September 9, 2009
Ohayô (Good Morning)- Japan, 1959

Yasujiro Ozu's Ohayo (Good Morning) is a comedy about a pair of boys who bring much trouble to their family and community by refusing to do very basic activities. The boys desire a television, but their father refuses. They are so insistent that the father eventually commands them to be quiet. They take him quite literally and refuse to speak at all, not even a typical polite morning greeting. Their impoliteness begins to weigh down both the family and the town as it goes against the ordered social structure of Japanese culture.

September 16, 2009
Au Revoir les Enfants- France, 1987

Gaspard Manesse plays Julien, an 11-year-old Catholic boarding-school resident during the Nazi occupation of France. He is witness to the courage of his instructors, who defy the German's anti-Semitic policies and quietly enroll Jewish children into the school under assumed names. Manesse befriends Jean (Raphael Fejto), one of these "instant Catholics." The refugee children are betrayed by a hostile ex-employee of the school, forcing Julien once more to be a bystander to history as Jean and the teachers are arrested.

October 14, 2009
Le Notti Bianche- Italy, 1957

Shy young Marcelo Mastroianni ambles across a bridge one evening, where he meets a strange but alluring girl (Maria Schell) who is awaiting her lover. This chance acquaintance is the first strand in a complex web entrapping Mastroianni in a dreamlike world of flashbacks, flashforwards and false visions. The girl, suspecting that her lover is staying at a nearby hotel, asks Mastroianni to deliver a note to the errant swain. He agrees--then destroys the note, setting the plot in motion. Updated from a 19th century story by Dostoyevsky, White Nights (Le Notti Bianche) was later refilmed by Robert Bresson as Four Nights of a Dreamer.

October 21, 2009
Day of Wrath- Denmark, 1943

Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer's Day of Wrath (Vredens Dag) is set in 1623 Denmark, where Anne Pedersdotter (Lisbeth Movin), the second wife of a Danish pastor, grows to loathe her husband for his self-asceticism and instead falls in love with the minister's son - with whom she spends an inordinate amount of time. Locals overhear her wishing aloud for her husband's death; when he dies of a stroke not long after, she is accused of witchcraft, a charge taken seriously enough to be punishable by death. Eventually, the poor woman is tortured and traumatized to such a point that she actually believes she is a witch - and she gives in to being burned at the stake. Yet Dreyer then shifts the perspective from internalized - illustrating the woman's paralyzing fear - to externalized, a point of view that enables the director to depict his subject's spiritual purification. Even allowing for the aura of raw terror, Dreyer never loses sight of the eroticism inherent in the concept of witchcraft.

November 11, 2009
Picnic at Hanging Rock- Australia, 1975

Peter Weir's haunting and evocative mystery is set in the Australia of 1900, a mystical place where the British have attempted to impose their Christian culture with such tweedy refinements as a girls' boarding school. After gauzily-photographed, nicely underplayed scenes of the girls' budding sexuality being restrained in Victorian corsets, the uptight headmistress (Rachel Roberts) takes them on a Valentine's Day picnic into the countryside, and several of the girls, led by the lovely Miranda (Anne Lambert) decide to explore a nearby volcanic rock formation. It's a desolate, primitive, vaguely menacing place, where one can almost feel the presence of ancient pagan spirits. Something -- and there is an unspoken but palpable emphasis on the inherent carnality of the place -- draws four of the girls to explore the rock. Three never return. No one ever finds out why. The repercussions for the school are tragic, and of course Roberts reacts with near-crazed anger, but what really happened? Weir gives enough clues to suggest any number of explanations, both physical and supernatural.

November 18, 2009
El Amor Brujo- Spain, 1986

El Amor Brujo is a filmed record of the little-known Spanish ballet by Manuel de Falla. The plot involves two gypsies, male and female, who are united in an arranged marriage. Each loves someone else, a circumstance that results in a fatal knife duel. The climax of the ballet involves the girl's torn loyalties between the ghost of her dead husband and her living lover. Antonio Gades, Cristina Hoyos, Laura del Sol and Juan Antonio Jimenez are the principal dancers in this well-photographed oddity. El Amor Brujo was the third in director Carlos Saura's flamenco trilogy, preceded by his far more successful Blood Wedding (1981) and Carmen (1983).

