Drama

  • Yorgos Lanthimos – Kinetta (2005)

    2001-2010ArthouseDramaGreeceYorgos Lanthimos

    PLOT:
    At a Greek hotel in the off-season, a chambermaid, a man obsessed with BMW cars, and a photo-store clerk attempt to film and photograph various badly re-enacted struggles between a man and a woman.Read More »

  • Fridrikh Ermler – Velikiy grazhdanin AKA The Great Citizen (1938)

    Drama1931-1940Fridrikh ErmlerPoliticsUSSR

    The film features life of Soviet country in the 20-s. The story is focused on the character of a major party leader. The film was inspired by life and activities of Bolshevik leader Sergei Kirov (1886 — 1934).Read More »

  • Willi Forst – Mazurka (1935)

    1931-1940CrimeDramaGermanyThird Reich CinemaWilli Forst

    Quote:
    A female cabaret singer is put on trial for murdering a predatory musician.

    Wikipedia wrote:
    Warner Brothers Studios acquired the U.S. distribution rights but shelved the film in favor of its own scene-by-scene 1937 English language remake, Confession, which starred Kay Francis. Mazurka’s sets were designed by the art director Hermann Warm. It was partly shot on location in Warsaw. The film was made by Cine-Allianz whose Jewish owners Arnold Pressburger and Gregor Rabinovitch were dispossessed during pre-production of the film.Read More »

  • Georg C. Klaren – Wozzeck (1947)

    Drama1941-1950Georg C. KlarenGermany

    Plot:
    The body of Franz Wozzeck lies on a table in an anatomy lecture of a small German university. Whereas the doctor in charge of dissecting the cadaver can only see the murdered corpse lying on the table, Buechner, a medical student, sees the corpse of a “human being.” “A human being” he adds, “that we have murdered.” Buechner then proceeds to tell the story of Franz Wozzeck. Franz Wozzeck was a poor soldier. He endured the harassment and humiliation of his military superiors. His meager soldier’s pay allowed him to provide for his beloved wife, Marie, and their child with the bare necessities and secure a modest future for them. It was this basic desire to earn money for his family that lead Wozzeck to be the guinea pig in a series of harsh medical experiments – for his participation in the experiments Wozzeck earned a few pennies. Read More »

  • Christopher St. John – Top of the Heap (1972)

    Drama1971-1980ActionChristopher St. JohnUSA

    Plot: A Washington D.C. cop is proud to be one of the few African-Americans on the force. He is not well loved by his peers, or by people. Trouble erupts when he is overlooked for a promotion.Read More »

  • Harry Falk – The Death Squad (1974)

    1971-1980CrimeDramaHarry FalkUSA

    When petty criminals start turning up murdered, a detective discovers they are being killed by a group of his fellow officers who think the criminals were treated too leniently by the courts.Read More »

  • Mark Cullingham – Play for Today: 84, Charing Cross Road (1975)

    1971-1980DramaMark CullinghamThe Wednesday Play & Play for TodayTVUnited Kingdom

    Written by Helene Hanff (book) & Hugh Whitemore (dramatisation)

    Quote:
    ‘…people going to England find exactly what they go looking for. I said I’d go looking for the England of English Literature…’

    When Arthur Dent receives an alien tongue-lashing on arrival at yet another inhospitable planet during The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, he observes in exasperation: ‘Why doesn’t anyone ever seem to pleased to see us?’1 One answer to that question might well be: ‘Because drama and comedy rely on conflict to make them work.’ There’s rarely a great deal of mileage to be extracted from people liking one another and generally getting on, but when the trick is pulled off, the results can be delightful and surprising.Read More »

  • Jean Delannoy – Le garçon sauvage AKA Savage Triangle (1951)

    1951-1960CrimeDramaFranceJean Delannoy

    Quote:
    A prostitute is going up the mountain.Up there,lives her son she left to a shepherd to take care of him.These first minutes are perhaps the best:the mother brings toys to her child but he cannot play,”playing” is a thing he’s never done;she did not intend to bring him back with her,but after a night in the same bed ,she understands she cannot live without him.So she takes him down to Marseille.
    Marseille is the city the place where evil dwells .It’s interesting to notice that the mountains (beginning) and the sea (ending)are providential,they represent purity and honesty.Read More »

  • Philippe Garrel – Elle a passé tant d’heures sous les sunlights… aka She Spent So Many Hours Under the Sun Lamps (1985)

    1981-1990DramaFrancePhilippe Garrel

    Quote:
    Faceted, fragmented, and oneiric, Philippe Garrel’s Elle a passé tant d’heures sous les sunlights… (She Spent So Many Hours Under the Sun Lamps) is more exorcism than expurgation, elegy than lamentation – an abstract, yet lucid chronicle of love and loss, death and birth sublimated through textural, self-reflexive impressions, visceral gestures, and metaphoric tableaux. A profoundly personal film dedicated to the memory of friend and fellow filmmaker (and May 68 idealist) Jean Eustache, and haunted by the unreconciled specter of Garrel’s failed relationship with Nico, the film opens to a crepuscular image of a couple – perhaps an actor and his lover (Jacques Bonnaffé and Anne Wiazemsky) as apparent surrogates for Garrel and Nico – in the midst of a breakup on a public street on a cold, winter evening, as their seemingly tenuous reconciliation is truncated by the subsequent shot of the couple returning home, and an all too familiar rupture as she once again lapses into the desensitized haze of heroin addiction in the distraction of his preoccupying rehearsals.Read More »

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