Evoking mixed marriages and their difficulties, the author depicts the journey of a young black husband, an elegant dandy, who has come to Paris to find his young white wife and their little daughter. This social satire is the feature-length directorial debut of Désiré Ecaré, originally from Côte d’Ivoire.
Tag: 1970s
A quality war film does not necessarily need spectacular aerial dogfights and bombed cityscapes. Only those movies have truly something to say that go beyond the crack of rifle fire to present personal dramas as well. Ferenc Kósa’s unusual, pacifist war film depicts the hell of carnage in all its senselessness. Characters of this gaunt, tight-lipped story wander through a beautiful landscape seeking their own truth or just the possibility of survival. The film is all the more memorable for the cinematography of Sándor Sára, the powerful screenplay and the acting of, for instance, Péter Haumann.
In an open field, a butterfly flies from flower to flower. The charming image is interrupted by cut-out photos of apartment blocks and flats that jump into view to the rhythm of a pile driver. The butterfly is increasingly hemmed in by the buildings, until there’s no more space left, and it is finally mounted and framed on a wall. The last of its kind died in 1975.
One of the most sublime color films ever made, Ballad of Orin follows the hardscrabble life of a wandering outcast goze (blind female musician) in early 20th-century Japan. Cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa and director Masahiro Shinoda interviewed surviving goza of the time to capture “a sense of the ideal beauty that these blind women had inwardly visualized.
“There are in life faces which, at first sight, appear unremarkable, but when seen through the camera or when projected on screen they become extraordinary. Behind every expression lies an entire life, a destiny,” Ferenc Grunwalsky once declared. While making a sociological documentary, the director-cinematographer came across a young mother who so caught his attention that he decided to devote an entire portrait film to her. In the absence of dialogue, the most minute expressions become the film’s ‘protagonists’, and instead of explanatory narration and captions the power of imagery prevails.
With his monumental ‘film fresco’ Ferenc Kósa erected a monument to the peasant revolt led by György Dózsa (16th century). Although under the Marxist interpretation of history of the period the revolt was frequently simplified down to an early example of ‘class struggle’, in the screenplay of Ferenc Kósa and Sándor Csoóri the depiction of historical events bears the universally valid formulation of questions about revolution and violence, while the figure of Dózsa – thanks also to the characterization of Ferenc Bessenyei – takes on a more lifelike and human aspect.
The marriage of Les and Katie Bingham is in big trouble. They’ve already split up once, and now they’re giving it one more try, but the bedroom of their New York apartment is not a happy place. Les finds her too cold. Katie finds him too fast.
A PERFECT COUPLE is a satisfying film for the romantic at heart. When Sheila Shea, a young member of a raucous rock-‘n’-roll group, meets an older man, Alex Theodopoulos, through a computer dating service, their unusual courtship takes them on a life journey neither could ever have imagined. Finding that they share a common bond, the two unlikely lovers find a way to accept each other’s differences.