Opulent melodramatic trash from India, not quite redeemed by a progressive social message, Awaara (The Vagabond) is saddled with too much story, and infantile, convoluted story at that, and interrupted by witless tunes and listless dances. Deep from the bowels of Bollywood, and testing the heroic endurance of the audience, the film does boast a […]
Monthly Archives: June 2012
Think of the gorgeous, austere Matka Joanna od aniolów as the sequel to Ken Russell’s The Devils (1971), with the seventeenth-century historical material transplanted from Loudon, France, to rural, dry, frozen Poland. Father Urbain Grandier has already been burned alive for allowing his manliness to incite the repressed sexuality of nuns at the parish convent; […]
A reciprocation of inflexibility between the common people—a mob of plebeians—and Rome’s scornful military titan, Coriolanus, results in the latter’s downfall following his pursuit of a twisting course that finds him allying himself with Rome’s enemy to wreak vengeance against Rome for turning against him and banishing him: this is the overall movement of William […]
An actress in tsarist Russian cinema, Olga Preobrazhenskaya turned to directing in the new Soviet Union; Babi riazanskie, her fourth film, is her most enduring piece of work. Highly plotted, it is a trivial melodrama, set a few years before the revolution, that at the last, post-revolution, slides into a momentous feminist message. One of […]
Jointly from France and Italy, a key work of postwar European psychology, René Clément’s Au-delà des grilles (literally, Beyond the Gates), in Italy known as Le mura di Malapaga, beautifully fleshes out a highly melodramatic scheme of past, present and future in order to portray, combinately, European trauma and uncertainty. It won the Oscar as […]
Dennis Grunes 