IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT
An heiress is trying to run away and elope, and a newspaper reporter offers to help her in exchange for a story; what follows may be the single most influential film of the 1930s – after, perhaps, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Both films defined a genre: in one case, animated features; in the […]
1945
Two Orthodox Jews arrive in a small remote rural Hungarian village which is getting ready for the wedding of the magistrate’s son. They’re accompanied by two coffin-like wooden crates supposedly filled with perfumes and soaps. Is this the start of a Jewish influx, reclaiming properties? Histories resurface, rumours spread wildly, paranoia reigns, and the villagers […]
THE DEVILS
Father Urbain Grandier (Reed) champions the rights of the people of Loudun against Cardinal Richelieu who wants to tear down the town’s defences. Local nuns, led by Sister Jeanne (Redgrave), accuse Grandier of witchcraft. The trial and the exorcisms of the nuns involved were sensational. Based on a true story written up as a novel […]
NINE QUEENS
Two con artists, one smoothly experienced, the other incompetent, join forces and become involved in a complex scam involving forged copies of rare stamps. The story is set over the course of a single day in Buenos Aires. Nine Queens trusts its audience and rewards attentiveness, and shows how a modestly budgeted film can create […]
THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER
The film of Davis Grubb’s novel The Night of the Hunter received scathing critical responses upon its first release. The film has, however, grown in stature since then and is now considered a classic with its expressionistic, dark, fairy tale evocation of the struggle of good against evil. The film’s star, Robert Mitchum, released from […]
AN AMERICAN IN PARIS
The story goes that ace MGM producer Alan Freed approached Ira Gershwin seeking permission to use his late brother’s concert piece An American in Paris in a movie. When he came away, he had permission to make a movie full of George’s songs. The result was six Oscar®s: Best Picture, Best Screenplay, Best Music, Best […]
THE BANK
This is an Australian thriller/drama, and is director Robert Connolly’s first film. The story starts in the 1970s and moves to the late ’90s and early 2000s. Set in Victoria, some scenes were filmed in the headquarters of a major bank in Melbourne. Jim Doyle (Wenham) is a brilliant mathematician who has designed a computer […]
MON ONCLE
Jacques Tati was born a little too late for the era of silent films, but he reinvented a version of them when he created the iconic character of Monsieur Hulot in the mid-1950s. There is room for debate as to which of the four Hulot films is the best; but this, the second, best defines […]
HARAKIRI
In 17th century Japan a destitute samurai arrives at the estate of a powerful clan requesting permission to commit ritual suicide. Expecting a bluff, the clan elders recount a recent case intended as a warning. As the man calmly insists on proceeding, his story unfolds, revealing a far more disturbing truth. Masaki Kobayashi’s Harakiri is […]
A TOWN LIKE ALICE
A beautifully acted and moving World War 2 film based on the 1950 novel of the same name by Nevil Shute, who was born in England but based in Australia after the war. The film tells the story of Jean Paget, exquisitely played by Virginia McKenna, a young English woman who becomes a prisoner of […]