1950s

Members of the American Federation of Labor, the Atlantic & Gulf Coast District of the Seafarers International Union commissioned budding filmmaker and magazine photographer Stanley Kubrick to direct this half-hour documentary. Originally released in October of 1953, this short was the director’s first film in color. More of an industrial film than a documentary, it basically served as a promotional tool to get sailors to join the union. Since then, it has been released on home video for curious fans of the director. In addition to directing, Kubrick was cinematographer and editor. Presumably, he took the job of making The Seafarers in order to finance his first feature film, Fear and Desire, which was released in the same year.Read More »

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In post-war West Germany, the charming Von Bohm is appointed a city’s new Building Commissioner. His morality is tested when he unknowingly falls in love with a brothel worker, Lola, the paid mistress of a corrupt property developer.Read More »

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Jalsaghar opens to the shot of a large, ornate, candlelit chandelier, precariously swaying from the momentum of its cumbersome weight. It is a vestige of the fading grandeur of Huzur Biswambhar Roy’s (Chhabi Biswas) cherished jalsaghar – the elegant entertainment room where guests listen to the performance of traditional musicians amid eroded columns and peeling plaster. In early twentieth century India, it is also a symptom of Roy’s aristocratic obsolescence. Roy lounges on his empty rooftop terrace, overlooking his inherited property, now worthlessly reduced to marshland, staring idly into space, smoking his hookah pipe. Read More »

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A managing editor of a LA newspaper must put together headlines for the next day in a way that’ll attract the potential readers, deal with hectic going-ons at the workplace and have a serious talk with his wife about her wish to adopt.Read More »

An ambitious potter (Masayuki Mori) and his devoted spouse (Kinuyo Tanaka) as well as a kindred couple (Eitaro Ozawa, Mitsuko Mito) are torn apart by the civil-war chaos of 16th-century Japan. Both men realize their material dreams but at a tragic cost to their respective mates. In particular, Mori’s shallow success is reflected in his delirious romance with a ghostly noblewoman (Machiko Kyo), an affair that will drive him to the brink of madness. One of the most poignant evocations of the illusory nature of worldly desires and missed opportunities and one of the most haunting depictions of the supernatural ever committed to celluloid. Winner of the 1953 Venice Film Festival Silver Lion Award.Read More »

Review Summary
In this adventure, a remake of Singapore (1947), a hero finds a bracelet containing 13 precious gems while visiting Istanbul. He soon finds himself pursued by covetous crooks who want those jewels. He is then deported by the Turkish authorities, but not before he has time to hide the bracelet in a hotel. Five years later, the man returns to seek out the stones. Again he is pursued by both authorities and criminals. He must also contend with the reappearance of his wife whom he thought had burned to death on their wedding night. She lived but suffered amnesia. She then remarried. Nat “King” Cole sings “When I Fall in Love”. Read More »

Amazon.com:
Grigory Chukhraj’s poetic odyssey of an accidental hero on a six-day pass is a sentimental journey through the ideals of the Soviet state in World War II. Vladimir Ivashov is the fresh-faced signalman whose trip from the Russian front to visit his white-haired mother becomes a series of detours as he stops to help the loyal comrades, fellow soldiers, and salt-of-the-earth civilians (as well as a few shirkers and scoundrels) he meets along the way. On a transport train he even falls in love with a pretty young stowaway, a feisty blond girl-next-door on her way to visit a wounded boyfriend. Delicately photographed and gently paced, this deliriously romantic road movie is undeniably Soviet in its celebration of patriotism and collectivism, but Chukhraj transcends politics with delightfully vivid characters and a deft mix of comedy, melodrama, and romance. –Sean AxmakerRead More »

A dispute between stage lines goes back and forth until one comes up with what it hopes will end it all .Read More »

In waning winter light, a doll maker works in his shop, a kerosene lamp beside him, a jumble of dolls and doll parts, whole and broken, surrounding him. There are noises, too: a cuckoo clock chirps the workday’s end. The artisan completes a repair and leaves, shuttering the shop from outside. Back inside, whispering begins. What else is in store for the shop’s seemingly lifeless denizens?Read More »