Jean Stapleton stars as Eleanor Roosevelt in this made-for-TV biography, first telecast May 12, 1982. The film recounts Mrs. Roosevelt’s life after the 1945 death of her husband, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. At the request of new president Truman, Eleanor serves as a United Nations delegate, spending much of her time tilting with dedicated anti-FDR politico John Foster Dulles. She goes on to spearhead the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, proving to Dulles–and to Soviet delegate Freddie Jones–that she’s anything but soft on Communism.
Tag: 1980s
A documentary profiling a Japanese taiko drumming group based in the remote Sado Island, Japan. The film blurs the line between real-life documentary footage of the troupe’s training and practice regimes, and staged performances of their varied musical acts, with sets designed by artist Tadanori Yokoo and an additional experimental electronic music score by Toshi Ichiyanagi.
In Ulrike Ottinger’s contemporary reinvention of the famous morality tale, fin de siècle dandy Dorian Gray is reimagined as a drag role, played without comment on the switch by Veruschka von Lehndorff in the male lead. Ottinger’s collision of Oscar Wilde and Fritz Lang features Delphine Seyrig as one “Dr. Mabuse,” the head of a sinister multinational newspaper agency that conspires to create, control, and destroy celebrity figure Dorian Gray. The film is an odyssey through eye-popping tableaux, including a trip to an unforgettable underworld.
Danny Glover stars as Apples Finnerty, a low budget film director whose life is crumbling. Finnerty can’t get work, he’s been evicted, and his wife is unfaithful. As he drives in to the hills, he gets a flat. A “helpful” stranger turns out to be an armed robber. Apples kills his assailant in self-defense and switches identities with him, escaping his own disastrous past. Unfortunately, his new identity is in hot water with the mob.
Dennis Weaver stars in this TV movie as a blue-collar family man who has earned his own keep for 40 years. He holds down a well-paying job at a Massachusetts factory–until one day, when he is summarily dismissed. The reason? He has spent his adult life harboring a terrible secret: he has never learned to read or write.
During the Vietnam War era, the influx of American soldiers to Okinawa boosted the local economy and introduced many bars and nightclubs. With exhausting displays of energy, Yôichi Sai presents a whirlwind romance between a local rocker and the daughter of a mixed American-Okinawan marriage.
A young Welsh soldier serving with the British Army in Northern Ireland is imprisoned for shooting a civilian while overcome with panic during a street disturbance. Despite his claim that he was acting under orders the Army makes him a scapegoat following a public outcry.
A documentary on film director William Wyler (1902-1981), this feature was conceived by his daughter, Catherine, as a loving tribute to him. Utilizing a wealth of film clips, many in black and white, the movie features interviews with Bette Davis, Lillian Hellman, Audrey Hepburn, Charleton Heston, John Huston, Laurence Olivier, Gregory Peck, Ralph Richardson, Barbra Streisand, Billy Wilder, Talli (the former Margaret Tallichet) Wyler, and the director himself. Some of the best of the Hollywood commentary comes from Wyler himself, interviewed only a few days before he died in 1981.