Drama

Review by Ennio Flaiano (L’Espresso, November 14th 1971)
In the scaffolds of Italian cinematography, there’s Augusto Tretti, with his two films, «La legge della tromba» and «Il potere» (two films in two years, the first one barely seen by anyone other than close friends), very hard to place in the landscape. Should be left alone. It will either be an isolated phenomenon, or worse, one that needs to be isolated. He will perhaps, in this country of people who find their ways, copycats, but surely bad ones or just clever ones. Tretti has a gift, his simplicity, which cannot be copied, it implies the superb innocence of the hermit. It’s a simplicity that brings the photographic image to the likes of Nadar, of Daguerre, and also to neo-realism […].Read More »

Quote:
Spining tale of a woman, her sister, and the man who completes the triangle. Told through such fertile sources as grand opera, classical painting, and Victorian melodrama.Read More »

13 German soldiers have to fight off a French regiment.Read More »

Two sisters born in Rio de Janeiro make their way through life, each mistakenly believing the other is living out her dreams half a world away.Read More »

The Swedish 19th century engineer S. A. Andrée sets out to become the first man on the north pole. His idea is to launch a polar expedition using a hydrogen balloon, together with two friends. The balloon, “The Eagle”, takes off from Svalbard in 1897, but the three men are not heard of again.Read More »

Synopsis:
Jean Valjean (Jean Gabin) is paroled after serving 19 year term in a hard labor prison for stealing some bread. After spending a night in a missionary, he tries to steal some silverware, but he is set straight by a kindly bishop (Fernand Ledoux) who protects him from the police and gives him a set of expensive candlesticks and makes him promise that he has to become a new man that day. Nine years later, Valjean is now a wealthy industrialist and a mayor.Read More »

Synopsis:
In 1976, a young woman in Krakow is making her diploma film, looking behind the scenes at the life of a 1950s bricklayer, Birkut, who was briefly a proletariat hero, at how that heroism was created, and what became of him. She gets hold of outtakes and censored footage and interviews the man’s friends, ex-wife, and the filmmaker who made him a hero. A portrait of Birkut emerges: he believed in the workers’ revolution, in building housing for all, and his very virtues were his undoing. Her hard-driving style and the content of the film unnerve her supervisor, who kills the project with the excuse she’s over budget. Is there any way she can push the film to completion?Read More »

Titus returns victorious from war, only to plant the seeds of future turmoil for himself and his family.Read More »

Quote:
Sombre, as Grandrieux’s first feature film, establishes some of the important characteristics of his art: An insistence on vision, with characters beyond psychologies, driven by biology or metaphysical forces.

Love (a mix of brotherly and sexual Love, a true awareness of the other, a communion) mostly overrules all, and its discovery by Jean creates waves that emanate in every shot, every cut and every sound in the rest of Sombre.Read More »