1980 – 1981 Season
Theater, Communication Arts Building, Howard Community College · 8:30 P.M. · Nine Fridays/Saturdays · $15.00
1980
Angi Vera
A subtle and memorable film from Hungary that explores the demoralizing effects of conformist pressure within a Communist society. A young woman, played by Veronika Papp, pleases the leadership with her frankness and is sent to a political re-education center for job advancement. In this environment, she learns her lessons too well, ultimately losing both her integrity and her happiness. Angi Vera is profound in its story, concise in its direction, and rich in its characterizations.
1980
A Simple Story
A portrait of an intelligent, divorced middle-class woman who, at age 39, is feeling vague discontents. In brief, glancing scenes of daily life, we identify with her concerns and become aware of time flowing by. Written and directed by Claude Sautet (César and Rosalie), the film was vitally acted and beautifully made. Romy Schneider won the French Oscar for her portrayal of the heroine.
1980
La Cage aux Folles
A French-Italian farce concerning the two most mismatched of families about to be united in matrimony. The bride's father heads a Union for Moral Order, while the groom's father has openly lived for twenty years with the drag-queen star of his transvestite revue. The story becomes affecting as well as amusing as the groom's family, for the sake of the son, tries to transform themselves into something they are not. Chaplinesque in its surface slapstick and its sly exposure of unexamined assumptions.
1981
Best Boy
The word documentary can't fully encompass what Ira Wohl has filmed of his 52-year-old, intellectually disabled cousin (Philly) and his aging parents. This is a family saga, often funny, about their courage and generosity as they struggle to overcome their interdependence. After his father dies during the three years of filming, his mother allows Philly a gradual separation, and he moves to a group home. Among the many awards this film has won is one titled "The Most Human and Moving Film of the Year."
1981
My Brilliant Career
An extraordinary young actress, Judy Davis, brilliantly plays a maverick and merry young woman from a poor family in the Australian outback at the turn of the century. At a time when a woman had to be either servant, teacher, or wife, she dares to pursue the lonely and uncertain career of writer, despite her love for a rich and handsome landowner. Her passionate desire to express her vision makes this exhilarating film far more than a feminist statement.
1981
The Tin Drum
An accomplished adaptation of the novel by Günter Grass — an anguished allegory about modern Germany as reflected in the eyes of little Oskar. The child is so disgusted by the brutality around him that he chooses to remain always a child with his toy drum and power in his piercing scream. In this unsentimental, harshly comic, and beautifully photographed film, David Bennent is sensationally effective in the role of Oskar.
1981
Wise Blood
This film is vintage Flannery O'Connor, true to her novel in both text and tone. A Southern Gothic tale of the delusions of true believers. Though the humor is dark, wonderful comic possibilities are realized as these characters, each with a fixed idea, are caught in monologue while they strain futilely for dialogue. The hero is a fanatic of negation, revealing his ultimate belief in his Church Without Christ. Director John Huston is at his best, and his cast captures the fable's matter-of-fact weirdness.
1981
Time After Time
This zestful thriller is a bizarre and imaginative confrontation between H. G. Wells and Jack the Ripper. Wells, who believes in a utopian future, has developed a time machine that is stolen by his friend, just identified as the Ripper. Wells leaves London of the 1890s and pursues him into San Francisco of 1979 to save his cherished future, only to find an age consumed in violence where Jack feels very much at home. Funny, romantic, and scary all at once.
1981
Blood Feud
Lina Wertmüller directs Sophia Loren, Marcello Mastroianni, and Giancarlo Giannini in her usual fashion of excess, juxtaposing the ludicrous and the grotesque against the truly sad. Set during the rise of Mussolini, a widow cries out for revenge after her husband's pointless death by the local leader of the Black Shirts. An ineffectual lawyer (Mastroianni) and a comical gangster (Giannini) become her allies. Underneath the often wildly funny comedy, we deal once again with Wertmüller's unchanging humanistic concerns.
