Baron Munchausen The Fabulous Baron Munchausen The Original Fabulous Adventures of Baron Munchausen Baron Prasil This eye-popping follow-up to Czech animator Karel Zeman's The Fabulous World of Jules Verne (Vynález zkázy) was conceived on a larger scale than the earlier film, and was filmed in color. Nevertheless, it's just not as much fun, and that'…
Vynález zkázy Invention of Destruction Czech artist and animator Karel Zeman adapted this extraordinary fantasy film—originally titled Vynález zkázy and released in much of the world as The Deadly Invention—from a number of Jules Verne stories, primarily “For the Flag.” It's a successful attempt at recreating the look of engraved, high…
Tanin No Kao I Have a Stranger's Face Stranger's Face A scientist named Okuyama (Tatsuya Nakadai) severely burns his face in an accident. He seeks the assistance of a brilliant plastic surgeon, who fashions a lifelike mask for him. The mask gives him a normal appearance, though a decidedly different one than before. His life becomes further complicated when his wife &#x…
Ansikte mot Ansikte Successful psychiatrist Dr. Jenny Isaksson (Liv Ullmann) makes a trip to her family home, and soon thereafter finds herself in the grip of a full-blown mental collapse. Neither her husband, also a psychiatrist, nor her lover is able to help her; but after a long tortuous journey (which includes a suicide attempt) and the help of another doctor who ca…
It's easy to see what's wrong with François Truffaut's risky and foolhardy adaptation of Ray Bradbury's seminal science-fiction novel, Fahrenheit 451. The English-language dialogue is stilted and awkward; Oskar Werner appears to be struggling to stay awake; the special effects and process photography are ludicrously bad. Yet if so much of Fahrenheit 451 is all wr…
Kazoku Gaimu Kazoku Game The director of this bitter 1983 Japanese satire, Yoshimitsu Morita, is probably not a psychic, but he could certainly pass for one based on this cautionary tale about a manic, over-achieving Japan, Inc. on the verge of collapsing under its own unbearable weight. The parents portrayed in The Family Game are frantic about the upcoming exams that will decide the academic fat…
César (Raimu) is a cafe owner in Marseilles whose son, Marius (Pierre Fresnay) is in love with Fanny (Orane Demazis). Fanny is terrified that Marius will abandon her because of his love for the sea, and soon her fears are realized. Soon after, when Fanny realizes that she's pregnant by Marius, she agrees to marry an understanding and loving f…
Fanny och Alexander For those who've never had the opportunity or the interest—for whatever reason—to experience one of the films of the great Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, there is probably no better place to jump in than with his 1983 Fanny and Alexander. As with so many great films, this one has a simple story; ten-year-old Alexander and his eight-year-old sister Fanny, …
La Planete Sauvage Planet of Incredible Creatures The Savage Planet Czech graphic artist Roland Topor and French animator René Laloux adapted Stefan Wul's cautionary novel about interplanetary class struggles, Oms en Serie, into one of the most visually innovative animated features of the 1970s. The civilized Oms are living under the heel—literally—of their giant, 40-fo…
In Weiter Ferne, So Nah! He just couldn't leave well enough alone. The “well enough” I refer to is Wim Wenders's delicate and miraculously successful 1988 Wings of Desire, the story of an angel (Bruno Ganz) who chooses to fall to earth in a divided Berlin in order to experience—even if for a relatively short time—the sensory and emotional ple…
Bawang Bie Ji Chen Kaige is one of many directors who've attempted to portray the human price of the massive cultural upheavals that have taken place within China. What sets his Farewell My Concubine apart is the sweeping, universally accessible structure that he's chosen for his story, as well as the humanity with which he portrays his flawed, damaged, yet heroic characters. It�…
Farinelli the Castrato Farinelli il Castrato Carlo Broschi, whose stage name was “Farinelli,” was the most famous of the 18th-century music world's many castrati—male singers whose high, heavenly voices were preserved for a lifetime by a flick of the knife in their youth. Broschi was the Sinatra of his day—in terms of popularity, that is—and he reportedly …
Faust-Eine deutsche Volkssage This visually brilliant expressionist fantasy by Germany's F.W. Murnau is based on Goethe's version of the story of a man who exchanges his soul for worldly pleasures. It is also, as is widely acknowledged, flawed by the meandering and melodramatic love scenes that take up a good portion of the film's center section. That said, don't miss i…
Pardon Me, Your Teeth Are in My Neck Dance of the Vampires Professor Abronsius (Jack McGowran) and his bumbling assistant Alfred (Roman Polanski) bring along a sack full of wooden stakes when they visit the desolate, Transylvanian castle where they hope to destroy an ancient family of vampires. For years I've read heavily qualified, polite reviews of Roman Polans…
