Comedy

“Criterion” wrote:
In René Clair’s irrepressibly romantic portrait of the crowded tenements of Paris, a street singer and a gangster vie for the love of a beautiful young woman. This witty exploration of love and human foibles, told primarily through song, captures the flamboyant atmosphere of the city with sophisticated visuals and groundbreaking use of the new technology of movie sound. An international sensation upon its release, Under the Roofs of Paris is an exhilarating celebration of filmmaking and one of France’s most beloved cinematic exports.Read More »

The first of Kawashima’s Daiei Studio collaborations with Wakao centers on the life of a Tokyo geisha named Koen and her relationships with various men. Starting out with no singing or dancing talents, the young, free-spirited Koen is initially eager to please and happy to do what she is told. With time and experience, however, she gradually begins to notice a change in herself and questions what she wants out of life. Played with subtle shifts in emotion, Wakao’s delicate performance earned her the Kinema Junpo Award and Blue Ribbon Award for Best Actress.Read More »

1944. Primo Arcovazzi, a fanatic member of Brigate Nere (fascist organization), is in charge to bring an opponent to the regime, Prof. George Wilson, from Abruzzo to Roma. He accepted the mandate because of his wish to be upgraded to “Federale”. They travel by a sidecar trough the disastrous Italy, near to the final collapse, under bombings and in agony. Nevertheless the bad situation, they manage to build up a kind of friendship. Primo, even if the signals of final destruction are near, doesn’t lose his trust in the regime. The end is near.Read More »

Politician get hitch hikers on road and in one car accident they all end up on a tree above the sea.

Quote:
Henri Roubier is an industrialist who has negotiated a contract to build a national roadway, making himself a rich man in the process. On his way to a meeting with the French Prime Minister, he gets caught up in a traffic jam and two hitch-hikers force their way into his car – a young man and a young woman, who have just met. Roubier drives off at great speed – but his car goes over the edge of a cliff.Read More »

This is a little like an extended but half-serious variation on the “Uptown Girl” song video where the working-class guy meets the beautiful model from the billboard. But a few more people are involved. Here, the guy is married and his daughter has a crush on the weatherman. The weatherman wants to marry the cosmetics queen from the billboards. The cosmetics queen kind of likes the guy’s sidekick. The sidekick kind of likes the guy’s daughter, although she’s in high school and the age difference would raise anyone’s eyebrows. The movie is a nice character study about accepting or denying who we really are and what we really want. It’s missing an anchor character in the middle with whom the audience could identify, but the eccentrics are obviously what interested the filmmakers. Real-life cosmetics queen Pnina Rosenblum was a good enough sport to allow her own home to be used as the home of the fictional character based on herself.Read More »

Saint-Maurice, an ordinary peaceful village, lived healthily so much so that the local doctor’s practice was scant. But that was before Dr. Parpalaid retired and was replaced by a charlatan by the name of Knock. A real genius this one, for he soon managed to persuade everyone that they were ill. And not only didn’t they resent him but they even loved their physician, who made a fortune and brought prosperity to the village by turning it into a big hospital.Read More »

To earn money for married life, a young engaged man takes a job as an engineer on a privately operated oil drilling rig in the far North of Russia. A friend’s letter brings the sad news that his fiancée has already married someone else and in desperation he quits his job and flies back to Moscow. There all his vast efforts to win her back seem in vain…Read More »

The nobleman Pantaleo of Santa Paola has deceased recently, but in the preamble to his will is read his confession in which he declares to have had, in his youth, an affair with a circus horsewoman from which were born two twin sons.
The search for these twins will bring the notary Pensabene and their cousins heirs, Rosa, Lilli e Titti, to fortuitously find Nicolino, the first of the twins. The search will continue with other hilarious adventures that will see the figure of Toto alternating with several phantasmagorical characters, surrounded by a family that wants to undermine their safety in order to collect the money of Pantaleo’s inheritance.Read More »

An industrialist has his wife tailed because he secretly hopes she is betraying him so that he can ask for a divorce and marry the model he’s fallen in love with. This leads to a series of thefts, blackmail and a suicide as well.Read More »