Cinema of the World

Description: Documentary on the discography of captain beefheart

The Arrangement tells the story of a seemingly-successful Los Angeles-area advertising executive of Greek-American extraction, "Eddie Anderson" (birth name Evangelos Arness, portrayed by Kirk Douglas) who is miserable in both his job and his marriage to his WASPy wife, Florence (Deborah Kerr) and is having a torrid affair with a co-worker, Gwen (Faye Dunaway). "Anderson" is forced to re-evaluate his life and its priorities after an automobile accident which occurs after he can no longer face what his life has become.

Splendor in the Grass, an American movie from 1961, tells a story of sexual repression, love, and heartbreak. Written by William Inge, who appears briefly as a Protestant clergyman, the film was directed by Elia Kazan.
The film is based on people whom Inge knew while growing up in Kansas in the 1920s. He told the story to director Elia Kazan when they were working on a production of Inge's play The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, in 1957. They agreed that it would make a good film and that they wanted to work together on it. Inge wrote it first as a novel, then as a screenplay.

Brief Synopsis:
This dramatization of a factual incident opens in a quiet Connecticut town where a kindly priest is murdered while waiting at a street corner. The citizens are horrified and demand action from the police. All of the witnesses identify John Waldron, a nervous out-of-towner, as the killer. Although Waldron vehemently denies the crime, no one will believe him. District Attorney Henry Harvey is then put on the case and faces political opposition in his attempt to prove Waldron's innocence.

Synopsis:
A wild, shocking and controversial title from the Philippines, guaranteed to have your jaw dropping.
In the tradition of Japanese "Pink" cinema comes this shocking, violent and sex filled movie that caused an outrage when it was screened at the Chicago Film Festival. The film stars former Miss Philippines, the stunning Maria Isabel Lopez, in her most revealing role ever. It‘s an eye-opening example of raw and savage filmmaking from one of its country’s most innovative directors. Set in the beautiful and remote countryside of Ilongo, the story tells of three young women and their struggle to come to terms with their own sexuality against a background of religious repression and male brutality.

The Visitors (1972)
Bill, Martha and their little child Hal are spending a quiet winter Sunday in their cosy house when they get an unexpected visit from Mike Nickerson and Tony Rodriguez. Mike and Tony are old acquaintances of Bill; a few years back, in Vietnam, they were in the same platoon. They also became opposed parties in a court martial - for a reason that Bill never explained to Martha. What happened in Vietnam, and what is the reason for the presence of Mike and Tony ?

Quote:
One of the earliest films about anti-Semitism in the U.S.A. (though Oscar Best Picture winner, The Life of Emile Zola (1937) dealt with the subject in France), this Best Picture winner ironically competed against another (better?) film based on the same, Crossfire (1947). The former is a story about a gentile writer who pretends to be Jewish and then experiences the prejudice firsthand, while the latter explores a murder whose anti-Semitic motive is at first unknown. Additionally (even stranger?), these two similar films competed with a Dickens classic & two traditionally Christmastime films The Bishop's Wife (1947) and Miracle on 34th Street (1947). But Best Actor nominee Gregory Peck & Director Elia Kazan (winning an Oscar with his first nomination) proved a more powerful combination than the three Roberts (Young, Mitchum, Ryan - though Robert Ryan was nominated for Best Supporting Actor) & Director Edward Dmytryk, who received his only Academy Award nomination. Additionally, Celeste Holm beat fellow Gentleman's Best Supporting Actress nominee Anne Revere and Crossfire's Gloria Grahame for that award. Both pictures also lost in the Editing & Writing categories. This was probably a very closely contested "race" considering the direct competition by genre. It's a wonder the other nominee, Great Expectations (1947), didn't win except for the fact that (up until that point) the British never had (which was "corrected" the following year with Laurence Olivier's self-directed Hamlet (1948))!

Mark and Mason are, apparently, The Water People. "We go swimming a lot here," one of them says. As far as the Deviate could make out however, they’re a pair of bullshit artists who luck out bigtime when gullible nympho salesgirls ring their doorbell. "My wife’s not home," Mark says. Of course, there is no wife, but since the girls are selling women’s products... Well, you get the idea.

The first salesgal, who identifies herself as Carol Kaiser (and is played by CAROL CONNORS, a.k.a. Carol Kaiser) sells cosmetics. Two other salesgals, selling lingerie, come (and cum) later. Mark and Mason ask for demonstrations which inevitably wind up in the bedroom. These demos show little about the merchandise they’re selling but a lot about the merchandise they’re giving away free...

