Set in provincial Mexico in the first half of the twentieth century, Dana Rotberg’s Otilia Rauda, from Sergio Galindo’s novel, follows Otilia’s contempt for her police-chief husband, Isidro, and her passionate love for the bandit he is trying to capture, Rubén Lazcano. Otilia’s father compelled her marriage. Isidro’s whoring results in Otilia’s contracting syphilis, which […]
Monthly Archives: July 2008
The end of the Cold War that the U.S. had launched to the detriment of the world after the Second World War has left the world changed in some ways and intact in others. Writer-director Krzysztof Zanussi’s Persona non grata revolves around Wiktor (Zbigniew Zapasiewicz, superb yet again), Poland’s aging Ambassador to Uruguay, where he […]
Agnieszka Holland’s unsentimental Europa Europa, from France and Germany, is based on Salomon Perel’s account of his actual experiences. A Jew, “Sali” eluded German capture before and during the war. Holland’s mother was Catholic; her father, Jewish. In 1938 Germany, Sali is indulging in a bath just prior to his bar mitzvah—arithmetic sets his age […]
Both 23 at the time, Tyrone Power and Loretta Young at least possessed the charm of youth in the comedy Love Is News; but they didn’t have a scrap of talent between them. Power’s good looks commended him, but even these were shiny and shallow; Power was the Tom Cruise of his day. (When he […]
[C]reation is a great wheel that cannot move without crushing someone. — Victor Hugo Abel Gance’s The Wheel derives from dubious melodramatic material. Its camera opens on train tracks zipping past and proceeds to train wheels in crushing closeup. The train derails, and in the wreck that follows the single mother of baby Norma is […]
Dennis Grunes 