Sweet Smell of Success (1957)

Ah! The overly dramatic dramas from the 50s! A reputation is on the line in this scandal layered story of a media tycoon and his flunky who is starting to develop a conscience. This is one of the great films that set a standard for morally ambiguous, down and out protagonists trying to do right. Plus it stars Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis.

Shichinin no samurai (1954)

Japanese master director Akira Kurosawa presents Seven Samurai, a 3.5 hour epic film set in 19th century rural Japan.

A peasant village is at the mercy of marauding seasonal thieves, so they hire people of great moral fibre (at least that is their intention) and military prowess to come and protect them.

I really enjoyed this film over 2 nights. The characters were colourful, flawed and unpredictable. The setting was thoroughly original and it was interesting just seeing agrarian Japan.

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Wisconsin Death Trip (1999)

The narration is readings from late 19th century newspaper articles from Wisconsin's frontier. The stories are acted out on black and white film. That's it.

The title gives away the common thread of the various articles.

It's a fascinating film in that it shocks any kind of romance out of the settler/homesteading era. The madness, lack of social recourse, and ignorance in these remote locations is saddening, if not a quite upsetting.

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The Bicycle Thief (1948)

What a heartbreaking film! A desperate labourer is robbed of his bicycle and spends the next day trying to find his bike and thus save his employment in postwar Italy. The film was a powerful display of what life is currently like in many parts of the world and I was surprised at how similar late 1940s Rome looked to current Guatemala City.

As painful as the story is, it is a beautiful image of a family working hard to make ends meet.

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Metropolis (1927)

This classic film about class struggle pulled out all the stops to generate a bleak, futuristic world where the masses were simply cogs in the wheel of progress (or at least labourers in an unfriendly factory). There are plenty of dials and steam in this analog future and not many smiles. Director Fritz Lang incorporates plenty of grouped choreographed movement and solo modern dances to demonstrate visually the moral of the film:

"The head and hand need a mediator, and that mediator is the heart!"

At the heart of the film is class struggle and considering that the film was made during the interwar period in Germany, I think it captures much of the sentiment of the Weimar Republic.

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Prestuplenie i nakazanie (1970)

This Russian adaptation of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment paces itself like the book, taking ample time inside protagonist Rodya Raskolnikov's head. It is done in black and white and the lack of colour adds the only other real joyless feature to the film beyond the glorious performances by the actors - who are unknown to the west.

Raskolnikov is pained by the conflict of his philosophical conclusion, that great men can accomplish whatever they like and should live without guilt and with impunity by virtue of the fact that they are great! He can not justify his philosophy because in his mind he himself is greater than his ignorant peers, but he and his mother and sister live in abject poverty. He decides to live out his philosophy by murdering a pawn broker, someone he views as a leech of society. The story plays out from here demonstrating his struggle to mute his conscience.

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À Bout de Souffle (1960)

From another time - generational angst that defined the 1960s. Chock full of anti-establishment, lust, and recklessness. A cop killing Frenchman pines over a blond American girl trying to get her to escape with him. She half-heartedly gives in to his advances only to half-heartedly flee. There is a back and forth that shows they both really don't know what they want.

The movie is a classic and it's worth watching just to see what Paris looked like a half century ago. The plot and acting is dramatic enough to keep you engaged, but the tale has been told many times since by copycats, so it isn't that new anymore.

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