1960s

A touching story of brothers raised apart and then brought together under tragic circumstances, this drama by Valerio Zurlini remains true to Vasco Pratolini’s novel. Told in a series of flashbacks as Enrico (Marcello Mastroianni) remembers the past, the brothers are separated after their mother dies. Enrico is raised by a humble guardian who works as a butler, his brother Lorenzo (Jacques Perrin) is taken in by a grandmother who gives him all he wants or needs. Enrico grows up to become a hard-working journalist, spending most of his time in Rome. Lorenzo is a young idealist living in Florence with no real need to work. The brothers rarely see each other, but when they finally meet after an extended absence, Lorenzo is gravely ill and dying. (-allmovie.com)Read More »

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An average Los Angeles citizen witnesses a gang murder when he stops to use a telephone. Aware that he is the only witness against them, the gang members seek out his identity and terrorize him and his family to keep him from testifying against them. Only by psychologically playing one gang member against the others is the man able to bring the police to his rescue.Read More »

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Finally reunited, Stan Brakhage’s masterpiece Dog Star Man is an experimental movie without sound. A creation myth realized in light, patterns, images superimposed, rapid cutting, and silence. A black screen, then streaks of light, then an explosion of color and squiggles and happenstance. Next, images of small circles emerge then of the Sun. Images of our Earth appear, woods, a part of a body, a nude woman perhaps giving birth. Imagery evokes movement across time and space. If the movie tends sometime toward abstraction, there is still a kind of off-the-tracks narration here. Dog Star Man could be about a man, lost in mountain, struggling to survive, and as he fell the breath of death on his shoulder, remembering trough flashes his wife and son.Read More »

Synopsis:
‘Teresa and Pedro have been married for five years and are settled in a routine, and a rather sterile home. He manages – and possibly owns – a factory, while she is a lady of leisure. The arrival of a collection of furniture from Teresa’s childhood family home triggers a nightmare and subsequent sleepwalking, followed by regressive and childish behaviour. Teresa replaces their furniture (in keeping with the modern – verging on Brutalist – architecture of their house) with what has arrived, which is distinctly different in style (dark wood and richly coloured fabrics). The film then settles into a series of extended role play ‘games’ between husband and wife that gradually get out of hand.’
– Rebecca NaughtenRead More »

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Pasolini doesn’t so much ‘meet’ with people of all regions of his country as interrogate them, trying to investigate the sexual mores of his time in a typical melding of politics and sex, of Marx and Freud. Although dated, it’s vital as a time capsule of 60’s Italy and as a man-on-the-streets pseudo-sociological examination of then-prevalent attitudes towards homosexuality, marriage, prostitution and divorce. The execution and image quality is rough – even for Pasolini – thought it’s no doubt intentional and a visual reflection of the project’s spur-of-the-moment, pieces-sewn-together approach.Read More »

Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne, directed by the late Satyajit Ray and based on a story by Upendra Kishore Ray, is a popular Bengali children’s film. It is sometimes released in the English-speaking world as The Adventures Of Goopy And Bagha. It is one of Satyajit Ray’s few films with an abundance of musical numbers.Read More »

IMDB says:
“Love at Twenty” unites five directors from around the world to present their different perspectives on what love really is at the age of 20. The episodes are united with the score of Georges Delerue and still photos of Henri Cartier-Bresson. The directors create their peculiar scenarios with Truffaut revisiting Antoine Doinel, this time finding some meaning to his life while getting involved with a girl; Renzo Rossellini’s episode about an abandoned mistress; Ishihara’s tale about an obsessive love; Ophüls’ story about a pregnant woman trying to plot against the baby’s father; and Wajda presenting a confusing relationship between people from different generations.Read More »

The directorial debut of famed American writer, philosopher, and political activist Susan Sontag is an intriguing tale of two couples involved in academia and politics. Artur is a professor living in exile in Sweden with his enigmatic wife Francesca. He hires young Tomas to help prepare a compendium of his works, but Tomas soon suspects that there is an erotic side to his new assignment. New York Times critic Vincent Canby described Duet as “intriguing, surprising, witty and sinister to the end.”Read More »

“As the 1960s drew to a close, European erotica really had its work cut out for it. In particular, Sweden, the country known for crashing American art houses with racy dramas, found itself competing with other countries like France and Italy to produce the latest scandal du jour. Budgets got bigger, acting got better, and plots became richer as directors tried to push the envelope, and no one benefited from this more than director and distributor Radley Metzger. Vibration (Lejonsommar) was released overseas hot on the heels of Metzger’s Therese and Isabelle, also starring the fascinating and talented Essy Persson, and it shows the increasing influence of directors like Ingmar Bergman (who, lest we forget, was also promoted at first in the U.S. more for his flashes of skin than his artistic merit). Arty editing, sun-dappled cinematography, and joyous sexuality are the order of the day here, and Vibration is a breezy reminder of what softcore was like just before Sweden’s next big shocker export, I Am Curious (Yellow).Read More »