Classics

A film thought to be lost until 5 reels (out of 9) were found in the UCLA archives. It was derived from an eponymous play by Marcel Achard which allowed to reconstruct he synopsis. Jean Gabin is the captain of the Cormorant, a horse-drawn barge, living happily along the canals with his sister Mique and Sylvestre (Pierre Blanchar), his fellow mariner and friend. The film starts with Gabin rescuing a young lady named Marinette (Madeleine Renaud) who had fallen in the canal for unsaid reason. Gabin soon also falls (for her), they get married and the boat is renamed ‘la Belle Marinière’ (the handsome she-mariner). During the wedding party returns Sylvestre (a handsome he-mariner) who had been away for the necessities of the script. He will now be the object of a growing interest from Marinette which results in the expected confict between the two men.Read More »

Quote:

Undeniably one of Hollywood’s greatest actresses, Katharine Hepburn nonetheless only had one voice. She used it to massive effect but anything that really warranted an utterly different accent tended to make her look horribly miscast. Of all the great actors she was the one who seemed to be horribly miscast most often, whether it be as a Chinese peasant girl, a queen of Scotland or a backwoods hillbilly. Here, playing the nineteenth century pianist and composer Clara Schumann, I expected another horrible miscasting, but found that the film’s very human story utterly engaging regardless what accents are brought to bear.Read More »

Mrs. Jacoby, a Brooklyn widow whose only son was killed by the Japanese in World
War II, reluctantly agrees to accompany her daughter, Alice, and her son-in-law, Jerry
Black, on a trip to Japan, where Jerry is to help negotiate a trade agreement. En route by
ship, Mrs. Jacoby’s resentment of the Japanese subsides when she meets Mr. Asano, a
Japanese industrialist whose family also was struck by tragedy during the war. Their
friendship ends, however, when Jerry suspects that Mr. Asano, who is also a
negotiating member of the trade committee, is ingratiating himself with his mother-in-law
for political gain.Read More »

Plot
Jim Dixon (Ian Carmichael) feels anything but lucky. At the university he has to do the bidding of absent-minded and boring Professor Welch (Hugh Griffith) to have any hope of keeping his job. Worse, he has managed to get entangled with boring and neurotic Margaret Peel, a fellow teacher. All-in-all, the pub is the only friendly place to be. His misery is completed at a dreadful weekend gathering of the Welch clan by the arrival of son Bertrand (Terry-Thomas). Betrand is loud-mouthed and boorish, but has as companion the delightful Christine Callaghan, the sort of marvellous and unattainable woman Jim can only dream about.Read More »

Ioannina, in the beginning of the 19th century. The whole Greece is under Turks. Ioannina is governed by the fierce and vulgar Ali Pasas. Ali’s eldest son, Muchtar, falls in love with a young Greek widow, Frosyni. The problem is, he’s married to the vindictive and cruel Chanife. And the muslim penalty for having an affair with a married man is death…Read More »

Captain Giakoumis makes the big decision to forsake the sea and live peacefully close to his wife and his adopted son, Andreas, who is about to sit for examinations in order to become a lieutenant. However, a terrible secret burdens his soul. He has a daughter, Agni, whom he had years ago when he had an affair with Maria, a prostitute from Troumpa. Maria, before she died, expressed the wish that Giakoumis recognize their daughter as his child. He, however, refused, since Agni ended up becoming a prostitute. The girl, to take revenge on her father, starts an affair with her half-brother with the intention of dragging him down into the mud. In the end, however, she falls in love with him, and this love blesses everyone and everything.Read More »

Synopsis:
King Oedipus, the ruler of Thebes, blinds himself after learning that he inadvertently killed his own father, and got married to his mother. From this unholy union, Oedipus had four children: two sons, Eteocles and Polynices, and two daughters, Ismene and Antigone. After a tragic clash between brothers for the throne, the new monarch of Thebes, Creon, decrees that the body of the traitorous Polynices should be left unburied–a royal order which Antigone chooses to defy. Now, a cruel fate awaits the rebellious woman in the castle’s cold and dank dungeons, as Apollo’s blind prophet, Tiresias, warns the king of the Gods’ wrath. Alas, an irreversible chain of events is already set in motion.Read More »

Baron Victor von Plessen’s “Kopfjäger von Borneo” (1936) is a magnificent early ethnographic film. A painter, ornithologist and ethnographer, von Plessen (1900-1980) apparently was an independent spirit of independent financial means. There is absolutely no indication for the fact that this was produced in Third Reich Germany, but this might nevertheless account for the relative obscurity into which this film has sadly fallen.Read More »

Synopsis
A samurai is ordered by his lord to go to Edo and investigate the truth behind the rumor of a rebellion against him. After collecting enough information to prove a conspiracy, the samurai needs to devise some way of leaving Edo without creating suspicion and comes up with a cockeyed plan. Based on the short story by Shiga Naoya.Read More »