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100 Best Foreign Films (21-30) Contempt (1963) One of cinema's snarkier in-jokes, Jean-Luc Godard's bleakly funny movie about trashy movie people making a hash out of The Odyssey in Europe was aimed at the time at cigar-chomping vulgarian types like producer Joseph E. Levine, but it could just as well have been Joel Silver and company making Hudson Hawk. As, respectively, the producer and bubble-headed star, Jack Palance and Brigitte Bardot turn in perfect accounts of themselves. (S.R.) Cria! (1975) Geraldine Chaplin and young Ana Torrent play the same woman, at different ages, barraged and self-imprisoned in a miserable, shadowy past. Chaplin's performance is overwhelming; director Carlos Saura's movie is magnificent. Saura and Chaplin were lovers at the time, and neither was ever better than here when they were together. (S.R.) The Decalogue (1988) Some movies provoke people to alter haircuts, attitudes or musical tastes. This one will change the way you look at movies. Each segment of Krzystof Kieslowski's 10-hour film (made to be shown in installments on Polish TV) presents a moral dilemma based on one of the Ten Commandments. A random murder, a diagnosis of cancer, the death of a dog, all are interwoven, all given equal weight. Considerably, more uplifting than William Bennett's The Book of Virtues. (S.R.) |
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Les Diaboliques (1954) Henri-Georges Clouzot's pitiless, icily enthralling shocker is famed for its bathtub murder, dankly perverse atmosphere (water, water, everywhere), irredeemable characters and much-imitated surprise ending. Simone Signoret's sangfroid and sunglasses nearly steal the whole show in this obvious forerunner of Psycho. The recent American remake is a travesty. (S.R.) Diary of a Country Priest (1950) A young priest suffers and sickens when his parishioners neither trust nor accept his piety. Rigorous austerity, scalpel-precise imagery, and sparsity of spoken word give Robert Bresson's film the searing purity of a brilliant silent film. (S.R.) The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) Bu–uel's riotous late-career masterpiece about a gaggle of self-infatuated Parisians whose attempts at having dinner together are forever frustrated by terrorist attacks, army invasions, sexual liaisons, dream sequences, etc. For a perfect bad-dream double bill, rent it with Bu–uel's The Exterminating Angel, where the dinner guests never get to leave the dining room. (M.A.) Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler (1922) An evil genius, heroes and innocents, cops and crooks, rival gangs, mind readers, mesmerists, spies, femmes fatales, car chases--no, not Die Hard, but a silent masterwork, so full of action that modern audiences would be exhausted. Director Fritz Lang has never had an equal for inventing and framing lethal situations. Among the first amazed audiences were Hitler and Goebbels. Don't say movies can't influence people. (D.T.) |
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La Dolce Vita (1960) Brilliant and caustic for nearly all of its three hours of glamorous moral rot and cynicism. Federico Fellini's seminal epic is never more inspired than when a helicopter flies over Rome dangling a statue of Christ, or when Amazonian Anita Ekberg, dancing through the night streets with a white kitten in her arms, hoists up her gown to wade through the Trevi Fountain. That's Italian. (S.R.) The Double Life of Veronique (1991) Many people tout Kieskowski's Red/White/Blue trilogy, but his greatest movie came before those three. The Double Life is the real thing, a deeply mysterious essay on self, fate and Irene Jacob squared. The music alone gives you the shivers. (M.A.) The Earrings of Madame de... (1953) 19th-century France. A marriage (Danielle Darrieux, Charles Boyer); a lover (Vittorio De Sica). It starts as comic intrigue, moves through high romance, and turns to tragedy. No one ever moved the camera better than Max Ophuels, or took so ambivalent a view of beauty. One wonders why succeeding generations have bothered to try to match this glory. (D.T.) 100 Best Foreign Films, Part 4 (31-40) |