Nominated for the Golden Lion in 1961 at the venice Film festival

“Samson” is the story of a Jew, Jakub Gold (Serge Merlin), at the polytechnic university in Warsaw imprisoned and sentenced to 10 years for accidentally killing his friend in German- occupied Poland. In prison he makes several contacts that will factor later in the movie. The prisoners are released when Warsaw is bombed. Jakub is sent to the Warsaw ghetto where the Jews are “doomed to death for the crime of existence” and is assigned to picking up corpses from the streets and helping to provide them with a Jewish burial. Along the way he picks up his own mother. After one such burial Jakub and another man escape from the ghetto. After he escapes he desires to go back into the ghetto to share the fate of his kinsmen. After being locked in an apartment building after curfew he meets a woman, Lucyna (Alina Janowska) , who is also a Jew but who has been hiding her identity in order to survive. Lucyna falls in love with him. She tells him “You know what it’s like to escape the Warsaw ghetto but I escape every day.” They are separated. Lucyna thinks that Jakub went back into the ghetto. She identifies herself as a Jew to the Germans in order to be sent to the ghetto in order to find him. (Shades of an O. Henry tale here.) Meanwhile he finds refuge in an apartment belonging Józef Malina (Jan Ciecierski), whom he met in prison, and Malina’s niece, Kazia (Elzbieta Kepinska). Jakub wishes that he had the strength of the biblical Samson to fight the Germans single handedly. Kazia falls for him. Jakub vacillates and instead of returning to the ghetto hides in their basement until the Warsaw uprising has ended. He only returns to the ghetto after the Germans had put down uprising and destroyed the ghetto in the process. Afterwards he meets others of the resistance.

It was not quite clear why Jakob did not return to the Warsaw ghetto and instead spent his time with Mr. Malina and Kazia. He did not have the strength of the biblical Samson after all I suppose.

1.17GB | 1h 51m | 668×304 | avi

https://nitro.download/view/533BA863F453A29/Samson_-_part_01.avi https://nitro.download/view/DD4EBDCF06AC20F/Samson_-_part_01.srt https://nitro.download/view/F09F60AD7C87472/Samson_-_part_02.avi https://nitro.download/view/BDF00D88ABC7EB8/Samson_-_part_02.srt

Language(s):Polish
Subtitles:English

The post Andrzej Wajda – Samson (1961) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

An English girl and an Indian elephant, born on the same day, share a common destiny.

Tusk review contributed by Steve Puchalski at Shock Cinema

Even though my print of this ultra-obscure Jodorowsky pic was in French with NO subtitles, you really don’t need a translation in order to get the gist of this self-termed “fable panique.” Set in turn of the century India, Jodorowsky drops most of his crazed mystical/religious/hallucinogenic stylings in order to tell a relatively straightforward story of a little girl, Elise, and a little elephant, Tusk, both of whom are born at the same time, and how their lives interconnect over the years (yawn). It begins on a good note, with Jodorowsky intercutting an elephant and a woman, each giving birth. But the movie swiftly turns into nothing more than a Disney G-rated nature film, with most of the $5 million budget going for Elephants-Are-Us rentals. There are a few sledgehammer-subtle points about French colonialism vs. the Forces of Nature, with Anton Diffring playing the girl’s tyranical father, and a nutty Indian medicine man popping up for comic relief. But for most of this debacle’s interminable two hour running time all we’re fed are long scenes of big animals lumbering around the countryside. When the little girl grows up, she discovers a psychic link to Tusk the Elephant when she stops it in its tracks during a rampage, but NONE of Jodorowsky’s crackpot enlightenment or savage grotesqueries from his earlier epics is on display here. Instead, it takes all too many predictable routes, such as Elise getting kidnapped by the buffoonish bad guys (they’re the ones who don’t respect elephants), with our heroic packyderm saving her life. Perhaps the problem lies in the fact Jodorowsky was adapting a novel entitled “Poo Lorn of the Elephants”, which, for all I know was some shitty children’s book. Maybe Jodorowsky was so desperate to get behind a camera after all his failed attepts at DUNE, that he grabbed the first thing to come along. Or perhaps he just wanted a free trip to India.

1.58GB | 1h 58m | 640×480 | avi

https://nitro.download/view/E00DC3FEE80CA2B/Tusk.avi

Language(s):English
Subtitles:French (hardcoded)

The post Alejandro Jodorowsky – Tusk (1980) first appeared on Cinema of the World.