Category: Film

Danish photojournalist Jacob Holdt will be present to introduce this film record of the five years he spent hitchhiking through the United States—a journey that took him from the home of Nelson Rockefeller to the rebellion at Wounded Knee.

Paul Robeson, in one of the films made during his exile in England, plays a French soldier who deserts to Africa and becomes a sheikh. Thornton Freeland directed (1937).

Classy and lifeless—a prettily photographed, heavily directed antiwar film (1981) that elicits only pity for its two young Australian protagonists, caught up in a suicide battle in World War I. The film spends most of its 100-minute running time developing the friendship between the two boys, while tipping the audience off to their ultimate fate—it’s […]

Rudolph Valentino stars in a 1921 melodrama directed by Rex Ingram and based on Balzac’s Eugenie Grandet. He’s a French peasant who wants to marry his beautiful cousin, but her miserly father wants to hold out for a better offer.

Pierre Richard, a talented physical comic, stars in this spy farce directed by Yves Robert, which amounts to a 90-minute testimony to the French love for Jerry Lewis. Pleasant, with a moment or two of genuine grace (1974).

Lawrence Kasdan’s 1981 noir fable is highly derivative in its overall conception, but it finds some freshness in its details—which is what you might expect from the screenwriter of Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Empire Strikes Back. Surprisingly, Kasdan shows more flair as a director than a writer: his images have a dark, […]

A literal-minded, stylistically conservative version of the James M. Cain pulp classic, which is to say a complete betrayal of it. Bob Rafelson’s direction has none of Cain’s lean hysteria; his Frank and Cora drift through their sex-drugged, sadomasochistic affair in a tone of depressed naturalism, without any invigorating sense of sin or transgression. When […]

1 hour 52 min

Louis Malle’s first film (1957), made when he was 24, is a surprisingly suspenseful reworking of the perfect crime/sexual tension formula. Also known as Ascenseur pour l’echafaud (Elevator to the Gallows); with Jeanne Moreau, Maurice Ronet, and an improvised score by Miles Davis, playing with European musicians.

Part two of Sergio Giral’s “Slavery Trilogy” is a portrait of Francisco Estevez, a bounty hunter who tracked down runaway slaves for the plantation owners of Cuba. He hatches an obsession for Melchora, the runaways’ legendary female leader, and the violent acts he commits in her pursuit appall even his white employers (1977).