Sans Toit Ni Loi The brief life of a young woman named Mona (Sandrine Bonnaire), whose frozen body is discovered at the beginning of Vagabond, is recounted in a series of flashbacks and interviews with people who encountered her in her aimless travels. Agnes Varda's shattering portrait of a lost soul is a remarkable work of art that never stoops to neatly packaging this woman&…
La Vallee At the height of its power, the cinema can tap in to the sensibilities of a generation so profoundly that an entire culture can be influenced, whether the film be Breathless, Easy Rider, or 2001: A Space Odyssey. Then again, few sights are sorrier than a talented filmmaker's attempt to tap into the “youth culture” with high-toned, swanky teensploitation pix like Barb…
Vampyr, Ou L'Etrange Aventure de David Gray Vampyr, Der Traum des David Gray Not Against the Flesh Castle of Doom The Strange Adventure of David Gray The Vampire Not to be confused with German director F.W. Murnau's 1922 Nosferatu (a marvelous film as well, yet different in just about every way), Danish director Carl Dreyer's 1932 Vampyr is the agonizingly creepy…
Looking at the greatest works of certain artists, it's sometimes unimaginable to think of being in the same room—or making small talk with—the genius whose hand created the image on the canvas before you. But that is exactly what director Maurice Pialat has done with his gentle and surprisingly moving Van Gogh—he has given us a man, not a deity, and has shown us what by…
Spoorloos A Dutch couple is on holiday when they stop for gas. While in the gas station getting snacks, the wife disappears. For the next three years, the woman's husband doggedly searches for any clue to her whereabouts. Ultimately, in a climactic sequence that can only be called unforgettable, he learns the truth. When critics write about thrillers, they frequently toss around expressions…
Vaudeville Variete An acrobat (Emil Jannings) abandons his wife and child to run off with a beautiful young girl (Lya de Putti).When the two of them form a trapeze act with a handsome young acrobat (Warwick Ward), Jannings's well-founded jealousy explodes into deadly violence. E.A. Dupont's silent German classic may not be one of the most sub…
Luci del Varieta Lights of Variety The first feature film on which Federico Fellini worked as director (it was co-directed with Alberto Lattuada) is the story of a down-and-out troupe of traveling vaudeville players who cling—naively but necessarily—to the dream that someday they will achieve real fame and stardom. The details of their seedy one-night-stands are present…
Fukusho Suruwa Ware Ni Ari Shohei Imamura's 1979 film is based on the true history of an infamous murderer and scam artist, called Iwao Enokizu in the film and portrayed mesmerizingly by Ken Ogata. Enokizu's case became a sensation in Japan, both because of the brutality of his crimes and because of their seeming senselessness. Beginning with the understanding that there is in fact n…
Die Sehns Ucht der Veronika Voss Based on the true story of a fallen German film star, Rainer Werner Fassbinder's baroque and ghoulish Veronika Voss is the closest he ever came to a flat-out horror film. Rosel Zech plays the one-time star who was also a mistress to high-ranking Nazi officials, but by the 1950s is an on-the-nod morphine addict whose supplier—a sadistic female doctor&#…
La Fiancee du Pirate Dirty Mary Pirate's Fiancee This strange little picture created a modest art house buzz in 1969. It is director Nelly Kaplan's merger of a bawdy, farmer's-daughter fable with a hard-line, feminist revenge fantasy. Bernadette Lafont is Marie, the physically desirable but socially outcast form of amusement for the smug and hypocritical men of her small rural…
A successful, married English barrister (Dirk Bogarde) with a concealed history of homosexuality finds himself the victim of blackmail after the death of a former lover. When the blackmailers, who are the cause of his young ex-lover's suicide, are caught, Bogarde decides to prosecute them himself, even though it means bringing his hidden past into the light, thereby risking hi…
Vincent, François, Paul et les Autres The films of Claude Sautet will always serve as perfect examples of the huge gap that existed—at least a couple of decades ago—between French filmmakers and their Hollywood counterparts. If Hollywood still believes in “high-concept”—plots describable in one sentence—then Sautet represents the true polar opposite…
Violette Noziere Violette is Claude Chabrol's 1978 portrait of the real-life 18-year-old French girl Violette Nozière, who, in 1933, took it upon herself to poison her parents so that she might speed up that irritatingly slow process of waiting for them to die in order to receive her inheritance. Violette (Isabelle Huppert at her most appropriately inscrutable) had othe…
Jungfrukallan In Ingmar Bergman's medieval tale, Herr Töre (Max von Sydow) sends his virginal daughter, Karin (Birgitta Pettersson), to carry a load of holy candles to church. As the candles can only be carried by a virgin, Karin's pregnant half-sister Ingeri slips a toad into Karin's bread out of jealousy. Later, on the road, when Karin offe…
It was Luis Bunuel's intention that the first film he directed in Spain after his 23-year political exile be both significant and explosive. He succeeded. Viridiana (Silvia Pinal) is an innocent girl who is cajoled into visiting her wealthy and worldly uncle, Don Jaime (Fernando Rey) prior to taking her final vows as a nun. She goes to thank him for helping her w…
There are two Marias in Viva Maria!; they're both dancers in a show traveling through Mexico and, more importantly, they're played by Brigitte Bardot and Jeanne Moreau. They're not pleased with the poverty they encounter in their travels, and they decide to do something about it. Just what to do becomes more clear after the Moreau Maria has an affair with a revolutionary leade…
Aiqing Wansui In crowded modern Taipei, a lonely real-estate agent (Yang Kuei-mei) uses one of her vacant high-rise apartments for an ongoing affair. She's unaware, however, that a young gay man (Lee Kang-sheng) who finds one of her keys has taken to living there himself. Carefully monitoring her comings and goings, their “relationship” becomes a po…