Jonathan Rosenbaum

This is one of the earliest features produced by Stanley Kramer (1949), an updated adaptation by Carl Foreman of an Arthur Laurents play about the traumatic effects of prejudice on an American soldier during World War 1. In the play the character who undergoes psychiatric treatment after being taunted by his fellow soldiers is a Jew; the film makes him a black man (James Edwards) during World War 2. Though the drama has its moments of power, the treatment of its subject now seems cautious and dated. With Frank Lovejoy, Lloyd Bridges, Douglas Dick, and Steve Brodie; Mark Robson directed. (JR) Read more

An American reporter in Rome (Andrew McCarthy) in 1978, covertly writing a novel about a well-known terrorist group, gets unwittingly involved in an intricate web of treachery, in a disappointing thriller directed by John Frankenheimer, adapted by David Ambrose from a book by Michael Mewshaw. Among the characters in the hero’s immediate circle are a former mistress (Valeria Golino), a professor friend (John Pankow), and an aggressive American photojournalist (Sharon Stone). Most surprising, given Frankenheimer’s previous record as a liberal, is the crudely xenophobic portrait accorded the terrorist Red Brigades; whatever else may be found here, don’t expect much edification or insight into European politics. (JR) Read more

Theresa Russell not only stars in Ken Russell’s adaptation of David Hines’s play Bondage but dominates it from beginning to end, and considering the narrowness of the character she’s playing, it’s an impressive performance. The material, adapted by the director and Deborah Dalton, is as relentlessly deglamorized and brutal a look at a street hooker’s existence as one can find in commercial movies, and virtually all of its interest resides in this fact; as drama or as character study it is fairly threadbare. A good deal of it consists of the heroine addressing the camera (her pimp, played by Benjamin Mouton, gets in an extended soliloquy as well) or supplying offscreen narration to flashbacks. Ken Russell, as usual, can’t quite trust the material to speak for itself and generally delivers it in shrieking neon (whenever someone bleeds in one of his films, you can always count on a hemorrhage), but he hasn’t prevented the overall message from coming through loud and clear. With Antonio Fargas, Sanjay, and Elizabeth Morehead (1991). (JR) Read more

Noel Burch’s fascinating and well-made (if at times historically contestable) six-part BBC television series, about early silent cinema in Denmark, England, the Soviet Union, France, Germany, and the U.S., mixes beautiful clips of rare films with various social theories about their significance. (JR) Read more

Claude Berri (Jean de Florette, Manon of the Springs) directed and authored (with Arlette Langmann) this adaptation of Marcel Ayme’s jaundiced novel about postliberated France in 1945, as observed from the vantage point of a single village. The charactersincluding some Stalinist communists eager to settle scores by accusing their old enemies of collaboration, certain fascists in hiding, and at least one socialist (Philippe Noiret) with his head in the cloudsall wind up looking less than honorable in this nasty little account of small-town purges. The main performance is a bombastic turn by Gerard Depardieu as an alcoholic ex-wrestler and Racine buff who runs the local bar and gets wrongly accused of harboring a fascist; also on hand are Jean-Pierre Marielle, Michel Blanc, Michel Galabru, and Gerard Desarthe. At times difficult to follow, this unpleasantly cynical but carefully crafted film at least has the virtue of teaching us something about the moral disarray France was in after World War II, although Ayme’s own collaborationist sympathies arguably make him less than ideal as a witness and commentator (1991). (JR) Read more

Based on a true story, Nancy Kelly’s fascinating American independent feature, written by Anne Makepeace and set in the 1880s, portrays a beautiful young Chinese woman (Rosalind Chao) sold into slavery by her destitute father and auctioned off in San Francisco to a mule skinner, who purchases her for a saloon keeper in a mining town in the northern Rockies. She and the mule skinner fall in love en route to their destination, but he delivers her to the saloon keeper nonetheless, and the ensuing story, with dialogue in Cantonese as well as English, depicts the woman’s courage and resourcefulness in creating a life for herself (1990). (JR) Read more

This Austrian docudrama by Robert Dornhelm, shot only weeks after the events it shows, is a political thriller and a mystery story that has been compared to both Z and The Thin Blue Line, although one could also perhaps establish certain links with Medium Cool. The Romanian-born Dornhelm (played by cowriter Felix Mitterer) returns to his homeland to meet a childhood friend, only to discover that this friend is accused of being a terrorist who killed 80 of his colleagues. Costarring Viktoria Schubert as a journalist who proceeds to investigate what happened, this movie certainly gains in immediacy through its frequent cuts to documentary video footage of the real events, but also creates a certain zone of uneasiness (as do Z and The Thin Blue Line) in the halfway house it inhabits between straight reportage and entertainment (1990). (JR) Read more

