John Ford’s streamlined version of Sean O’Casey’s The Plough and the Stars is full of a rich, provocative ambivalence. Despite wife Nora’s pleas, Jack Clitheroe continues with his dangerous activities against British rule of Ireland as a member of the Irish Citizen Army (that is, Irish Republican Army). It is 1916 in Dublin, during the […]
Daily Archives: August 23, 2008
Based on the 1962 novel by Arnośt Lustig, this film, also from Czechoslovakia, is about an eighteen-year-old girl in postwar Prague after her internment in a Nazi death camp. Survival is a matter of historical perspective; soon afterwards, Dita Saxová throws herself off a cliff to her death. Why? For one thing, among European Jews […]
Dennis Grunes 