1950s

Quote:
In Stockholm, the fashion photographer Susanne Frank misses her married lover Henrik Lobelius that lives in Gothenburg with his wife and children, and the naive twenty years old model Doris has a troubled relationship with her boy friend Palle Palt. Susanne schedules a session of photo shoots in Gothenburg with Doris, and once there, she calls Henrik for an encounter. Meanwhile, Doris meets an elegant middle age gentleman on the street, the Consul Otto Sönderby, who buys expensive gifts for her: a dress, a pair of Italian gloves and valuable pearl necklace.Read More »

Synopsis
from Imdb user : “La red” is a story of sexual desire, reportedly inspired by Maxim Gorki’s “Malva”, and interestingly told with sparse dialogue, and mostly through images, a strategy that merited a special award by the jury in the Cannes film festival. When a robbery fails, a thief escapes, while his mate is caught by the police. The fugitive goes to a remote community to hide from the law, living in a hut by the sea with a beautiful woman (Rossana Podestà) who fishes sponges and sells then in town. But then his mate is released, and the three have to live together. As expected, desire and jealousy arise.Read More »

Another sprawling Nakahira drama detailing the love life of several members of a middle class family.Read More »

Synopsis:
In a marksmanship contest, Lin McAdam wins a prized Winchester rifle, which is immediately stolen by the runner-up, Dutch Henry Brown. This “story of a rifle” then follows McAdams’ pursuit, and the rifle as it changes hands, until a final showdown and shoot-out on a rocky mountain precipice.Read More »

Quote:
Masaki Kobayashi’s six-part magnum opus, The Human Condition, based on Junpei Gomikawa’s postwar novel, bears the imprint of Kobayashi’s tutelage under legendary filmmaker Keisuke Kinoshita at Shochiku’s Ofuna studio, a critical, introspective, and deeply personal account of wartime Japan framed from the perspective of an idealistic everyman (and Kobayashi’s alterego), Kaji (Tatsuya Nakadai). Opening to the ironic image of lovers Kaji and Michiko (Michiyo Aratama) meeting under an archway auspiciously called the Southern Gate of Peace in Manchuria as Imperial troops march in the street, Kobayashi presents an incisive image of 1930s Japanese society that is morally consumed—and ravaged—by increasingly extremist values of militarism, occupation, and nationalism.Read More »

Quote:
A man possessed by a Hauka spirit stoops and breaks an egg over the sculpted figure of the governor . . . that presides over the day’s event of Hauka possession. Cracked on the governor’s head, the egg cascades in white and yellow rivulets. Then the film is abruptly cut. We are transported to a big military parade in the colonial city two hours away. The film hurls us at the cascading yellow and white plumes of the white governor’s gorgeous hat as he reviews the black troops passing. . . .Read More »

Normandy, second half of the nineteenth century. Jeanne Dandieu lives in a manor house with her parents and their servant Rosalie. She gets to know Julien, a handsome man, whom she soon marries. Her happiness is short-lived as she finds out that not only has Julien married her for her money but he cheats on her as well, with Rosalie to crown it all. The latter gives birth to a baby girl before leaving the house. Six years later, Julien has a new mistress, Gilberte de Fourcheville. Jeanne puts up with this new ordeal bravely. However Gilbert’s husband surprises the two lovers in a caravan and, in a rage, hurls them over the edge of a cliff.Read More »

Quote:
The moment he’s released from prison, the honorable gangster Miyamoto recovers the stolen diamonds he had stashed before getting pinched. When he returns to his haunt to make good by friend who took a bullet for him, he is diverted by the greedy boss Oyane and his insatiable taste for Miyamoto’s precious stones.Read More »

PLOT: Fumiko, mother of two children and wife of an unfaithful man who shows a low self esteem, shares her family life with her budding vocation as a poetess. The beginning of her successful literary career coincides with her divorce and the development of a serious illness: a breast cancer, which leads her to lose her breasts. In the last stage of her life she meets a young journalist arrived from Tokyo, an admirer of her work, who wants to write a story on her life.Read More »