Classics

Adaptations of three short stories by W. Somerset Maugham comprise this anthology film in which the celebrated author introduces each segment of the film in front of the camera.Read More »

Producer Val Lewton and director Jacques Tourneur elevated the horror film to new heights of poetic abstraction with this entrancing journey into the realm between life and death. When she takes a job caring for a comatose woman on a Caribbean island, a young nurse (Frances Dee) finds herself plunged into a mysterious world where the ghosts of slavery haunt the present and Vodou priests have the power to summon the living dead. Sugarcane swaying in a moonlit field, the hypnotic beat of ceremonial drums, the relentless pull toward death—the otherworldly atmosphere of this bold reimagining of Jane Eyre is as close as studio-era Hollywood ever came to pure dream-state surrealism.Read More »

Aspiring singer Susanne takes over for ham actor Viktor at a small cabaret in Berlin where he works a woman impersonator and per chance she’s discovered by an agent, who thinks, that she really is a man. She becomes famous, but her situation becomes troublesome, when she falls in love with Robert. imdb.Read More »

“In the streets behind the Ginza avenue, the boss of an hairdressing salon is found dead, killed by strangulation. The inspector in charge of the investigation questions one of the residents of the district, being aware at the same time of the rumours. They suspect Yoshio, a cafe employee, who was found at the hairdresser’s place 40 minutes after the crime. The young guy has something against him: he was judged in the past for involuntary homicide.Read More »

Shusei Tokuda’s starkly realistic novel about a poor girl pressed into becoming a geisha was forcefully adapted by Kaneto Shindo (Onibaba). When Ginko (Nobuko Otowa, Shindo’s wife) falls in love with one of her clients, she is handily rebuffed by the young man’s wealthy family, and left to wander from geisha house to geisha house.Read More »

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In 1547, Ivan IV (1530-1584), archduke of Moscow, crowns himself Tsar of Russia and sets about reclaiming lost Russian territory. In scenes of his coronation, his wedding to Anastasia, his campaign against the Tartars in Kazan, his illness when all think he will die, recovery, campaigns in the Baltic and Crimea, self-imposed exile in Alexandrov, and the petition of Muscovites that he return, his enemies among the boyars threaten his success. Chief among them are his aunt, who wants to advance the fortunes of her son, a simpleton, and Kurbsky, a warrior prince who wants both power and the hand of Anastasia. Ivan deftly plays to the people to consolidate his power.Read More »

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His wife dead from poisoning and his chief warrior, Kurbsky, defected to the Poles, Ivan is lonely as he pursues a unified Russia with no foreign occupiers. Needing friendship, he brings to court Kolychev, now Philip the monk, and makes him metropolitan bishop of Moscow. Philip, however, takes his cues from the boyars and tries to bend Ivan to the will of the church. Ivan faces down Philip and lets loose his private force, the Oprichniks, on the boyars. Led by the Tsar’s aunt, Euphrosyne, the boyers plot to assassinate Ivan and enthrone her son, Vladimir. At a banquet, Ivan mockingly crowns Vladimir and sends him in royal robes into the cathedral where the assassin awaits.Read More »

The beautiful Beatrice Cenci, daughter of the noble Francesco, falls in love with the intendant Olimpio. But she has to face the jealousy of her violent and morbid father, and the hostility of her stepmother Lucrezia.Read More »

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Ginette, a young and free lifestyle dressmaker’s apprentice, receives each day a 10,000 francs bill, in an anonymous sealed letter. Her search among some old and wealthy acquaintances is vain. The young Ginette, first disturbed, then worried, eventually becomes used to this wonderful income transforming her life. She gives up – not without insolence – her work at the sewing workshop, and goes on holiday at her mother’s farm, in Saint-Gervais-du-Cantal. The young Parisian is in sharp contrast with her family background and her childhood friends.Read More »