One-time movie song-and-dance man James Dunn won an Academy Award for his "comeback" performance in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Based on the best-selling novel by Betty Smith, the film relates the trials and tribulations of a turn-of-the-century Brooklyn tenement family. The father, Dunn, is a likable but irresponsible alcoholic whose dreams of improving his family's lot are invariably doomed to disappointment. The mother, Dorothy McGuire, is the true head of the household, steadfastly holding the family together no matter what crisis arises. The story is told from the point of view of daughter Peggy Ann Garner, a clear-eyed realist who nonetheless would like to believe in her pie-in-the-sky father, whom she dearly loves. Joan Blondell co-stars as the family's brash, freewheeling aunt, whose means of financial support is a never-ending source of neighborhood gossip. This first film directorial effort of Elia Kazan earned a special Oscar for "Most Promising Juvenile Performer" Peggy Ann Garner. A Tree Grows From Brooklyn was remade for TV in 1974, and also served as the basis of a Broadway musical. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Brief Synopsis:
A child bride holds her husband at bay while flirting with a sexy Italian farmer.

Tennessee Williams' 27 Wagons Full of Cotton was the basis for this steamy sex seriocomedy. Karl Malden stars as the doltish owner of a Southern cotton gin. He is married to luscious teenager Carroll Baker, who steadfastly refuses to sleep with her husband until she reaches the age of 20. Her nickname is "Baby Doll", a cognomen she does her best to live up to by lying in a crib-like bed and sucking her thumb. Enter crafty Sicilian Eli Wallach (who like supporting actor Rip Torn makes his film debut herein), who covets both Malden's wife and business. Malden's jealously sets fire to Wallach's business, compelling Wallach to try to claim Baby Doll as "compensation." Heavily admonished for its supposed filthiness in 1956 (it was condemned by the Legion of Decency, which did more harm to the Legion than to the film), Baby Doll seems a model of decorum today--so much so that it is regularly shown on the straight-laced American Movie Classics cable service. -- Hal Erickson

Description: A young field administrator (Montgomery Clift) for the TVA comes to rural Tennessee to oversee the building of a dam on the Tennessee River. He encounters opposition from the local people, in particular a farmer who objects to his employment (with pay) of local black laborers. Much of the plot revolves around the eviction of an elderly woman from her home on an island in the River, and the young man's love affair with that woman's widowed granddaughter.

Description: He has the power to make anyone's dream come true... except his own.
F.Scott Fitzgerald's novel is brought to life in this story of a movie producer slowly working himself to death.

Synopsis
East of Eden (1955) is director Elia Kazan's updated re-telling of the Biblical story of rival brothers, Cain and Abel and a paradise lost. Writer Paul Osborn's screenplay adapted John Steinbeck's 1952 novel with the same title for this dramatic Warner Bros. film.

James Dean represents the unappreciated son Cal (representing Cain) who vies against his dull, stuffy brother Aron (representing Abel) for the affections of their father. The maligned Cain character, representing the unlikeable and outcast Kazan himself (for naming names before the HUAC Committee in 1952), becomes the hero of this film.
edited from Filmsite.org

26 min., English. Written by Jan Nemec. One of the most powerful documentaries ever made: Jan Nemec's unique document of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. The only filmed record of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, the raw footage of Oratorio for Prague, became the first information that the Soviet Army had not been “invited” in. The film also includes never-before-seen scenes from the Prague Spring before the invasion.

Jan Němec's original proposal in 1966 to adapt Kafka's Metamorphosis as a theatrical feature was rejected by the Czech state film board. In 1974, he was forced into exile -- first seeking refuge in Germany:

SYNOPSIS

Great (although ideologically controversial) film about famous czech reformator directed by spiritual father of the czech new wave.

Güney and his work were almost entirely unknown outside of his Turkish homeland until his 1981 escape from imprisonment in Turkey and his "discovery" the following year at the Cannes Film Festival for his autobiographical screenplay for Yol (1982), the festival's grand prize winner. Born in 1937 in a village near the southern city of Adana, Güney studied law and economics at the universities in Ankara and Istanbul, but by the age of 21 he found himself actively involved in filmmaking. As Yesilcam, the Turkish studio system, grew in strength, a handful of directors, including Atif Yilmaz, began to use the cinema as a means of addressing the problems of the people. Only state-sanctioned melodramas, war films and play adaptations had previously played in Turkish theaters, but these new filmmakers began to fill the screens with more artistic, personal and relevant pictures of Turkish life. The most popular name to emerge from the Young Turkish Cinema was that of Yilmaz Güney. Güney was a gruff-looking young actor who earned the monicker "Cirkin Kral," or "the Ugly King." After apprenticing as a screenwriter for and assistant to Atif Yilmaz, Güney soon began appearing in as many as 20 films a year and became Turkey's most popular actor. More than a screen idol, Güney was a Turk who believed in the Turkish people and their way of life, as well as being personally committed to social change.

Wikipedia wrote:
The Lavender Hill Mob is a 1951 comedy film from Ealing Studios, written by T.E.B. Clarke, directed by Charles Crichton and starring Alec Guinness, Stanley Holloway and Sid James as gold bullion thieves. The title refers to Lavender Hill, a street in Battersea, a district of South London, in the postcode district SW11, near to Clapham Junction railway station.

Audrey Hepburn made an early film appearance in a small role as Chiquita near the start of the film.

Awards
The film won the Academy Award for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay.

Guinness was nominated for the award of Best Actor in a Leading Role.