Satyricon Using the Satyricon of Petronius as a jumping off-point, Federico Fellini created the first historical head film, and right on time; the picture became a cult item in American art houses less than a year after the release of 2001: A Space Odyssey. But issues of timing aside, it's difficult to argue with assessments like the one by Pauline Kael, who found Fellini Satyricon to be &#…
Roma Fellini's Roma, a heartfelt series of vignettes about the city the maestro loves, was promoted in 1972 as Fellini's “documentary” about the city, but with a few fantasy sequences thrown into the mix. I've always had trouble defining the term “documentary” anyway, but to assume that Federico Fellini was going to present us with cinema vér…
Wild Flower Two children—descendants of a Tuscan family that has a long, unusual history—are being driven by their father to meet their grandfather for the first time. Before they arrive, the father decides to arm the children with the truth about the family's past—200-year-old curse and all. This exquisitely delicate memory film from directors Paolo and Vittorio Tavian…
Le Feu Follet Fuoco Fatuo Louis Malle's great 1964 film (his fourth feature) is a compassionate but scrupulously unsentimental account of the final 48 hours in the life of a man determined to commit suicide. Though contemporary in setting, The Fire Within is based on a 1931 novel called Le Feu follet (the film's French title) by Pierre Drieu Le Rochelle, w…
Hori, Ma Panenko Milos Forman's third feature film—set in a small Czech town not long before Soviet tanks invaded the country—is a poignant, brilliantly inventive comedy in which the smallest moments converge to form an enormous impression. At this year's edition of the annual celebration held by the town's volunteer fire brigade, the main order of business is to…
Nobi It's often the case that great novels make mediocre movies; it may be that filmmakers are too fearful of rejection by critics and audiences to impose a personal vision on already venerated material. I haven't read the novel that was the basis for Kon Ichikawa's 1959 story of World War II, Fires on the Plain, but if it's half as powerful, original, and shocking as t…
An open letter to Clint Eastwood. Dear Mr. Eastwood: In 1971, you came to Detroit on a publicity tour for your first directorial effort, Play Misty for Me. At a crowded press lunch (You had a steak sandwich and a Heineken. You could have had anything you wanted.) I asked you in my geekiest “film generation” college-paper film-critic style about the genesis of a movie of…
Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo is the story of an obsessive, perhaps maniacal, self-styled entrepreneur (Klaus Kinski at his most possessed) whose dream it is to build a full-scale opera house in one of the deepest jungles of the Amazon's rain forest. Since the story is set at the end of the last century, it's only logical that Fitzcarraldo's dream will be c…
La Flor de My Secreto An unexpected and refreshingly welcome surprise, particularly after the (unintentionally, I hope) misogynistic misfire of Kika, Pedro Almodóvar's The Flower of My Secret is a sparklingly witty, genuinely moving portrait of a middle-aged writer (Marisa Paredes in a fabulous performance) who tries desperately to find a meaningful shred …
Francesco, Giullare di Dio Francis, God's Jester I saw Roberto Rossellini's 1950 The Flowers of St. Francis just once, at a screening at London's National Film Theatre more than 30 years ago. I remember it as being a charmingly relaxed, documentary-style series of episodes in the life of St. Francis and his disciples—a film so uninsistent in tone that it struck me as be…
Les Jeux Interdits Paulette (Brigitte Fossey), a five-year-old girl whose parents are killed as the family flees Nazi occupied Paris, is taken in by a peasant family that includes 11-year-old Michel (Georges Poujouly). Paulette adapts as best she can thanks to the help of the adoring Michel. She understands the need for survival, though she's confused by her new …
Dutch filmmaker Peter Delpeut has fashioned something of a cottage industry out of turning archival documentary footage into a spine on which to hang newly spun yarns. In his The Forbidden Quest, Delpeut begins with spectacular images of polar expeditions—probably shot between 1905 and 1925—and adds a soundtrack, actors, and newly staged scenes to create a hybrid, fake “docume…
The Loyal 47 Ronin 47 Samurai The tale has been filmed many times, but Kenji Mizoguchi's 1942 two-part epic of Seika Mayama's story is the best remembered and the most gripping. Part one chronicles how the early 18th-century samurai warriors of Lord Asano set out to avenge their leader, who was forced by an enemy to commit seppuku (harakiri, to use the more vulgar term)…
See The 47 Ronin, Part 1.
