1960s

SPOILER
From American Film Institute Catalog 1961-1970: “In the early morning hours after a Peruvian carnival, a young woman named Adriana lies naked and exhausted on a lonely stretch of beach, the final resting place for dying gulls from the nearby Guano Islands. The night before, Adriana left her sadomasochistic millionaire husband and came to the beach with four costumed revelers with whom she hoped to find sexual fulfillment. Tormented by nymphomania, and knowing that her husband and his chauffeur-bodyguard will soon come for her, Adriana dresses herself and wanders into a beachside brothel owned by Madame Fernande. At first Adriana gives herself to the madame and offers to work for her as a prostitute but then changes her mind and returns to the beach. Remembering her agreement that the chauffeur could kill her if she ever succumbed again to her sickness, she attempts to drown herself, but she is rescued by Rainier, a poet and self-confessed failure, who runs a beach cafe that no one frequents. While they make love, Rainier implies that they could be each other’s salvation. His suggestions are interrupted, however, by the arrival of the chauffeur and the whisky-sodden husband, who have come to carry out the agreed-upon ritualized execution. Rainier intervenes and is knocked unconscious; a young Indian boy called Alejo, who has been following Adriana, leaps out from a hiding place and plunges a knife into the chauffeur. Ignoring the others, Adriana wanders off alone as her husband picks up the dead chauffeur’s cap and hands it to Rainier, who accepts it. As the two men set off after Adriana, the young boy races headlong into the sea”SPOILERRead More »

dvdauthority.com wrote:
Beverly (Heather Hall) is about to learn a lot about herself, as she explores a side of herself she never knew existed. The way she behaves makes most people think she hates men, which would make sense, as she has been in numerous bad relationships with bad men. Her roommate Joan (Judy Young) has no such hatred, in fact she loves men and loves to have sex as often as possible. Her boyfriend Rook (John Aristedes) is not a good man, more like a street thug, but he satisfies her needs, so she keeps him around. One night, Rook decides to climb into Beverly’s bed, which sets off a sexual chain reaction. After that encounter, Bev realizes she is a nymphomaniac and as a result, she needs sex all the time. Joan catches the two in the act and beats Bev to a pulp, then tosses her into the street. She soon meets a new man who understands her condition, but when her path crosses once more with her old friends, will her new lifestyle be put in jeopardy?Read More »

A student, Oldrich “Fajolo” Fajtak, has a romantic attachment to two girls: his hometown love Bela, and Jana – a lover whom he meets during a summer job on a collective farm. One storyline of the film peels layers off Bela’s permanently tense home life marked by her blind mother’s helplessness, her father’s past break with his father who lives in the village where Fajolo is finding some consolation in the arms of his new lover Jana. As Fajolo begins to pry into Bela’s grandfather’s secrets, she, in turn, allows her new boyfriend Peťo to read and deride Fajolo’s remorseful letters from the farm. This lovers’ triangle provides the film with several oppositions: town and country, intelligentsia and worker, collective and personal truth in communist Czechoslovakia. The potential symbolism of the film appeared ominous to the Communist authorities bent on banning the film, but the nascent political thaw helped the filmmakers prevail and the release of “The Sun in a Net” became its harbinger in Czechoslovak film and culture.
Stanislav Szomolányi’s location cinematography and Ilja Zeljenka’s musique concrète score remain striking.Read More »

Restored in 2004 by Catherine Prévert

Cast
Jacques Prévert … Himself
Pierre Prévert … Himself
Arletty … Herself
René Bertele … Himself
Pierre Brasseur … Himself
Jacques B. Brunius … Himself
Raymond Bussières … Himself
Marcel Carné … Himself
Marcel Duhamel … Himself
Jean Gabin … Himself
Paul Grimault … Himself
Alexandre Trauner … Himself
Jeanne Witta … Herself
Read More »

Portrait of an artist as a young manic. First, a montage of still photographs of an artist’s face. Then motion. He stirs in sleep; he paints and expresses frustration. He looks for a light for his cigarette. He sketches, wads it up; makes tea; stares at his face in a mirror, then looks at canvas after canvas of self-portraits. He becomes agitated and defaces the work. He rips and tears, punches and kicks the art. Then he destroys mirrors. The catharsis over, he rests and begins again to paint. (IMDb)Read More »

Synopsis:
Two brothers rob a bank and take a young girl hostage. They find out that the girl is a nudist, so they force her to take them to a nudist colony so they can hide out.Read More »

Story “White Nights” by Fyodor Dostoevsky shot by Ivan Pyryev. Petersburg 1840s. A Dreamer, living in a big city for a few years and all the time he is alone. But one summer in St. Petersburg’s White Nights on the Neva, he meets Nastya. Five nights walking around the city, young people talk about themselves. With all the passion and tenderness of its nature the dreamer falls in love with Nastya. The girl, has feelings of despair of former lover, Dreamer promises to marry her. Unfortunately, the happiness is short-lived … Nastya is regaining his old love, and Dreamer is alone again.

1960 – Certificate IV IFF Film Festival in London-60
1960 – Best Film of 1960 (with the films “The Ballad of a Soldier” and “Revenge”) by a decision of the British Film InstituteRead More »

Quote:
Paul, a middle-class young man, in a break with his sphere, meets a group of wandering vegetarians who live begging; he decides to join them.Read More »

A young intellectual conscientious objector is forced to serve with the Japanese army in Manchuria. He joins with a dim-witted former gangster in an effort to desert by stealing a train.Read More »