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Theater Verschijning: 24 09 1975

Studio: Paramount

Genre: Thriller

Samenvatting: Set in the world of CIA power games and scientific hardware, but dominated by an intriguing Borges-like riddle: why should a mystery thriller that didn't sell be translated into obscure languages? And why should the American Literary Historical Society in New York be massacred while one of their readers (Redford) is out getting lunch? With the telephone his only method of contact with Olympian and untrustworthy superiors, Redford becomes lost, unpredictable, even sentimental. He holes up in Dunaway's apartment and starts making mistakes. Thanks to an intelligent script, partly by Lorenzo Semple Jr (Pretty Poison, The Parallax View), the action rarely falters, and at its best the film offers an intriguing slice of neo-Hitchcock. A certain gloss irritates, but enough scenes compensate for the chic portrayal of the Redford/ Dunaway relationship: Redford's sudden intrusion into civilisation when he visits a dead man's apartment, and finds the wife preparing her husband's dinner; the postman whose pen won't work; Redford in the strange, darkened house of his quarry, taking the initiative by blaring soul music from the hi-fi. CPe

Theater Verschijning: 01 12 1959

Studio: mk2

Genre: Drama

Samenvatting: PICKPOCKET
Released in the same year as Godard’s ‘Breathless’ (1959) and filmed on the same sun-dappled Parisian streets, Robert Bresson’s mid-career tale of the mysterious operation of grace and redemption on the fate of a young thief is considered by many to be his masterpiece. Newcomers to Bresson’s films may be surprised to hear that this is perhaps his most optimistic, open, sensuous and sexually charged film, given its dark Dostoyevskian subject matter. Even for those used to Kiarostami’s minimalism, this is a further step into essentialism. Bresson’s actors – ‘models’ – are non-professional and strictly coached; but there is no mistaking the orgasmic pleasure that sweeps the face of indolent, penurious student Michel (Martin LaSalle) as he succeeds on his first ‘dip’ at Longchamps racecourse; nor his despair as his world begins to fall apart. Bresson’s goals were deep; to sweep away the dross of expectation and viewing conventions by means of a purified cinema. At times in this thief’s journal – the extended train station robbery sequence, for instance – his visual discourse touches the sublime.

PROCÈS DE JEANNE D'ARC
Based on the minutes of Joan of Arc's trial, this can be seen as Bresson's essay in sado-masochistic voyeurism. Joan (Carrez) is manacled, spied at through peepholes, genitally scrutinised, and forced (by the director) to squat on a wooden stool as if on a toilet seat. The tension generated by juxtaposing such humiliation with the serenely beautiful text (from the transcription of the trial) resolves itself in the unforgettable final image of Joan's charred remains like a burnt-out firework.

L'ARGENT
A single 500 franc forged note changes hands as a schoolboy prank; and with remorseless logic, an innocent is led down the path to becoming an axe-murderer. Taken from a Tolstoy short story, this is a return to the extremes of crime and punishment that Bresson last used in Pickpocket; and as in that film, crime is a model of redemption and prison a metaphor for the soul. True to a taste for Catholic paradox, the murderer may or may not 'find' himself through his acts; the family is axed in the name of spiritual release; and most powerful of all, Evil is not demeaned by any vacuous sociological explanation. Filming with his usual tranquil, austere feeling for the miraculous, Bresson still manages to make most other film-makers appear hysterical over-reachers; at nearly 80, his power to renew our faith in cinema is as firm as one could wish for. Gold, pure.

Theater Verschijning: 11 11 1977

Studio: Criterion

Genre: Drama

Samenvatting: "The cinema," Orson Welles famously noted, "is a ribbon of dream." "3 Women" is one of few feature films on record as having taken form "in" a dream. The dreamer was Robert Altman, and although all his best work has an oneiric quality--the floaty zooms, the eerie pastels bleeding into one another, the slip and slide of characters' trajectories overlapping in the fluid accumulation of what passes for narrative--this last masterpiece in his amazing seven-year run of 1970s masterpieces is only more so. Shelly Duvall, that most unorthodox of Altman creatures, locks in the tone with her eerie portrayal of Millie Lammoreaux, a Texan hoyden whose nonstop prattle turns life into a stream-of-consciousness reverie even as most of the people in her vicinity studiously ignore her. Her primacy is worshiped, then emulated by a strange, certifiably dysfunctional childwoman named Pinky Rose (Sissy Spacek) who comes to work in the same old-age home as Millie, moves in with her, and progressively usurps her lifestyle and finally her identity. The third woman, Willie (the late Janice Rule), is a pregnant artist who paints reptilian humanoid figures on the floors of swimming pools. Willie's husband (Robert Fortier), a strutting gun nut who once had a bit part on TV's "Wyatt Earp" ("He knows Hugh O'Brian"), is just about the only male character of consequence in the film. This macho man gets his--but what "his" may be is only one of the movie's beguiling mysteries. It's only appropriate that the cameraman, Chuck Rosher, should be the son of the man who photographed F.W. Murnau's "Sunrise".