Les Quatre Cents Coups The debate over just how autobiographical François Truffaut's first feature film really is has faded somewhat over the years, while its stature as one of the most influential of all films about childhood has continued to rise. The troubled, 13-year-old Antoine Doinel, played by an extraordinary young actor named Jean-Pierre Léaud, lives in a tiny Parisia…
Die Verde Man Later in his career, the Dutch director Paul Verhoeven would again attempt to meld a murder mystery with comically intense eroticism, but the result then—the Sharon Stone/Michael Douglas Basic Instinct—would be less inventive, less witty, less interesting, and just less fun than his diabolically clever 1979 thriller The 4th Man. Gerard (Jeroen Krabbé…
Elevator to the Gallows Ascenseur pour L'Echafaud Louis Malle was 25 when he made his directorial feature debut with this 1957 thriller about an ex-paratrooper named Julien (Maurice Ronet) in love with his boss's wife (Jeanne Moreau). Julien knows what has to be done, and the perfect murder he has planned will leave nothing to chance—nothing, that i…
Zamri Oumi Voskresni Near the end of World War II, two children (Pavel Nazarov and Dinara Drukarova) living in poverty in the remote mining village of Suchan, have only their wits and their precious sense of humor to guide them though the bleakness of their situation. This humane, sensitive, and inventively photographed Russian film marks the directorial debut of Vitaly Kanevski, who…
Only the French Can! In the Paris of 1888, a nightclub owner named Danglard (Jean Gabin) has fallen on hard times; he decides that the only way to restore himself to financial health is to revive the Can Can. To do it properly, he'll need to present it in a dazzling, spectacular cabaret, but since nothing already in existence is good enough, Danglard sets out to build the nigh…
Souvenirs d'en France Former film critic André Téchiné was yet another of the gifted Cahiers du Cinéma set who decided to put his money where his mouth is, and the result was this striking if maddeningly disjointed portrait of a seamstress (Jeanne Moreau) who marries into a bourgeois family and works her way to the top. The movie's conceived …
Bushwhacked Gazon Maudit All praise to Victoria Abril for her stalwart efforts at trying to keep this helpless, sinking ship of a sex comedy afloat; it goes down to the bottom anyway, and it seems to take longer to do it than the entire running time of Titanic. Josiane Balasko (who played the other woman in Bertrand Blier's Too Beautiful for You) was the perp of this high-conc…
Les Nuits de la Pleine Louise (Pascale Ogier) is feeling suffocated in her relationship with her architect boyfriend. Explaining to the befuddled guy that she needs her own space, Louise takes a small apartment in Paris where she can be on her own. But space, it seems, it not what Louise really gravitates toward, and before long she's being pushed and pulled into relationships…
Funeral Rites Ososhiki The TV careers of a married couple are interrupted by the sudden death of the wife's father. The couple gets considerably more than they bargained for, however, when the carefully laid plans for what was to be a traditional, three-day Buddhist funeral service begin to unravel into a series of out-of-control misadventures. Juzo Itami's 1985 debut film has fewer …