This 1967 feature was one of the first by Hungarian filmmaker Miklos Jancso to have some impact in the U.S., and the stylistic virtuosity, ritualistic power, and sheer beauty of his work are already fully apparent. In this black-and-white pageant, set during the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, the reds are the revolutionaries and the whites are the government forces ordered to crush them. Working in elaborately choreographed long takes with often spectacular vistas, Jancso invites us to study the mechanisms of power almost abstractly, with a cold eroticism that may suggest some of the subsequent work of Stanley Kubrick. If you’ve never encountered Jancso’s work, you shouldn’t miss this. He may well be the key Hungarian filmmaker of the sound era, and certain later figures such as Bela Tarr would be inconceivable without him. In Hungarian with subtitles. 90 min. (JR) Read more

For all of John Cassavetes’s concern with acting, this 1977 film is the only one of his features that takes it on as a subject; it also boasts his most impressive cast. During the New Haven tryouts for a new play, an aging star (Gena Rowlands), already distressed that she’s playing a woman older than herself, is traumatized further by the accidental death of an adoring teenage fan (Laura Johnson). Fantasizing the continued existence of this girl as a younger version of herself, she repeatedly changes her lines onstage and addresses the audience directly, while the other members of the companythe director (Ben Gazzara), playwright (Joan Blondell), costar (Cassavetes), and producer (Paul Stewart)try to help end her distress. Juggling onstage and offstage action, Cassavetes makes this a fascinating look at some of the internal mechanisms and conflicts that create theatrical fiction, and his wonderful castwhich also includes Zohra Lampert as the director’s wife, assorted Cassavetes regulars, and cameos by Peter Falk and Peter Bogdanovich as themselvesnever lets him down. 144 min. (JR) Read more

This 1930 feature was Josef von Sternberg’s first American film with Marlene Dietrich, and some purists might declare it the best; certainly the visual exoticism is thick enough to tastein layers yet. Gary Cooper at his most effective costars as a foreign legionnaire who wins Dietrich’s heart, and Adolphe Menjou plays a wealthy rake who competes for her affection; Dietrich, as a cabaret singer, does three numbers. 92 min. (JR) Read more

This 1965 feature doesn’t have much of a critical reputation, yet it’s an unusually gripping and compelling thriller of the diabolical puzzler variety, about a man (Gregory Peck) who suffers amnesia during a New York power blackout, during which an executive plunges to his death from a skyscraper. The ensuing conspiracy plot is full of disquieting and effective twists as the hero’s memory gradually leaks back into consciousness and various goons try to kill him; there’s also a nice actorly turn by Walter Matthau as a private detective. The denouement is something of a corny letdown, but prior to that Edward Dmytryk’s direction is adroit and purposeful. Scripted by Peter Stone; with Diane Baker, Walter Abel, Leif Erickson, Jack Weston, George Kennedy, and Kevin McCarthy. 108 min. (JR) Read more

Without being a masterpiece, this 1961 British drama about a former child molester (Stuart Whitman) trying to make a fresh start after a prison term is an example of intelligent and compassionate liberal filmmaking that seems especially rare nowadayswhich suggests that it warrants a second look. Whitman received an Oscar nomination for his performance, but the usually overwrought Rod Steiger may be even better in the low-key part of the hero’s sympathetic psychiatrist; Maria Schell is effective as well. Thoughtfully written by Sidney Buchman and Stanley Mann, and not at all badly directed by Guy Green. (JR) Read more

The great Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembene directed this 1968 feature about a poor man who receives a money order in the mail but whose attempts to cash it are thwarted by the bureaucratic elite. In Wolof with subtitles. 90 min. (JR) Read more

The underrated and neglected Robert Mulligan (To Kill a Mockingbird, Inside Daisy Clover, Summer of ’42, Clara’s Heart) may be one of the only American directors left with a fully achieved style that is commonly (if misleadingly) termed classical. Indeed, he is a master of carving out dramatic space with liquid camera movements and precise angles, a mastery that’s matched by a special sensitivity in handling adolescents. These qualities are fully apparent in this tender treatment of the romantic heartbreak experienced by a 14-year-old girl (Reese Witherspoon) in rural Louisiana during the 50s, although Mulligan is less than ideally served by a script (by Jenny Wingfield) that at times borders on the obvious and simplistic. The heroine is infatuated with the 17-year-old boy (Jason London) who runs a neighboring farm, but he’s more interested in her older sister (Emily Warfield). Mulligan does a fine job both with the nonprofessionals playing the kids and with Sam Waterston, Tess Harper, and Gail Strickland as their parents (1991). (JR) Read more

A vintage film noir item (1946) directed by John Brahmfamous, or at least notorious, for having a flashback within a flashback within a flashback. The ploy pivots on the emotional distress of a bride (Laraine Day) on her wedding day as she remembers her past lovers and indiscretions, though these events are perceived mainly through the eyes of her former lovers. Scripted by Sheridan Gibney and costarring Robert Mitchum, Brian Aherne, Gene Raymond, and Ricardo Cortez. (JR) Read more