Quotes :
An actor disguises himself as a soldier during the Second World War, but is mistaken for a soldier and becomes involved in the events of WWII.
Un comédien de troisième zone se déguise en officier Allemand pour les besoins de sa troupe de théâtre. Il est fait prisonnier par les soldats Américains le jour du Débarquement…Read More »
Below is an apt “user comment” from the film’s IMDB page. For my money, LA MATERNELLE is an even greater film than ZERO FOR CONDUCT, which is saying a lot.
“Until I saw this film at a Cinema Conference in Aberdeen in 1995 I was ignorant of the fact that a woman director had produced poetic and social cinema comparable with Vigo’s ZERO DE CONDUITE (certainly one of the greatest films ever). Vigo in 1933 is revolutionary anarchist with modernist poetry at his finger tips; Epstein in 1933 is warm-hearted popular front realism with magnificent performances by nursery school kids, though the main schoolgirl is a little older (and in love with her teacher, like the protagonist in Leontine Sagan’s MAIDENS IN UNIFORM 1931). Read More »
Using archive images, Sergei Loznitsa revisits the gala evenings organized at the Palais Garnier in the fifties and sixties. Between prestige and protocol, these evenings gathered both celebrities and ordinary people who came by the thousands from the Place de l’Opéra to watch this spectacle, of which the director amusingly brings out the irony…Read More »
A young pianist is shocked when she witnesses a strange chess tournament with a robot. Could there be a gruesome secret behind this exhibition?Read More »
Quote:
A new priest (Claude Laydu) arrives in the French country village of Ambricourt to attend to his first parish. The apathetic and hostile rural congregation rejects him immediately. Through his diary entries, the suffering young man relays a crisis of faith that threatens to drive him away from the village and from God. With his fourth film, Robert Bresson began to implement his stylistic philosophy as a filmmaker, stripping away all inessential elements from his compositions, the dialogue and the music, exacting a purity of image and sound.Read More »
Quote:
Trial of Joan of Arc opens to the austere, fragmented image of the hurried footsteps of an indistinguishable figure dressed in a black robe. Carrying a parchment into the vestibule of a chapel, an unidentified woman delivers a personal statement on her daughter’s religious upbringing and death at the hands of the church, visibly supported by two sympathetic advocates. The somber and official tone of the grieving mother’s testament is subsequently reflected in the demeanor of the accused, Jeanne d’Arc (Florence Delay), who is first introduced through a shot of her manacled hands as she places them on an opened Bible before beginning her sworn testimony in front of the presiding judge, Bishop Cauchon (Jean-Claude Fourneau). Read More »
Quote:
In Paris of the not-too-distant future, a mysterious new disease named STBO is killing young people who make love without emotional involvement. A serum has been developed, but it is locked away in an office block, out of the reach of those who need it most. An American woman blackmails two aging crooks, Marc and Hans, into stealing the STBO serum. Marc recruits Alex, a rebellious teenager whose father worked for him before getting himself killed. Although Alex has a girlfriend, Lise, he ends up falling for Marc’s young lover, Anna…Read More »
In the ‘eighties, the clash between Thatcher and Scargill in England over the way of managing the country’s economy provoked a series of strict State measures aimed against the working classes, and more particularly against the miners whose trade union had grown into too powerful an opposition force. As had happened in the majority of mines, the Towell mine in Wales was then closed down. Deciding not to give in to bitterness and refusing to head for the dole queue, a group of miners planned to buy back the land and proposed that each employee reinvest his severance allowance and become a shareholder in the new company.Read More »
Synopsis
Martinique, in the early 1930s. Young José and his grandmother live in a small village. Nearly everyone works cutting cane and barely earning a living. The overseer can fine a worker for the smallest infraction. The way to advance is to do well in school. José studies hard and succeeds in an exam allowing him to attend school in the capital. With only a partial scholarship, the tuition is very costly. José and his grandmother move to Fort-de-France to make José’s studies easier…
IMDb.comRead More »