Christian Petzold’s third episode for the Polizeiruf 110 series, “Tatorte,” starring Matthias Brandt, who has a major cameo in Transit.
Episode description: A woman is executed in a secluded parking lot in front of her daughter. For assistant Nadja and Kriminalhauptkommissar Hanns von Meuffels the case seems obvious: a family drama.Read More »
Synopsis:
In Tokyo, a ruthless gang starts holding up U.S. ammunition trains, prepared to kill any of their own members wounded during a robbery. Down-at-heel ex-serviceman Eddie Spannier arrives from the States, apparently at the invitation of one such unfortunate. But Eddie isn’t quite what he seems as he manages to make contact with Sandy Dawson, who is obviously running some sort of big operation, and his plan is helped by acquaintance with Mariko, the secret Japanese wife of the dead American.Read More »
Filmed in 1948 as Senza Pieta, this Alberto Lattuada-directed effort came to America the following year as Without Pity. The film’s sensitive subject matter caused problems in distribution and approval; Lattuada was never known to shirk from a sociopolitical statement, even when it meant loss of revenue overseas. The plot is based on an actual postwar dilemma: in Northern Italy, dozens of black American GIs chose to go AWOL rather than return to a racially divided United States. John Kitzmiller plays an occupation soldier named Jerry, who decides to remain in Italy when he falls in love with a blonde, Caucasian local girl named Angela (Carla Del Poggio). Read More »
Synopsis:
To his Victorian London friends, Stephen Lowry is a heartbroken widower. Only his housemaid Lily knows that far from dying of gastroenteritis his wife was slowly poisoned by her husband – information she is happy to use to improve her position in the household and to make sure she stays close to Stephen. As his own prospects improve with a business partnership and a romance more of his own class, Stephen decides that Lily must go. Unfortunately for him, his first attempt gives her even more of a hold over him.Read More »
Synopsis:
Ordinary man-in-the-street Arthur Ferguson Jones leads a very straightforward life. He’s never late for work and nothing interesting ever happens to him. One day everything changes: he oversleeps and is fired as an example, he’s then mistaken for evil criminal killer Mannion and is arrested. The resemblance is so striking that the police give him a special pass to avoid a similar mistake. The real Mannion sees the opportunity to steal the pass and move around freely and chaos results.Read More »
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This wicked adaptation of the Octave Mirbeau novel is classic Luis Buñuel. Jeanne Moreau is Celestine, a beautiful Parisian domestic who, upon arrival at her new job at an estate in provincial 1930s France, entrenches herself in sexual hypocrisy and scandal with her philandering employer (Buñuel regular Michel Piccoli). Filmed in luxurious black-and-white Franscope, Diary of a Chambermaid is a raw-edged tangle of fetishism and murder—and a scathing look at the burgeoning French fascism of the era.Read More »
Synopsis:
A couple traveling through the countryside strike a man on a bicycle. When they get out of their car to examine him, they find that he is injured but not dead. But instead of helping the man, Juan (Alberto Closas) and Maria Jose (Lucia Bosé) do the unthinkable. They flee – rather than reveal that they have been carrying on a long-term affair.
When they return to Madrid, the couple pay a terrible price for their deception. Guilt begins to gnaw away at them, especially at Juan, who is also experiencing conflict with his young students over an ethical issue at the university where he teaches…Read More »
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From Spencer Selby’s Dark City:
Serving time in prison for a murder he didn’t commit, a man becomes hard and embittered. One of several noirs which were remade from thirties crime pictures.Read More »
Damon Runyon’s Broadway fable The Lemon Drop Kid was filmed twice by Paramount Pictures, but only the 1934 version with Lee Tracy paid more than lip service to the original Runyon story. The second version, filmed in 1951, was completely retooled to accommodate the talents of Bob Hope. Known far and wide as the Lemon Drop Kid because of his fondness for that particular round, yellow confection, Hope is a bookie who finds himself deeply in debt to Florida gangster Fred Clark. Magnanimously, Clark permits Hope to head to New York to raise the money–but he’d better have the dough ready by Christmas, or else. Read More »