Theater Verschijning: 01 07 1957

Studio: Sony

Genre: Western

Samenvatting: Struggling rancher and family man Van Heflin sneaks captured outlaw Glenn Ford out from under the eyes of his gang and nervously awaits the prison train in this tight, taut Western in the "High Noon" tradition. Adapted from an Elmore Leonard story, this tense Western thriller is boiled down to its essential elements: a charming and cunning criminal, an initially reluctant hero whose courage and resolution hardens along the way, and a waiting game that pits them in a battle of wills and wits. Glenn Ford practically steals the film in one of his best performances ever: calm, cool, and confident, he's a ruthless killer with polite manners and an honorable streak. Director Delmer Daves ("Broken Arrow") sets it all in a harsh, parched frontier of empty landscapes, deserted towns, and dust, creating a brittle quiet that threatens to snap into violence at any moment. "--Sean Axmaker"

Theater Verschijning: 30 11 1945

Studio: Questar

Genre: Film Noir

Samenvatting: Like many public-domain DVD sets, this six-disc set compiles a handful of well-liked features from one genre--in this case, a quintet of venerable '40s noir. Where Questar's box exceeds expectations is on its sixth disc, which is chock full of extras that make the set a must-have for viewers looking for a crash course in Hollywood thrillers. The lineup of flicks is solid--Rudolph Mate's "D.O.A.", in which Edmond O'Brien must find out who has poisoned him; Edgar G. Ulmer's minimalist "Detour", which pits desperate Tom Neal against feral Ann Savage; Orson Welles's "The Stranger" (which is technically more suspense than noir), in which his Nazi-turned professor locks horns with Edward G. Robinson--who's also featured in Fritz Lang's moody "Scarlet Street". The set is rounded out by the lesser-known "Killer Bait", and if the picture quality isn't as crystal-clear as on major studio releases, the supplemental features more than make up for it. Disc 6 features two swell featurettes, one on the genre itself and the other on its predatory ladies, as well as a color gallery of poster art and a terrific compilation of trailers for such films as "Bullets or Ballots" and "The Postman Always Rings Twice". For noir first-timers, this set is a killer place to start. "--Paul Gaita"

Theater Verschijning: 04 08 1956

Studio: Paramount

Genre: Western

Samenvatting: Not many Westerns can claim to be original. "Seven Men from Now" can. Its making, for the B-picture arm of John Wayne's Batjac company, was a modest enterprise. The screenwriter, Burt Kennedy, was just starting out; the director, Budd Boetticher, was a matador-turned-filmmaker with only one film of distinction ("The Bullfighter and the Lady") in a journeyman career; the star, Randolph Scott, was regarded as "over the hill." Yet the three men's talents blended uncannily, producing not just a terrific Western but a cinema masterpiece--an ironical, beautifully spare bit of storytelling that became the ideal showcase for Scott's sandy reticence.

You don't want anybody synopsizing the story for you; there's little of it, really, yet "how" it's told makes it complex and compelling. We know, from a memorable first scene, that Scott is hunting down seven men who did something terrible. He will be thrown together with several other characters, including Lee Marvin as an affable but deadly rascal with whom he shares some history. Everybody has private reasons to be traveling through Apache country. Savor every syllable of the laconic dialogue, what people say and what they don't quite say--what they think they understand about one another's motives, except that that understanding keeps getting rearranged.

"Seven Men from Now" went missing after Wayne's death in 1979 threw the Batjac library into limbo. (Its success had inspired Scott, Boetticher, and Kennedy to collaborate on three other remarkable Westerns--"The Tall T" (1957), "Ride Lonesome" (1959), and "Comanche Station" (1960)--which, because they "weren't" made for Batjac, we've had little trouble seeing over the years.) The movie became legendary, a Holy Grail for film buffs. Now, with a beautiful restoration on DVD, it gets to be a movie again. A great one. "--Richard T. Jameson"

Theater Verschijning: 13 04 1957

Studio: MGM

Genre: Drama

Samenvatting: Sidney Lumet's directorial debut remains a tense, atmospheric (though slightly manipulative and stagy) courtroom thriller, in which the viewer never sees a trial and the only action is verbal. As he does in his later corruption commentaries such as "Serpico" or "Q & A", Lumet focuses on the lonely one-man battles of a protagonist whose ethics alienate him from the rest of jaded society. As the film opens, the seemingly open-and-shut trial of a young Puerto Rican accused of murdering his father with a knife has just concluded and the 12-man jury retires to their microscopic, sweltering quarters to decide the verdict. When the votes are counted, 11 men rule guilty, while one--played by Henry Fonda, again typecast as another liberal, truth-seeking hero--doubts the obvious. Stressing the idea of "reasonable doubt," Fonda slowly chips away at the jury, who represent a microcosm of white, male society--exposing the prejudices and preconceptions that directly influence the other jurors' snap judgments. The tight script by Reginald Rose (based on his own teleplay) presents each juror vividly using detailed soliloquies, all which are expertly performed by the film's flawless cast. Still, it's Lumet's claustrophobic direction--all sweaty close-ups and cramped compositions within a one-room setting--that really transforms this contrived story into an explosive and compelling nail-biter. --"Dave McCoy"