monsieurk's - Favourites List

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"Out 1" is a very precise picture of post May 1968 malaise - when Utopian dreams of a new society had crashed and burned, radical terrorism was starting to emerge in unlikely places and a great many other things.

Two marginals who don't know one another stumble into the remnants of a "secret society": Colin, a seemingly deaf-mute who all of a sudden begins to talk and Frederique, a con artist working the "short con" (stealing drinks and tricking men who think she's a hooker out of their money). Meanwhile, there are two theater groups rehearsing classic Greek dramas: "Seven Against Thebes" and "Prometheus Bound". A member of the Moretti group passes a note to Leaud about "The 13" which sends Leaud on a search for "The 13". His search brings him eventually to Bulle Ogier's shop in Les Halles "L'Angle du Hasard". Berto follows much the same path when she steals a cachet of letters from Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and tries to get money from their owners for their return...

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Soon after the huge success of 'Magnificent Obsession', Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson again teamed up with director Douglas Sirk for this heartwarming story of an attractive, wealthy New England widow who defies social constraints when she falls in love for a much younger man.

When Cary Scott (Jane Wyman) falls in love with her sexy gardener, Ron Kirby (Rock Hudson), she becomes the target of small town gossip, while at the time incurring the wrath of her own children Kay (Gloria Talbott) and Ned (William Reynolds). The children and the town want Cary to lead a more conventional lifestyle than that offered by Ron. They would prefer that she spend the rest of her life in front of her new TV set, wed to Harvey (Conrad Nagel), a highly respected, wealthy - and boring - bachelor. Will she choose love or "respectability"?

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An intoxicating, time-bending experience bathed in the golden glow of oil lamps and wreathed in an opium haze, this gorgeous period reverie by Hou Hsiao-hsien traces the romantic intrigue, jealousies, and tensions swirling around four late-nineteenth-century Shanghai "flower houses", where

courtesans live confined to a gilded cage, ensconced in opulent splendor but forced to work to buy back their freedom. Among the regular clients is the taciturn Master Wang (Tony Leung Chiu-wai), whose relationship with his longtime mistress (Michiko Hada) is roiled by a perceived act of betrayal. Composed in a languorous procession of entrancing long takes, Flowers of Shanghai evokes a vanished world of decadence and cruelty, an insular universe where much of the dramatic action remains tantalizingly offscreen - even as its emotional fallout registers with quiet devastation.

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A band of Italian strolling players has come to perform, seeking fame and wealth. Lusty Camilla, the troupe's fiery prima donna, soon turns the heads of the Spanish viceroy, a soldier and a famous bullfighter.

To prepare for an impending war the viceroy demands great financial sacrifices from the local aristocrats, but when he then gives his official gilded coach to Camilla in order to win her love, the noblemen rebel. Camilla is pursued by the three infatuated men, but her first love is always the stage.

Primarily an account of the tough life led by Sicilian fishermen, this haunting and beautiful film by one of the fathers of Italian neo-realism is also a polemic which conveys the villagers' sense of frustration and injustice as they struggle for sustenance in the face of unscrupulous businessmen.

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Charting the turbulent relationship between a train-driver and a married woman as they plot to kill her husband, Renoir's adaptation of Emile Zola's classic novel is often cited by critics as one of the director's greatest films.

Made at the height of Renoir's 1930s poetic realism period, the film also has shades of film-noir with its sexually charged story and self-destructive, hard-boiled anti-hero. Featuring a truly unforgettable performance by Jean Gabin as Lantier, the tormented train-driver, 'La Bete Humaine' was one of Renoir's biggest successes and is just as compelling today as when it was first released.

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Set in the German prison camps of WW1, the film stars Jean Gabin as Marechal, and Marcel Dalio as Rosenthal.

Like the charming aristocrat Captain de Boeldieu (Pierre Fresnay), these two French aviators were shot down and now spend most of their time escaping from German prison camps before inevitably being recaptured. Between escapes, they do what they can to amuse themselves, but after a tunnel they've dug is discovered, the three are sent to Wintersborn, a forbidding fortress of a prison commanded by former ace pilot Von Rauffenstein (Erich Von Stroheim). Von Rauffenstein cannot help but strike up a friendship with Captain de Boeldieu, a kindred spirit from the doomed nobility.

