A family of aristocrats have fallen on hard times. To pay for repairs to their crumbling country chateau they are forced to use their home as a hotel. The local garage mechanic, Charlie, provides a constant stream of guests for them by sabotaging any car that arrives in his garage. The latest arrival is an important-looking man, Cesar Maricorne, accompanied by his two aides. When she learns that he is a gangster who has just robbed a bank, the aging Marquise realises that her family’s financial worries may be at an end.
Tag: 1960s
A sophisticated Hollywood film editor, on location for a film she is working on, falls for a local cowboy who is hired to work on the film.
In this thriller, an orphan with ESP is engaged to help solve the abduction of a wealthy Englishwoman by her aunt. The rich woman’s brother and the local cabbie believe in the girl’s mysterious talent. Therefore, they are terrified that she will lead the authorities to the woman’s corpse.
Jan Lenica’s semi-autobiographical movie about a life of a man under the number “44”. He experiences bureaucracy, abusive step-parents, oppression from the government and society. In the end, he tries to get away to the “lost paradise”.
Vivacious student Rita flees her boarding school with her music teacher, to whom she is engaged. She wants to take part in a singing contest, but her father, who is dead-set against it, has her kidnapped. He finally gives in when his wife threatens to sing in the contest herself.
A charming butterfly still cannot comprehend that its flutter from one flower to another can cause serious incidents. Indeed, its outline on the radar screen causes an alarm at a military base. A general sends his missiles to fight against a presumed aggressor. It was, of course, a misunderstanding and everything soon returns to normal. However, a bird directs itself towards the radar antennas. Everything begins all over again. Until when?
In just 14 minutes, Avraham Heffner’s short film successfully refines the confession of a quarrel and reconciliation between an ageing couple in late 1960s Tel Aviv. The heroine’s omnipresent, stream-of-consciousness narration provides a harsh account of life together. And though it is a short film, Slow Down was nonetheless hailed a harbinger of a new style of Israeli filmmaking and storytelling, while director Avraham Heffner himself admitted it was his favourite film. Based on a short story by Simone de Beauvoir (L’âge de discretion).
This colourful short animation traces the insecure protagonist’s path to tobacco addiction after he discovers, as a teengaer, that smoking can make him “cool”. His addiction follows him well into adulthood, until the scare of lung cancer forces him to face his demons. This funny yet cautionary tale is told by the protagonist as he sits on a psychiatrist’s couch, his recollections amusingly illustrated in colourful vignettes of his past. Both entertaining and visually rich, the film is a deterrent against smoking drawn in typical ’60s modernist/pop-art style.