The film also won the BAFTA Award for Best British Film.

Description: Two very different approaches to religion and sport are at the heart of Chariots of Fire, a period piece that explores timeless themes of temporal ambitions and higher purposes, of commitment and sacrifice, of ability and spirit. The film is based on the true story of two British sprinters in the 1924 Paris Olympics, one Christian, one Jewish. Neither is out for personal or national glory; for each competing is a matter of a higher calling, but in two very different ways.

For Harold Abrahams (Ben Cross), a proud English Jew from a well-to-do family, running is a weapon against antisemitism — a way of validating his worth, and by extension his Jewishness, to his Anglo society and to himself.

Synopsis
In plague-ravaged 17th Century Europe, Saint Vincent de Paul devotes himself to his mission of persuading the wealthy to improve the fortunes of the poor. From humble beginnings (having lived the early part of his life in captivity and slavery), Saint Vincent de Paul starts out as a humble priest. Struck by the suffering of the poor and the indifference of the nobility, he takes it upon himself to convince the latter of their obligation to help those who are worse off than themselves...

By Steven D. Greydanus

"A riddle for a heathen," says Thérèse Martin (Catherine Mouchet) at one point in Thérèse, Alain Cavalier’s stark, austere reflection on the mystery of the little saint of Lisieux’s romance with Jesus.

Perhaps that is what Thérèse herself and her whole life is to Cavalier — a riddle for a heathen. His film is a reverie rather than a meditation, built of fleeting minimalist vignettes, almost snapshots, glimpses of its subject rather than an integral portrait. There is no sense of judgment, of approval or disapproval of its subject’s life, or even, finally, of real understanding. His Thérèse is a riddle, and we must make of her what we can.

Description: Decent telling of the story of Jesus from his birth up to the resurrection. This early French feature is full of wonderful imagination and the use of color is a real added bonus. The visual are all very nice and the set decoration is among the best I've seen in any silent film of its era. The biggest problem is that the feature runs just over 40-minutes and it seems like a bunch of short films edited together. There's really no consistent storytelling but instead just various segments from the Bible.

This is provocative cinema adventure of priests taking Kingdom of God to a native population
yet untouched by advancing culture and technology.DeNiro is powerful in role of changed
mercenary/slavetrader who jumps sides, while Irons is just superb in role of spiritual
giant with magic oboe who leads this people against all odds only to be overran -- or were they?
The storyline develops slowly yet beautifully in this magnificent landscape of South
America. What makes it all one moving drama is a great soundtrack by Ennio Morricone.

Detailed plot summary of the five episodes
“Concorso 4 Attrici 1 Speranza" ("Four stars and a starlette")
Anna Amendola decides to leave her home to become an actress, even though her mother says that she can not come back if she does. She goes to Cinecittà, where a casting is taking place to find a girl to be included in a segment of Siamo donne. The contest begins with the girls walking through a line, where they are checked for certain requirements, especially age. The ones who pass this stage are given a meal by the studio, while a spotlight scans through the tables, finding girls for the screen test stage. Amendola passes through these stages. Then, there are a series of screen tests, where several girls are asked questions about their dreams and ambitions. The results of the screen tests are not decided until the next day; therefore, Amendola sleeps at a neighbor's house, since she does not want to go home and forfeit her chances of winning the contest. The next day, she is called up as a finalist, along with Emma Danieli. The story ends with the two finalists about to give interviews.

Plot Synopsis by Hal Erickson

Heavy Traffic represents a follow-up to animator Ralph Bakshi's first feature film, Fritz the Cat (1972). The central character is Michael, the ingenuous son of an Italian father and Jewish mother. An aspiring cartoonist, Michael leaves home in a huff and outrages his family by conducting an affair with an African-American woman. Heavy Traffic was originally intended to be a cartoon adaptation of Hubert Selby's notorious novel Last Exit to Brooklyn, but negotiations fell through, and Bakshi was obliged to cook up a similar but not identical "mean streets" plotline. (Last Exit to Brooklyn was made as a live-action film in 1989.)

Description: Candela, who is loved by Carmelo, marries Jose in a pre-arranged marriage decided by their respective fathers. Jose, however, is in love with the flirtatious Lucia and dies defending her honor. Carmelo is mistakenly arrested for the killing, and spends several years in prison. After being released, he declares his love for Candela. Although Candela is now "free" to marry Carmelo she is haunted (and obsessed) by the ghost of Jose, who reappears every night to dance with her. Candela, while speaking with Lucia, learns that Jose pursued her even after he married Candela. She renounces him, but is unable to shake his hold on her. Tia Rosario provides the solution - Lucia must dance with Jose, an act which will exorcise his ghost forever. (It is never made clear if Lucia actually gives up her life to join him, but she never reappears in the film after their dance scene.)
The film fleshed out the story with spoken dialogue and several songs, but nevertheless used the entire score of the ballet. The Orquesta Nacional de España was conducted by Jesus Lopez-Cobos, and the singer heard on the soundtrack was the late Rocio Jurado.