Delmer Daves’s genial, engrossing soap opera about Connecticut River Valley tobacco wars finds ruthless Judd Raike trying to squeeze out or burn out rival plantation owners, especially Sala Post, whose employee, Ellen McLean, he woos and marries. Ellen’s son, Parrish, is mentored by both Post and Raike, giving us something of an education in tobacco […]
Daily Archives: October 11, 2007
Western front, 1916. A vainglorious French general orders a suicidal mission: the capture of a German stronghold. From no-man’s-land Colonel Dax’s surviving soldiers retreat; others have remained behind in their trenches. The general orders that the latter be fired upon, but the order is rejected, enraging the general, who ekes out revenge by having three […]
Wryly written and directed by Corneliu Porumboiu, who was 14 when Nicolae Ceauşescu’s regime, and along with it Communism, collapsed in Romania in 1989, A fost sau n-a fost? questions the weight of this event—recent past for some; ancient for others—on Romania’s present. The setting is a small, sleepy town, Vaslui. Jderescu, the owner of […]
Dennis Grunes 