Doctor Glas is told in the form of a journal. The main character is Dr. Glas, a physician. The antagonist is Reverend Gregorius, a morally corrupt clergyman. Gregorius’ beautiful young wife confides in Dr. Glas that her sex life is making her miserable and asks for his help. Glas, in love with her, agrees to help even though she already has another adulterous lover. He attempts to intervene, but the Reverend refuses to give up his “marital rights”- she must have sex with him whether she likes it or not (at the time, a wife was legally the property of her husband, and subsequently had no right to say no). So, in order to make his love happy, he begins to plot her husband’s murder.
Tag: 1960s
A BBC documentary portrait of Peter Sellers, filmed over a period of nine months in 1969 during the filming of his latest film The Magic Christian. Director Tony Palmer interviews Sellers and friends and associates about the actor’s career and life. At age 44, with 38 films already behind him, including Dr. Strangelove and two “Pink Panther” films, Sellers was then at the crest of his career. But his personal life, which included two bad marriages (and two more to come), a near-fatal 1964 heart attack, and increasingly disturbing personality disorders, was in tatters. His distrust of everyone, including Palmer, is evident here on-camera several times.
The first of Kawashima’s Daiei Studio collaborations with Wakao centers on the life of a Tokyo geisha named Koen and her relationships with various men. Starting out with no singing or dancing talents, the young, free-spirited Koen is initially eager to please and happy to do what she is told. With time and experience, however, she gradually begins to notice a change in herself and questions what she wants out of life. Played with subtle shifts in emotion, Wakao’s delicate performance earned her the Kinema Junpo Award and Blue Ribbon Award for Best Actress.
Fast-moving impressions of the Big Sur, the water, the ocean, and the Ladies, as part of the landscape, swimming, or running nude, against the sun or part of the sun.
In Budapest, two rival gangs of young boys lay claim to a vacant lot. The hostilities escalate yet never quite boil over into actual violence. Just when things do get out of hand, however, the problem is “solved” by the city government, which takes over the lot for future development.
Lena Horne’s famous song “Now!”, which was banned in the U.S. in the 1960s, was an angry call for struggle against racism. This film uses Horne’s song as the vehicle for a montage of film and photographic images from the U.S. civil rights movement. These images of racial struggle and oppression in the United States convey the heroism and pathos of the black protagonists of the Civil Rights movement, and the brutality of white police and Klansmen and the system they represent. Santiago Alvarez responds to the song’s escalating rhythm by moving between images to evoke the violence with which American society was being torn apart by white supremacy, and the intensity of the African-American struggle to right these injustices.
Jane Fonda rehearses for the stage play Fun Couple, which is her first starring role on Broadway. As the daughter of the famous Henry Fonda, Jane strives to prove her acting chops in live theater; for her, the real measure of success. The film follows Jane through demanding rehearsals, testing the play for live audiences and, finally, opening night in New York. Though her show opens to devastating reviews, Jane’s love of acting, her determination and her resilience shine through the biting criticism. Takes viewers backstage and behind the scences with a surprisingly endearing young actress. Jane captures the earliest stirrings of the star Jane Fonda would become.
A humorous and satirical comedy, which places a man from the year 2222 one day in the (then) present day life in GDR, East Germany under Communist regime. Using a crystal for mind reading he uncovers some improprieties and moral weaknesses in the “Beautiful future” professed by VEB (“Volkseigener Betrieb” – “State Owned Holdings”).