In the final days of World War II, a German military unit sets out to liquidate the inhabitants of a lunatic asylum. At the last minute, a German officer called Windisch arrives in civilian attire, with altogether different orders. He must find a British spy who is, according to the anonymous letter he has received, hiding amongst the patients.
Tag: 1960s
The film shows the history of the Neapolitan popular revolt against the invading Germans during World War II. During the four days in Naples, the revolt turns over in just a few hours. Neapolitans slung on rifles and guns or armed themselves with stones, house-objects, gasoline-bottles, anything and everything, anonymous and silent. Gennarino Capuozzo, a 10-year-old killed on a barricade while he was fighting against the invaders, is remembered as a hero.
In a small French town, Flora has a six-week fling with a soldier. But this is no passionate affair. Her lover, the cartoonish Charles, ignores her advances, insists she watch as he drinks bowl after bowl of the expensive coffee she prepares for him, and berates her if lunch is not made on time. Increasingly depressed, Flora is drawn to nature, and finds she has a much greater affinity for plants than for people.
“The Chair” by Daniel Szczechura is a brilliant animated political satire depicting the timeless mechanism of the struggle for power. In a monumental hall, a meeting is underway – one seat at the presidential table remains empty. The candidates, shown from a bird’s-eye view as abstract, moving figures, compete ruthlessly, using tricks and underhanded tactics to win the titular chair. The film, made using cutout animation techniques, suggestively employs graphic simplicity, irony, and distance.
The long and flamboyant career of the French filmmaker is depicted in Abel Gance: The Charm of Dynamite, a documentary created for the BBC by film historian and Abel Gance scholar Kevin Brownlow. A Blue Ribbon winner at the American Film Festival of 1976, this documentary, along with Brownlow’s history of silent film The Parade’s Gone By and his restoration of Gance’s 1927 Napoleon, was instrumental in bringing Gance’s cinematic genius to a new generation of film enthusiasts.
György Kovásznai transposes this Jules and Jim-inspired love triangle into his own world, centering it on a circle of young intellectuals who drift through the streets of Budapest and gather in cafés. The film imitates the personal tone of the diaries with the use of painted black and white photo retouching.
The line between genuine love and violent obsession is blurred when a man falls for a girl and proceeds to tie her up with rope to him, making her follow him around and bend to his whims until tragedy ultimately befalls them both.