February 17, 2010
Beauty and the Beast- France, 1946

Jean Cocteau's adaptation of Beauty and the Beast (originally released in France as La Belle et la Bête) stars Josette Day as Beauty and Jean Marais as the Beast. When a merchant (Marcel André) is told that he must die for picking a rose from the Beast's garden, his courageous daughter (Day) offers to go back to the Beast in her father's place. The Beast falls in love with her and proposes marriage on a nightly basis; she refuses, having pledged her troth to a handsome prince (also played by Marais). Eventually, however, she is drawn to the repellent but strangely fascinating Beast, who tests her fidelity by giving her a key, telling her that if she doesn't return it to him by a specific time, he will die of grief. The film features a musical score by Georges Auric.

February 24, 2010
Black Orpheus- Brazil, 1959

Black Orpheus (Orfeu Negro) is literally what its title suggests: a retelling of the "Orpheus and Eurydice" legend enacted by black performers. This time the setting is the annual Carnival in Rio de Janeiro. Orpheus (Breno Mello) is a streetcar conductor; Eurydice (Marpessa Dawn) has just jilted her lover and is attempting to escape his wrath. Orpheus himself falls in love with Eurydice, whereupon her ex-lover, disguised as the Angel of Death shows up and kills Eurydice. To reclaim his lost love, Orpheus enters "Hell" (the Rio morgue) and uses supernatural methods to revive the dead girl. A multi-award winner on the international film scene, Black Orpheus features a samba musical score by Luiz Bonfa and Antonio Carlos Jobim. 

March 10, 2010
Viridiana- Spain, 1961

Regarded by many as Buñuel's crowning achievement, the film centers on an idealistic young nun named Viridiana (Silvia Pinal). Just before taking her final vows, Viridiana is forced by her mother superior to visit her wealthy uncle Don Jaime (Fernando Rey), who has "selflessly" provided for the girl over the years. She has always considered Don Jaime an unspeakable beast, so she is surprised when he graciously welcomes her into his home. Just as graciously, he sets about to corrupt Viridiana beyond redemption -- all because the girl resembles his late wife. It is always hard to select the most outrageous scene in any Buñuel film; our candidate in Viridiana is the devastating Last Supper tableau consisting of beggars, thieves, and degenerates. As joltingly brilliant today as on its first release, Viridiana won the Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival.

March 17, 2010
Knife in the Water- Poland, 1962

Noz w Wodzie was not only Polanski's first feature-length film, but it also marked the first screen appearance of Polish actor Zygmunt Malanowicz who played a young student. In fact, the only experienced thespian in the featured trio is Leon Niemczyk as Andrzej, the self-important, somewhat arrogant husband of Kataryna. Andrzej and Kataryna pick up the student as he is hitchhiking and invite him to join them on their boat for an outing. As the threesome head out to open water, the husband and the student start a kind of jealous interaction that keeps Kataryna mildly amused. What began as a macho sparring ends up in a fight that has the student falling overboard and the husband swimming to shore for help. But appearances are deceiving, as the husband will soon discover.

April 7, 2010
Sisters of Gion- Japan, 1936

Sisters of the Gion is widely considered one of Kenji Mizoguchi's finest prewar films. The movie takes a realistic look at the life of a geisha in Kyoto's Gion district. Omocha is a geisha with "modern girl" sensibilities; she resents the way that men callously treat women, and she is inclined to ignore the traditions and expectations of her profession. She sets out to beat men at their own game, jumping from patron to patron (a no-no in the geisha business) in order to attain money, nice clothes, and fancy meals. In the process, she deceives and ruins a bumbling, though sincere, store clerk. Her sister Umekichi, on the other hand, possesses all the qualities of the legendary geisha. In spite of Omocha's mockery, she remains devoted to her bankrupt former patron. Eventually, the wronged store clerk exacts revenge against Omocha, landing her in the hospital, while Umekichi's patron abandons her, returning to his wife. As in much of his oeuvre, Mizoguchi shows a deep sensitivity towards the plight of women in society and, as in much of his postwar work, he emphasizes the inevitability of fate.

April 14, 2010
Lost Honor of Katarina Blum- Germany, 1975

A striking examination of the power of the police and excesses of the media, The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum grows more pertinent every day. When the police burst into Katharina Blum's apartment, they fail to find the suspected terrorist they've been tracking.