(SPOILERS!)

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The best moments of A Wife’s Heart involve things not said or seen and this is most explicit in the interactions between Kiyoko (Hideko Takamine) and her bank clerk bachelor confidant Kenkichi (Toshiro Mifune). Kiyoko, along with her husband Shinji (Keiju Kobayashi), wants to open a coffee shop and so goes to Kenkichi to ask for a loan. Director Mikio Naruse never focuses on the duo’s talk of money; as filmed, their entire relationship is a series of beginnings and endings with the middles cut out. It is at first purely a business association, though after Shinji (at the manipulative behest of his matchmaker mother) gives a majority of the loan to his deadbeat brother Zenichi, Kiyoko starts to think that her feelings for Kenkichi may be more then platonic. Following through on his setup, Naruse never lets either character nakedly confess their heart’s desire. The closest they come is during a sequence, set against the backdrop of a torrential downpour, where Kenkichi utters the first few words of a thought that he will never finish. In other hands this scene might have played as masochistic repression, but Naruse allows the rainstorm to act as an expressive emotional outlet—nature thus concludes what Kenkichi cannot.Read More »

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From acquarello at Strictly Film School Blog: Hiroshi Shimizu’s government-pressured, militarism-era film A Star Athlete is a breezy, refreshingly lighthearted, and subtly subversive slice-of-life comedy that centers on an all-day student march in formation and armed combat drills through the rural countryside for military training exercises. Shimizu demonstrates his deceptively facile adeptness and virtuoso camerawork through a series of extraordinarily choreographed plan sequence shots: a track-and-field race around the campus track between the school’s start athlete Seki (Shuji Sano) and his constantly spurring – and sparring – team mate (Chishu Ryu); an extended dolly sequence of the students’ march as bemused villagers and flirtatious, love-struck young women alternately respectfully step aside, playfully trail, obliviously obstruct, and amorously chase the dashing students in uniform; a mock battlefield charge assault through muddy fields as a guilt-ridden motley crew of travelers on the road scramble to flee from the students in a mistaken belief of being chased in retribution for their petty transgressions during their brief stay in the village.Read More »

“Gim is a beautiful fashion model whose life is in peril. There is a homicidal killer who seek to murder her only Gim is totally unaware of her danger. The only person who seems to be sure that the killer will strike is a professor at a local collage. A police detective also believes the killer will strike but knows not the killer nor the victim. Upon speaking to the professor he has the victims identity and must find her in the mostly deserted city populated by a small group of unusual people who attempt to thwart his search.Read More »

The movie tells the story of a teacher who spends one winter in a mountain village of Hakkari, a city in the farest South-eastern vorner of the Turkey. Erden Kıral depicts his struggle for teaching Turkish to children who can only speak Kurdish and the loneliness of Zazi in a poetic way and also using the landscape as a further character. The screenplat is based on the novel by Ferit Edgü and adapted by Onat Kutlar with contributions from Tezer Özlü, another famous Turkish writer. The film was awarded with Silver Berlin Bear at 1983.Read More »

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m’s first international prize-winner (best actress for Kang at Venice) is a more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger attack on the principles of male lineage and ancestor worship in the traditional Korean family. It’s set in the late Yi Dynasty (late 19th century) to stress how deep rooted these things are, but its resonances are squarely contemporary. The well-born Shin and his wife are happy but lack an heir; behind his back, the family conspires with his wife to bring in a surrogate to bear him a son. Their choice is Ok-Nyo (Kang), a free-spirited girl who endures various physiological and sexual indignities (intended to ensure that she produces a boy) because she comes to like Shin and enjoy the relatively pampered life – forgetting she is there only as a servant. The emphasis on female suffering has come in for some critical stick, but Im’s analysis of Confucian blockages in the Korean psyche seems all too cogent. And his mastery of image, tone and rhythm is unassailable. TRRead More »

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Filmed in 1979, these four short films share a common method: they combine texts written and read by Duras (in voice-over) with images shot by Pierre Lhomme.Read More »

Thoroughbred (1936)
Tommy Dawson (Frank Leighton), would-be horse trainer, buys an emaciated stallion called Stormalong on a trip to New Zealand. When it loses its first race, the insecure Tommy vows to sell it, but Tommy’s fiancé Joan (Helen Twelvetrees), a much better judge of horses, rescues Stormalong. With Tommy’s mother, Ma Dawson (Nellie Ferguson), Joan turns Stormalong into the greatest racehorse in Australia. As the Melbourne Cup approaches, an international crime syndicate decides to kill Stormalong. Tommy has to foil the plot on race day.Read More »

Foreword: Love 65 shares common elements from director Michelangelo Antonioni, Federico Fellini and Jean-Luc Godard. Especially Fellini’s “8½” and Godards “Contempt” (both from 1963) which also deals with filmmakers, shares a striking resemblance to Love 65.

Synopsis: The movie is entirely built upon Keve, a successful movie director. He has a conveniently located cabin in the Kåseberga area on Österlen in Skåne, a beautiful wife, Ann-Marie, and daughter, Nina. All things considered, he should be happy but instead he feels unharmonical, lonely and disoriented. As every other summer he has invited his friends to a small party. Inger and Kent, a young couple in the divoce process are also there. During the preparations for the party, Keve leaves the cabin and walks about in the nearby village. He finds a poster which announces a lecture being held this day. He knows the lecturer Björn briefly and decides to go listen to what he has to say. At this very lecture he finds Björns wife Evabritt who makes a profound impression on Keve…Read More »

Djam, a Greek girl, is sent to Istanbul on a mission to find a motor-boat part of her uncle, a former sailor and great fan of the Greek musical style rebetiko. In the city, she meets Avril, a French woman who works as a volunteer with refugees but who has run out of money and not known in Turkey. Generous, fearless and unpredictable, Djam leaves with Avril to Mytilene – a journey of music and encounters.Read More »