Classics

IMDB rating: 8.3 / 10
First color film made in Republic of Macedonia. Based on a true story.

At the turn of the century, Macedonia is under the administration of the Ottoman Empire. Macedonian freedom fighters, in order to raise money for their cause, kidnap an American Protestant missionary – MIss Stone – and demand ransom for her return.

Whilst among her kidnappers, Miss Stone, who originally set out to convert Macedonians to Protestantism, was herself converted to the Macedonain cause for national independence. After her release she returned to the US where she campaigned for the Macedonian cause. Too bad American public opinion at the time equated ‘ransom’ with the tactics of Chinese brigands who also kidnapped American missionaries.Read More »

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A few months later, (L’Herbier) directed Rose-France, an excessive and disturbing poem, filmed in the form of a weird symbolist collage. In this movie he started to experiment with special effects and celebrated the young actor Jaque Catelain, an expressive beauty, a true Dorian Gray, whose presence would mark almost all of his silent films. His mastery of the medium earned him a two-year contract at the Gaumont Film Company.Read More »

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My Apprenticeship (V lyudyakh) was the second entry in Russian director Mark Donskoy’s “Maxim Gorky” trilogy. Picking up where 1938’s My Childhood left off, the story covers the years in Gorky’s life when the future writer (Alexei Lyarsky) was on his own, looking for a purpose and place in life. Before he can make up his own mind, Gorky is trapped into serfdom by a wealthy family. As he grows from his teen years to full manhood, Gorky fights his way towards freedom of thought and body. Based on Gorky’s autobiography, the film was followed in 1940 by My Universities. My Apprenticeship has also been released as On His Own and Among People. (Hollywood.com)Read More »

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My Universities (Moi universiteti) is the last installment of Russian director Mark Donskoy’s “Maxim Gorky” trilogy. Having endured a painful youth in My Childhood (1938) and a torturous sojourn as a serf in My Apprenticeship (1939), future writer Gorky (Alexei Lyarsky) reaches maturity with an insatiable desire for personal and artistic freedom. The “university” of the title is actual the school of Hard Knocks, as Gorky goes to work in the shipyards and commisserates with the hard-drinking, philosophical dockworkers. Donskoy’s depiction of street life under the Czarist regime of the late 19th century as unrelentingly depressing, filled with disenfranchised derelicts. This, of course, was meant to be a contrast to the “perfection” of the Stalin years. We can forgive this propagandizing in the light of Donskoy’s indisputable cinematic brilliance. In 1941, a considerably edited version of My Universities was released in the US as University of Life. (Hal Erickson, Rovi)Read More »

A society novelist brings a brash young chorus girl home in order to study her for inspiration for his new novel. His family is distraught, but soon her behavior has forever altered their snobbish ways.Read More »

Chidambaram (Malayalam) is a 1985 Malayalam film written, directed and produced by G. Aravindan. It is the film adaptation of a short story by C. V. Sreeraman.The film explores various aspects of relations between men and women through the lives of three people living in a cattle farm. Themes of guilt and redemption are also dealt with. Bharath Gopi, Smita Patil, Sreenivasan and Mohan Das play the lead roles. It won the National Film Award for Best Feature Film and five Kerala State Film Awards including Best Film and Best Direction.Read More »

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“Aparajito” is the second film of Satyajit Ray’s ‘Apu Trilogy’ (Pather Panchali, Aparajito and Apur Sansar) continues to document the life and maturation of one young Indian boy. The film opens with Apu, son of Harihar and Sarbajaya, wandering and exploring the Temple City of Bananas on the banks of the Ganga (Ganges river) where they reside. The story focuses on Apu leaving the embrace of his family nest to work and become educated in a more modern world than what he has become accustomed in his youth. The struggle to remain separate is exemplified by the dire need of his Mother, Sarbajaya who is deathly ill and depressed. She remains desperately lonely in her small village after the death of her husband and departure of her son. Continuing the cycle of life Satyajit Ray continues to explore the inner conflicts of conforming to a more contemporary world than our parents. The strength to overcome our bonding of birth is another universal theme of traditional respect and independent personal advancement.Read More »

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Ekman’s favorite of his own films, and an enduring classic in Scandinavia, “Girl with Hyacinths” examines the mysterious suicide of a young woman (Eva Henning, Ekman’s wife at the time) through a Wellesian multiplicity of points of view. Visually striking, with extreme long takes and images that drift into a dreamlike surrealism, the film reveals its secrets with grace and sympathy, moving toward a final revelation that seems at least a generation ahead of its time.Read More »

Plot: A movie musical about…wrestling? Turns out the public grew weary of musicals while Sit Tight was made, so most of the tunes were jettisoned prior to release. What remains is a wrestling comedy filled with plenty of pre-Code friskiness. Athletic funnyman Joe E. Brown plays Jojo Mullins, who has an eye for the ladies although his heart belongs to the manager (Winnie Lightner) of the health club where he works. Eager to show the ring prowess he learned by correspondence, Jojo gets his chance in a big-time match. Paul Gregory and Claudia Dell (rumored to be the model for Columbia Pictures logo) play the subplot’s young lovebirds in this energetic comedy that’s one of nearly 50 films directed by Lloyd Bacon in the 1930s. From Warner Brothers Studio!Read More »