Written by Ladislav Smoljak and Zdeněk Svěrák, and directed by Oldřich Lipský, Marečku, podejte mi pero! is a warm, humane Czech comedy. Jiří Sovák plays Jiří Kroupa, a fiftyish factory foreman who has just chastised his son for his latest high school grade report; “Soup!” Jiří instructs his wife for the boy’s lunch. “He deserves […]
Daily Archives: August 16, 2009
The Oscars, including one for best picture, that went to John Ford’s mediocre How Green Was My Valley (1941) helped smooth the way for the (loose) adaptation of another Richard Llewellyn novel, None But the Lonely Heart, published a year later. The irrevocably downbeat nature of the material placed it far outside the Hollywood mainstream; […]
The lovely breeziness of Mikio Naruse’s Inazuma (best film, best director, Blue Ribbon Awards) telegraphs the laughter of its eventual mother-daughter reconciliation and expresses optimism for daughter Kiyoko’s future; but at the same time the film, from a novel by Fumiko Hayashi, takes up Japanese cinema’s principal postwar theme: the breakdown of the Japanese family. […]
Dennis Grunes 