Although it shared first prize at Venice (with Valerio Zurlini’s heartrending Family Diary), Andrei Tarkovsky’s first feature, perhaps because the script largely predated his involvement and another director started the project, poorly predicts his range of accomplishment. An antiwar film about a 12-year-old orphan who works as a spy for a Russian war attachment by […]
Daily Archives: May 28, 2007
I don’t know one piece of Italian art from another but am riveted by Tempo di viaggio, the documentary that Andrei Tarkovsky made in Italy while also making Nostalghia (1983), his first film after fleeing the Soviet Union. Part of the film consists of a debate between him and scenarist Tonino Guerra, Antonioni’s writer, about […]
One of the loveliest comedies in creation, The Happiest Days of Your Life casts a nostalgic eye backward on wartime England. Written and directed by Frank Launder from John Dighton’s play, it claims a catastrophic premise: amidst hectic demands of the Blitz, the Resettlement Department at the Ministry of Education evacuates St. Swithin’s School for […]
A charming romantic comedy, Billy Wilder’s second directorial effort, and his first in the U.S., The Major and the Minor exists on two levels, as do many Wilder films; it’s richly entertaining while exploring serious themes. The premise is delicious: After 25 failed jobs and many more male overtures and gropings in the Big Bad […]
Written and directed by Mike Leigh, Vera Drake is a sincere, nongrandstanding film about a decent person bedeviled by the law in 1950 postwar London. Vera Drake is a busy woman. She cleans houses for a living, but it’s what she does for which she takes no remuneration that gets her into trouble. Vera tends […]
Dennis Grunes 