WHAT FOREIGN FILMS HAVE YOU WATCHED LATELY?

[knitwit45]

Mike, I don't like Magnificent Ambersons either....but for heavens sake, DON'T TELL CHIO!!!!!

[Rita Hayworth]

Mike, I don't like Magnificent Ambersons either....but for heavens sake, DON'T TELL CHIO!!!!!

Knitty ... don't you realize that CHIO can read your post!

[knitwit45]

uh, yeah, I do....

[MichiganJ]

I watched the terrific Spanish thriller, Swindled (2004). It's about a group of con artists who plot to pull off the big score. But, as con men (and woman) will do, they try to also out con each other.

Many of the cons turn out to be quite implausible and impossible, but with the film's pacing and all of the twists and turns, you have little time to analysis specifics and just happily go along for the ride. (Which is not hard to do, anyway, since Victoria Abril stars.)

[MikeBSG]

Today I watched "Tree of Wooden Clogs" (1978) directed by Ermanno Olmi.

I liked this film about peasants in Lombardy in 1900. I liked watching the interactions of the peasant families and seeing how their stories developed: the little boy going t school; the old man obsessed with his tomatoes; the courtship of the young couple; the widow trying to make ends meet. It was all really well done and was seemingly without a political axe to grind. (It was also refreshing to the see priest presented as a good man of common sense -- neither a hypocrite nor an infallible source of wisdom and miracles.)

[charliechaplinfan]

I know a lot of people love "The Leopard." Martin Scorsese is one. I just could not warm up to the movie, particularly in the final hour. And, coincidentally, I've never warmed up to "The Magnificent Ambersons" either. Must just be me.

I struggle with both too, so that makes three of us.

[JackFavell]

I watched Forbidden Games when it was on TCM. I was stifling my sobs at the end, so I wouldn't wake my family. I can't even describe the greatness of this movie. But I have some fleeting impressions I hope no one minds me relating.

SPOILERS FOR FORBIDDEN GAMES

I had sort of avoided it for years, because I knew it would get to me, but somehow during it, I was just sitting there with my mouth open, taking it in, not as upset as I thought I would be, till the end. It was so beautiful, with moments of light shining, or Brigitte Fossey's lovely expressive face filling the frame gently.

This movie hit me deeply, in a complex way, much like my favorites, Curse of the Cat People, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, The Fallen Idol, and The Search do... but this was so much deeper on an instinctual level, hitting at the heart of childhood, bringing one back to one's innocence.

As MissG said at the other site, there are such delicate moments mixed with the incredibly harsh. The contrast is so wrenching.

You can see why the adults did what they did and yet it is horrible beyond words to see them juxtaposed with these sweet children. It didn't make it any easier to watch them, understanding the kind of disillusioned world they are coming from, it didn't make them less hypocritical, it just makes it clear that adulthood is a tragedy. To put children in the hands of these monsters, who are us, is even more of a tragedy.

The adults all acted as they wished to at each moment, like animals, cruelly. In fact, with little of the virtues that they were trying to instill in the children, who already had those virtues before they were "taught". I used to see this at daycare all the time, adults "teaching" their kids with the words "They have to learn to fight for themselves sometime" blithely bandied as parents stood and watched their kids beating up some poor unsuspecting victim without flinching.

The family (which could stand for anyone in the world who's adult) seemed to have a personal grudge against just about everybody and everything, their neighbors especially, from the beginning - ignorance and want ruled them, like in the Dickens' story. The battle with the neighbors seemed almost comic at times, if it hadn't had such stupid awful consequences.

Sometimes, Michel's prayers caught the adults' vibes, and they needed him for that. He was a good, kind boy. But somehow, the nicer he was, the more he was on their wrong side, and couldn't get back no matter what. I worry about this with my daughter so much, as she gets older. You see things in your kids - things that you might not like, but that reflect YOU and your faults and it's upsetting... so it's tempting to lash out, or make them try to re-learn now whatever it is that you made the mistake about in the first place. Which ends up seeming like punishment or disregard to them. It's awful, being an adult and a parent. Seeing your mistakes right in front of you, concrete, is not a pretty thing - those mistakes that might make it harder for your children later - and you taught them - you were lazy or didn't think about the consequences at the time, or never saw it in yourself until now. It's easy to get upset over these things,to feel like you wish you could do it over, when the child has no idea that you hate the very thing in yourself, the behavior, not them. And your time is ticking away, you don't have any more chances to change. So you plod on, getting harder as the world bashes you about. And your kids pay because they don't understand. Clement makes all this so clear, simply and with so few words.

The adults were hypocritical at best, gentle when it was easy, and downright nasty when they felt 'on show' with their neighbors or priest, or if they felt slighted in some petty way. What I loved was how Clement showed the adults' actions as almost nonsensical , they seemed crazy sometimes and the children the sane ones.

The adults had lost any kindness or generosity , they had sunk so far with work and hardship that they couldn't even understand the children. The children's innocence made them innately more than usually generous, and thoughtful if somewhat coldblooded. Their coldbloodedness did not rise out of hatred, but out of indifference to the things that adults deemed important. They alone were interested in how things live or die. Caring for one another. The older the adults, the worse they acted, too far from innocence to even know it when they saw it. The adults, with age and hard work, became almost evil, definitely monstrous.