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Gerard Depardieu is the self-abasing curate tortured by questions about his role in God's plan — before an encounter with a material Satan touches off a powerful revelation.

At the crux of his vision is Sandrine Bonnaire, the madly profligate sylph whose fate ruptures in a blast of gunpowder and the slash of a razor. As events unfurl, Maurice Pialat himself provides witness as the seasoned cleric who pronounces the words: "God wears us down"

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When Helene (Maria Casares) discovers her love for Jean (Paul Bernard) has become unrequited, she carefully hatches her revenge by willingly inflaming a relationship between Jean and dancer Agnes (Elina Labourdette).

However, Jean is unaware of certain aspects of Agnes' life which Helene hopes will ruin his reputation as their passions for each other grows.

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With 'The Music Room' (Jalsaghar), Satyajit Ray (Pather Panchali) brilliantly evokes the crumbling opulence of the world of a fallen aristocrat (the beloved actor Chhabi Biswas) desperately clinging to his way of life.

His greatest joy is the music room in which he has hosted lavish concerts over the years - now a shadow of its former vivid self. An incandescent depiction of the clash between tradition and modernity, and a showcase for some of India's most popular musicians of the day, 'The Music Room' is a defining work by the great Bengali filmmaker.

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Across the course of history, only a relative handful of filmmakers can be said to have developed and refined a language of cinematographic expression which, inimitable, belongs to its creator alone.

Pedro Costa, of our time, exists within this select group, and Colossal Youth is one of his sublime achievements.
An intimate epic wherein present and past move as one, Colossal Youth chronicles Ventura, the towering Cape Verdean who has assumed the role of surrogate "father" to an untold number of characters around Lisbon and its now-razed neighbourhood of Fontainhas. Through Ventura's ghost-like visitations to figures such as Vanda Duarte (the central personage of Costa's previous In Vanda's Room) and repeated recollections of his past life as a newly migrated manual labourer, Costa explores the nature, and necessity, of storytelling in the course of the human adventure.

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Van Gogh, depicted by the remarkable actor/songwriter-singer Jacques Dutronc (Godard's Sauve qui peut (la vie)), has arrived at Auvers-sur-Oise to come under the care of Dr. Gachet (Gerard Sety) for his nervous agitation.

Soon after the arrival of Vincent's brother Theo (Bernard Le Coq) and his wife, plein air portraiture and conviviality give way to the more crepuscular moods of brothels and cabarets, and the painter's anguished existence, tossing between money worries and an impassioned relationship with the doctor's teenage daughter, finally meets its terminal scene.

Set within a Gutsul community in the Ukranian Carpathian mountains, this visually stunning and richly detailed tale of a young man who yearns for a lost love is a beguiling mix of folklore, sorcery and religious symbolism, which brought Paradjanov to prominence and won numerous awards.

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Oscar winner Juliette Binoche gives a "powerhouse performance" in this visually stunning portrait of a year in the life of Camille Claudel, the sculptor Auguste Rodin's infamous mistress.

The French auteur Bruno Dumont, whose previous masterpieces include Flanders and Hors Satan, draws up a beautifully stark vision of a woman denied her art, confined by her family to an asylum in the South of France where she will never sculpt again. We follow Camille through her story as she struggles to adjust to life in the asylum and awaits a visit from her brother, the writer Paul Claudel. Binoche gives an excruciatingly honest performance, acting alongside real patients, in what is a must-see cornerstone of cinema history.

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Adapted from a novel by Yasunari Kawabata, the first Japanese author to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, 'Sound of the Mountain' typifies Naruse's preferred genre of shomin-geki (films about the daily lives of ordinary people).

Set in the ancient seaside town of Kamakura, Kawabata's home, 'Sound of the Mountain' depicts the increasingly close relationship between a childless young woman, Kikuko (Setsuko Hara), and her father-in-law, Shingo (So Yamamura), to whom she turns as her own marriage, to the neglectful and philandering Shuichi (Ken Uehara), disintegrates. A domestic drama of rare existential insight and emotional subtlety, 'Sound of the Mountain' draws on the concerns of Naruse's earlier marriage films, including 'Repast' (even the pairing of stars Hara and Uehara is reprised), to offer a profoundly moving account of the complex relationship that develops between an older man and a younger woman.