the film is a third over. The villains are the erudite-but-deadly Denver Jones (John Dehner) and the just-plain-deadly Silver Kirby (William Bishop). With so much already in its favor, Cripple Creek hardly needs a romantic interest, but Columbia had to keep contract actress Karin Booth busy, thus she shows up briefly as a flashy saloon gal.

allmovie" wrote:
This beautifully photographed German drama is set in Lisbon, a major center for contemporary European culture, and offers insight into the nature of cinema. Sound recordist Phillip Winter is driving to Lisbon to meet his old friend Friedrich Monroe who recently sent him a postcard asking Winter to help him with a documentary, but when he arrives, Monroe is nowhere to be found. Instead, Winter only finds a few cans of film shot on an old fashioned hand cranked camera. When he is not aimlessly ambling about the beautiful city recording sounds for the film, Winters passes the time playing with the local street children who are obsessed with chronicling even the smallest events on their video cameras. He also begins falling for Teresa, the singer whose band is composing the soundtrack for the documentary. Eventually Monroe returns with a brand new vision and some strong opinions on the sorry state of contemporary cinema.

Description: A father, who is a failed former television reporter tries to mount a documentary about violence and sex among youths. He proceeds to have sex with his daughter who is now a prostitute and films his son being humiliated and hit by classmates. "Q", a perfect stranger somehow gets involved and enter the bizzare family who's son beats his mom, who in turn is also a prostitute and a heroin addict...

Plot Synopsis by Eleanor Mannikka

This 153-minute Biblical epic about salt and sin is directed by Robert Aldrich and has enough dynamic interactions between its chief protagonists to sustain interest in-between climactic scenes. Stewart Granger is Lot, the Hebrew leader who takes his people to camp in the Valley of Jordan only to find that they are caught between the Helamites on the one hand, and the wicked Queen Bera (Anouk Aimee) on the other. She rules over the twin cesspools of Sodom and Gomorrah and is beleaguered by a crafty brother who wants the scepter she now wields. The Queen makes a pact with Lot that he can stay with the Hebrews in the valley as long as he defends it -- she wants to use him and the Hebrews as a first line of defense against the Helamites. To seal the pact, she gives Lot her best slave Ildith (Pier Angeli) to be his wife. Adventures and excitement prevails as Lot and the Hebrews brave one challenge after the other -- until Lot realizes that his people are being corrupted by the environment of Sodom and Gomorrah and eventually receives a Divine vision and knows he has to lead the Hebrews away from here. Special effects are impressive and take much of the impact away from the fate of Ildith, as she turns one last time to look back at the crumbling cities.

Plot Synopsis [from all movie]
This is the final sequel to The Magnificent Seven. In this chapter, the lead gunslinger has settled down with a new wife, and has become the marshal of a little town. His peaceful existence is disrupted when a psychotic outlaw rides in, robs the bank, wounds the marshal with his gun, and then rapes and kills his new wife. The marshal is then assigned to save some widowed women from ruthless banditos. To help him, he rallies an eastern journalist and five hardened convicts to ride in and stop them.

Plot Synopsis (From All Movie)
Chris (George Kennedy) is the lone survivor of the original seven gunmen who is recruited to help in a peasant struggle in Mexico. Colonel Diego (Michael Ansara)is the ruthless military commandant of a Mexican prison holding the leader of the revolt. With knife expert Levi Morgon (James Whitmore) and firearms experts Keno (Monte Markham), P.J. (Scott Thomas) and Slater (Joe Don Baker), they enlist the help of the giant black man Cassie (Bernie Casey) and two others to rescue the leader of the proposed revolt. The evil Diego employs his torturous and inhuman practices on both sides of the prison walls in a effort to stop the heroes from rescuing the prisoner in this action packed western saga.

Synopsis: When a bandit leader wants to build a church in memory of his dead sons, he raids three Mexican villages and kidnaps all the men for labour. One of these men is Chico, formerly of the original Magnificent Seven. His wife Petra immediately sets out to look for Chris and Vin, the other surviving members of the Seven. Chris recruits four others (a playboy, an avenger, a highwayman and an orphan) to reform the Seven, once again defending farmers from their oppressors.

Plot: A wagon train heads for Denver with a cargo of whisky for the miners. Chaos ensues as the Temperance League, the US cavalry, the miners and the local Indians all try to take control of the valuable cargo.

THE HALLELUJAH TRAIL FACTS

THE HALLELUJAH TRAIL is a slapstick comedy starring Burt Lancaster as cavalry officer Col. Thadeus Gearhart, set just before the winter of 1867, when the boomtown of Denver realizes it's almost run out of whiskey. The perenially drunken Oracle Jones (Donald Pleasence) hatches a plan to bring a wagon train of whiskey to Denver before winter sets in. Newspaper editor Hobbs wires temperance leader Cora Massingale (Lee Remick) about the shipment, and a group of Sioux Indians also takes an interest in the booze. Col. Gearheart leads a company assigned to protect the temperance contingent, which intends to head off the train, and Capt. Slater (Jim Hutton) leads another, assigned to protect the train. A Denver citizens group, led by Clayton Howell (Dub Taylor), is also headed for the train, not to mention the Sioux. When the Teamsters suddenly stage a sit-down strike, the train is left wide open to attack. This odd little film, based on the novel by Bill Gulick, features a star-studded cast and a score by the great Elmer Bernstein.