I found the references to religion and death and how confusing they are quite fascinating. You get a box on the ears for stealing a cross (oh, my gosh I almost jumped out of my seat when the priest HIT Michel, oh my! I wasn't expecting such violence out of +him+) for a friend to ease her anguish, putting into effect exactly what the grownups do at church only with the meaning actually intact, and yet, the adults don't get it. Michel is told every day to steal from the neighbor, but when he steals to help someone, with true Christ-like behavior, he's an outlaw. When you are dead, you are put in a hole in the ground and a cross is leaned over your hole - except that it is just a weird meaningless ritual. When the kids do it, mimicking, they somehow capture the real meaning, oddly enough. Certain things are done by rote - a prayer is not so much a prayer as something to say very very fast over and over again. But Michel can feel the need for it.

Throw a complete innocent into this barren emotional landscape and the adults just can't deal with it. They felt their little petty, small world was toppling, never thinking how Paulette's world had already toppled. They never really thought of her or Michel. They had to take their vindictiveness out on the children, because the adults saw their own guilt, and punishment was necessary somewhere, in order to pretend they were 'moral'. The children violated some unspoken rule that they did not even know existed. And so they were sacrificed.

I really don't know which was worse, the lie - the betrayal, when Michel's parents decide arbitrarily that Paulette cannot stay with them after all - or seeing all those people at the station, or whatever that building was, and Paulette just left there, wandering through the crowd, no one paying any attention to her. Lost forever. That's the power of it, knowing that there were probably thousands of Paulettes out there after the war. Michel was learning every day to hate, to steal, to not care. They killed his soul, any goodness in him. Heartbreaking. Paulette, the youngest, the most vulnerable in this world, paid the worst price of all. How Clement could bear to leave her like that at the end, I don't know. But it makes the movie one of the greatest I've ever seen. Fossey is unforgettable. Her image haunts.

[charliechaplinfan]

Wendy, I loved Forbidden Games, you did it justice, it's isn't as easy film to digest.

I watched I Nostri or The Monsters today directed by Dino Risi, not quite as good as Il Sorpasso which I enjoyed tremendously, it is a very different film, a film of episodes and in those episodes their is either Vittorio Gassman or Ugo Taganazzi or both. Gassman gets two chances to dress in drag, one as an old woman, one as a vamp, he's hilarious, he's also a boxer, a football fan, a vagabond, a lover, a priest, a defence lawyer, he holds hands on a beach with Taganazzi and has an attempt at crossing the road. Taganazzi is a father, a policeman, a boxer, a cuckolded husband, a lover, a man buying a new car, a witness in a trial, a father. All the episodes poke fun at facets of society, some rather naughtily like the man watching telly whilst his wife has her lover in the next room, the man crossing the road, the priest who is vain then preaching on simplicity, the men who admire women bu not quite as much as they admire themselves. Much use is made of makeup that sometimes it's only possible to tell them apart because Gassman is tall and slim and Tagnazzi is smaller and a broader build. I like Dino Risi and will be looking for some more of his movies.

[JackFavell]

Thanks, Alison. I Nostri sounds like a movie I would like a lot. I love episodic films like that, especially humorous ones.

[charliechaplinfan]

Gassman must have been quite an actor, well known in Italy for his Shakespeare on stage as well as his many films, many of which are comedies, for me an actor who can deliver comedy and turn his hand to Shakespeare's tragedies is a rare species.

[JackFavell]

I used to have a videotape called To Be Hamlet, a marvelous documentary in which Trevor Nunn traveled the world over to find different international "hamlets" - Gassman was one. They showed how each actor tackled the role and what it all meant. I've got to transfer it to dvd, it's absolutely wonderful. If you can find it at all, it's worth getting, but over here, it literally costs over a hundred dollars as a pre-made dvd.

[Mr. Arkadin]

Wendy, I loved Forbidden Games, you did it justice, it's isn't as easy film to digest.

I watched I Nostri or The Monsters today directed by Dino Risi, not quite as good as Il Sorpasso which I enjoyed tremendously, it is a very different film, a film of episodes and in those episodes their is either Vittorio Gassman or Ugo Taganazzi or both. Gassman gets two chances to dress in drag, one as an old woman, one as a vamp, he's hilarious, he's also a boxer, a football fan, a vagabond, a lover, a priest, a defence lawyer, he holds hands on a beach with Taganazzi and has an attempt at crossing the road. Taganazzi is a father, a policeman, a boxer, a cuckolded husband, a lover, a man buying a new car, a witness in a trial, a father. All the episodes poke fun at facets of society, some rather naughtily like the man watching telly whilst his wife has her lover in the next room, the man crossing the road, the priest who is vain then preaching on simplicity, the men who admire women bu not quite as much as they admire themselves. Much use is made of makeup that sometimes it's only possible to tell them apart because Gassman is tall and slim and Tagnazzi is smaller and a broader build. I like Dino Risi and will be looking for some more of his movies.

If you like Risi and Gassman, don't miss this one:

http://silverscreenoasis.com/oasis3/vie ... 04#p103204

[charliechaplinfan]

Thank you, I'm going to watch that one all the way through tomorrow, hopefully

[Mr. Arkadin]

Thank you, I'm going to watch that one all the way through tomorrow, hopefully

Very good! I assume it is available in R2 over there with subtitles, or perhaps you speak Italian? My print is excellent, but it's a fandub, where someone has placed English subtitles on an Italian print. I'll be interested to know what you think of the film.

[MikeBSG]

Today I watched "La Bete Humaine" (1938) directed by Jean Renoir.

I utterly failed to connect with this film. I did like all the footage of old locomotives racing about, but the plot struck me as utterly arbitrary, and I couldn't work up any interest in either Jean Gabin or Simone Simon, both of whom I have liked a lot in other films.