Month: May 2014

I Vitelloni

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Federico Fellini’s first international success, this 1953 film, based on memories of his youth in Rimini, focuses on five youths in a sleepy seaside town during the winter offseason. The director has said that much of the film is autobiographical and captures those he knew in Rimini.
The film opens with a party, where Sandra Rubini (Leonora Ruffo) is elected Miss Siren of 1953. This is because she is pregnant, via Fausto Moretti (Franco Fabrizi), whose father forces him to marry her, to save the family honor. Throughout the film, we see him flirting with all kinds of women-a married girl at a film theater, his boss’s wife, a girl he picks up at a café and so on. Riccardo (Riccardo Fellini- Federico’s brother) is given the least screen time. He’s a wannabe actor and singer who basically support for the others. Leopoldo (Leopoldo Trieste), is a poet and intellectual who revels in melodrama and clichés. Alberto (Alberto Sordi) lives with his mother and sister, Olga (Claude Farell), who sleeps with married men. And then there is Moraldo (Franco Interlenghi), the most philosophical of their group, is actually aware of their lives as insulated and circumscribed, the only one finally agitated enough to take action.  Moraldo is definitely the consciousness of the film. Martin Scorsese named this film as a huge inspiration for his film “Mean Streets” .I Vitelloni is also an insightful and accurate representation of Italy in the immediate postwar period, full of references to the massive social changes underway.

Red angel

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Yasuzo Masumura’s no-bullshit antiwar film tells of an army nurse who falls in love with a drug-addicted surgeon. Sakura Nishi is a Japanese nurse in China during the Sino-Japanese war. One evening after entering the ward she is overpowered by her patients and raped. Then she is sent to field hospital and there she falls in love with doctor Okabe. There she surprisingly comes into contact with the soldier who raped her before. Instead of seeking revenge . she pleads with Okabe to do their best to save him. Shot in hauntingly beautiful black and white, Red Angel has an episodic structure and uses Nishi’s encounters with different patients to explore how the war affects the men and society as a whole in different ways.  One of the film’s strongest assets and statements is showing the unflinching carnage that war creates via its scenes of battle wounded soldiers . 

The Hunt (Jagten)

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The Hunt is a 2012 Danish drama film directed by Thomas Vinterberg and starring Mads Mikkelsen in lead role. The story is set in a small Danish village around Christmas , and follows a man who bcomes a target of mass hyseteria after being wrongly accused of sexually assaulting a child.
Lucas (Mads Mikkelsen) , a divorced kindergarten teacher , is falsely accused of exposing himself by Klara (Annika Wedderkopp) , a five year old girl in his care. The Hunt becomes an interesting tense-drama thriller. The adults in the community believe Klara’s story , dismissing her self-contradictions as denial. Lucas is shunned by the community as a pedophile sexual predator. Shops refuse him service . A butcher provokes a fight with him and Lucas retaliates. The weight of the film rests on Mikkelsen’s shoulders and Vinterberg and co-writer Tobias Lindholm have given him a lot of heavy lifting. Lucas is a character of a high moral standard and he is put to the absolute test. Mikkelsen handles the main character Lucas both with restraint, and a little explosiveness when warranted. Vinterberg was among the film-makers who started the no-frills Dogme 95 movement.  

Till now his best film was The Celebration which also revolved around accusations of sexual abuse. The Hunt exposes the brutality of blind prejudice faced with the spectre of child abuse.

AADMI KI AURAT AUR ANYA KAHANIYA ( [The Man’s Woman and Other Stories)

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This is a film made for the acting students (2006-2008) of the Film & Television Institute of India, and is a debut work of the whole cast and crew. Amit Dutta’s film is a series of three episodes which explore the difficult relationship between men , women and the physical and mental spaces they inhibit.
The first story (Pedh par Kamra by author Vinod Kumar Shukla) is about a man who lives in a rented room with tree branches by his window. He fears that birds and snakes may enter in his room through the window. But for some reasons , he finds himself compelled to go on recurring journeys to find a connection between the space he lives in and the woman living in his landlord’s quarter. In the second story (Aadmi Ki Aurat by author Vinod Kumar Shukla) , its the relationship of the man with his wife which gets transformed from possession to mutual love. In the third story (“Sau Candle Power Ka Bulb” by Sadat Hasan Manto ) , a woman is forcefully hired off to a young man waiting for his friend. While the young man wants to know her story , she only wishes to sleep.
There is very little dialogue in this film and all the text of the short stories is conveyed on the screen sharply via subtext and idiosyncratic absurdities of the characters .

Death of a cyclist

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Spanish cinema under Franco was a sterile industry , kept under strict government control. Bardem was one of the few brave film-makers to question the psychological and political oppression of the day. At the time of his Cannes award, Bardem was serving a prison sentence for his political beliefs,until international outcry led to his release from prison. Bardem was arrested a total number of seven times under Franco. Back then Bardem condemned Spanish cinema as “politically useless, socially dishonest, intellectually void, aesthetically hideous and industrially decrepit”. A couple travelling through the countryside strike a man on a bicycle.  When they get out of their car ,they find out that he is injured but not dead. Juan (Alberto Closas) and Maria Jose (Lucia Bosé) decide to flee instead of helping the man. Maria Jose is less bothered by the moral implications of killing a man. Her wealthy industrialist husband Miguel (Otello Toso) is unaware of his wife’s affair. Matters become even more complicated when the couple discover a member of their social circle,Rafa (Carlos Casaravilla), may know something about their affair.
Juan Antonio Bardem’s charged melodrama Death of a Cyclist was a direct attack on 1950s Spanish society under Franco’s rule. He shows a Spanish society where people like Juan and Maria Jose operate above the law.

Black Sun

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A young jazz-obsessed Japanese drifter and a black American bcome friends in a strange manner. Our main protagonist loves jazz and blues , those done by blacks. It is a Japan still recovering from WWII, with bombed out buildings. Black Sun‘s bizarre character interactions take place within the context of the USA’s ongoing military presence in Japan some twenty years after Emperor Hirohito sent his emissaries to sign the documents of surrender that drew the Second World War to a close. The two outsiders become outlaws, and Koreyoshi Kurahara depicts their growing bond as an alternately absurd and tragic culture clash. It features music by American jazz drummer Max Roach.

Tender Mercies

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Mac Sledge (Robert Duvall) is a burnt out country and western singer whose life has bcome a series of disappointments.One morning he wakes up on the floor of a desolate motel six miles outside of texas. The rundown place is managed by Rosa Lee (Tess Harper) , a widow whose husband was killed in Vietnam. Mac wants to stay on as a handyman and work off his bill. Without much fanfare , Mac and Rosa lee fall in love and marry He reveals that he was married twice before once when he was too young and once to dixie (Betty Buckley), a very famous country singer. Director Bruce Beresford has stated: “This film is about changing relationships. The man is finding a new life, the woman a new husband, and the boy a new father. It is a story of growing together and of hope.” Duvall played a part where he is sure that he is unhappy and he accepted it as part of life but still he searches for some change.
Tender Mercies is a very poignant movie about the healing powers of love