SYNOPSIS
A crazed killer with scuba-gear is on the loose in the catacombs of Venice, Italy. He stalks beautiful women, drags them to his underground lair, kills them, then stuffs them and adds them to his "collection." (IMDb)

By BOSLEY CROWTHER - New York Times
Published: November 3, 1965

IF you view it as straight, unchallenged fiction — and that is certainly the only way you should even think of viewing "The Bedford Incident," which came to the Astor and other theaters yesterday—you may find this austerely masculine picture of a maritime episode in the cold war a grimly absorbing speculation on how wrong one ship's captain might be.

Richard Widmark is the stern and salty skipper of an American destroyer on patrol in North Atlantic waters as an element of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization fleet, and he has an obsessive determination to hunt and hound a certain Soviet submarine.

Nothing his fellow officers say can keep him from taking inordinate risks in tracking his underwater quarry among floating ice fields off the Greenland coast. Orders from Fleet Commander that he avoid making contact with the sub only arouse his fuming impatience and cause him to stalk angrily about his bridge. And finally, when orders come through granting permission to challenge the sub, the danger in his too keen chase develops and a fatal accident occurs.

Plot Outline 1965 TV-version of the classic fairy tale, set to a Rodgers and Hammerstein score.
Plot Synopsis: Rodgers & Hammerstein's musical retelling of the classic fairy tale. Cinderella is a teenage girl forced to do all of the menial tasks in the home she shares with her coldhearted stepmother and homely stepsisters. One day when home alone, Cinderella shares a cup of water with a thirsty and handsome traveler, not realizing until he continues on his journey that he is the crown prince of the kingdom. Shortly thereafter, the king and queen invite every young maiden in the kingdom to a royal ball so that the crown prince can find a girl to marry. Cinderella's stepmother and stepsisters go to the ball, leaving Cinderella behind to wish about how her life could be. While she is daydreaming, she is visited by her fairy godmother, who makes it possible for her wishes to come true.

Description: Many of the earliest nickelodeon films featured the dancing of vaudeville performer Annabelle Whitford (known as Peerless Annabelle) Moore, whose routines were filmed at Edison's studio in NJ - Annabelle Butterfly Dance (1894), Annabelle Sun Dance (1894), Annabelle Serpentine Dance (1895) - the first publically-released color film (pictured) - hand-tinted, Serpentine Dance by Annabelle (1896), Annabelle in Flag Dance (1896), Skirt Dance by Annabelle (1896), Tambourine Dance by Annabelle (1896), Sun Dance - Annabelle (1897), etc.; male audiences were enthralled watching these early depictions of a clothed female dancer (sometimes color-tinted) on a Kinetoscope - an early peep-show device for projecting short films.

Plot Summary :
This autumn, Dr. Earl Headley is eagerly demonstrating what seems to be a miraculous cure for tuberculosis. Yet not far from where he is working, the disease seems ready to claim yet another life, a young woman named Winifred, who is already seriously ill. Winifred's mother and younger sister Trixie are devastated by the news. When Trixie hears the family doctor say of Winifred that "when the last leaf falls, she will have passed away", she interprets the doctor's words literally. Thinking over what she has heard, she determines to do everything possible to save her sister.

A gay-themed Western seems as though it could only be a 21st-century creation. But 93 years prior to Brokeback Mountain (2005), a gay cowboy named Algernon Allmore was already pioneering that cultural frontier in Alice Guy-Blache's comedy short Algie, the Miner (1912).

Algernon (Billy Quirk) is an effete city boy who is required to go West and develop some virility before he can have the hand of his girlfriend in marriage. Technically, he is not a homosexual. This was 1912 and, even in the most forward-thinking film, some sexual orientations dared not speak their names. Instead, Algie's character is defined as gay through certain visual indicators of behavior and dress: his tendency to give cowboys kisses on the lips rather than slaps on the back, his bright and flamboyant Western wear, and a penchant for lace hankies and lip rouge.

DVD 1 Alice Guy

Few individual artists have exerted as profound an influence upon the evolution of cinema as Alice Guy (later known as Guy-Blaché). With this collection of more than 60 films, culled from the world’s leading archives and carefully mastered, Guy may no longer be seen as a “woman filmmaker.” These films, produced by Guy for Gaumont before she moved to the US, reveal her to be an unqualified pioneer whose work stands alongside that of the Lumière Brothers, Georges Méliès, and Edwin S. Porter, in cinema’s rapid growth from an optical illusion to a storytelling medium to an art form. Among the highlights are a 19th-century serpentine dance, early “trick” films, experiments with hand-coloring and synchronized sound, comedies, social commentaries, and (as the collection’s centerpiece) a 33-minute religious epic: The Birth, the Life and the Death of Christ (1906).

Description: Pierre, a youth, comes from his grandmother's in France to stay with his parents in the Canary Islands. His father talks oddly about his lost youth and leaves abruptly for France. Mom promises to take Pierre to a nightclub, remarking that people will think he's her lover. He prays. His father dies in France, and his mother wants him to empty his father's office; Pierre finds it full of pornography. His mother takes him in tow into a night world without morality, a world of sexual exploitation, exhibitionism, and wildness. What will Pierre make of this, and what, ultimately, will he make of his mother?