1981 – 1982 Season
Theater, Communication Arts Building, Howard Community College & Wilde Lake High School · 8:30 P.M. · Nine Fridays/Saturdays · $15.00
1981
Breaker Morant
With overtones of irony and prejudice, this film depicts an historical incident involving three Australians fighting with the British during the Boer War. For following unwritten orders to execute their colonial prisoners, they become scapegoats in a military trial. Fast-paced in performance and composition, the trial is broken with flashbacks of fierce fighting and suddenly intimate close-ups. A stunning example of the high quality of recent Australian films which tap universal themes while exploring national history and culture.
1981
Kagemusha
A portrayal of war not as eulogy but as an event which men want, and in which, ironically, they sometimes achieve nobility. Directed by Kurosawa and set in 16th-century Japan, the plot concerns a thief who doubles for his dead warlord and gradually acquires the warlord's force of character and nobility of mind. An opulent work like a tapestry of chivalry, splendid in its sweep and beauty, fascinating in its detail.
1981
Mon Oncle d'Amérique
An intelligent, provocative film which juxtaposes the work of behavioral scientist Dr. Henri Laborit with the entangled dramas of three adults who illustrate his theories about the instinctual nature of human conduct. One of the best films of Alain Resnais (Hiroshima, Mon Amour), it is original, well-acted, beautiful, and often hilarious. The New York Film Critics gave this movie their Best Foreign Film of the Year Award.
1982
One Wild Moment
Love between a young girl and a middle-aged man is treated with candor and sympathy in this well-acted tale of two fathers vacationing with their 18-year-old daughters. The daughters ignore the conventions of their fathers, creating a familiar picture of parental anguish, until the unthinkable happens. The wild moment begins a true relationship with all the time-pathos implicit in a September Song love, with Freudian implications affecting each of the four characters.
1982
The Last Metro
Sweeping the French Oscars and causing a standing ovation at the New York Film Festival, Truffaut's study of collaboration and anti-Semitism during the Nazi occupation takes place backstage in a small Parisian theater. A respected German-Jewish stage director is forced to hide in the cellar while his wife copes with a pro-Nazi critic, the curfew, and her love for the new leading man. The story of the ruses and resourcefulness of daily life in a dangerous time — the small details of war.
1982
Return of the Secaucus Seven
A gentle, witty, and reflective social comedy about a group of people who grew up together in the counterculture and now, approaching 30, must ruefully accommodate to practicality and adulthood. Almost plotless, director John Sayles deals with character and continually changing relationships, achieving a rare ensemble performance by unknowns. The conversation seems ad-libbed, rather like eavesdropping on real people at a real reunion.
1982
Les Bons Débarras
A willful, intelligent 13-year-old seeks to dominate and keep for herself the love of her warm-hearted mother. Set in the Laurentian Mountains outside Montreal, this story of excess and the destructive power of love is both grimly realistic and poetic. The script relies on the development and exploration of character, as this amoral child manipulates her mother's guilt and drives away each challenger to her concept of paradise.
May 1, 1982
From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China
A strong, emotional undercurrent runs through this documentary of a symbolic meeting of two cultures. Listening to Western music was recently a crime in China, which explains the packed audiences and fervor of lessons during Isaac Stern's 1979 tour. Glimpses of Chinese culture are captured as well as the teaching process, the moment of illumination made tangible. Brilliantly made with breathtaking scenery, warm humanity, and glorious music.
1982
La Cage aux Folles II
Albin and Renato again, this time embroiled in a spy thriller that allows them even more range, ingenuity, and surprise than the first Cage. The farce turns on their efforts to escape the spy ring and the complex masquerades this requires of Albin — as well as his joy in them. This unique couple mirrors the pressures of heterosexual marriage and, in their exotic way, celebrates tenderness and ridiculousness in marriage.
1982 – 1983 Season
Theater, Communication Arts Building, Howard Community College & Wilde Lake High School · 8:30 P.M. · Nine Fridays/Saturdays · $15.00
1982
Heart to Heart
The most delightful movie to arrive from France in several years wryly chronicles in anecdotal style the tale of three sisters growing up before the worker and student rebellions of May 1968. Each girl, with very different dreams, suffers an unwanted pregnancy in late adolescence and deals with the problem in her own special way. One becomes a compulsive mother, one a battered wife, and the third chooses a life of uncertain independence. The underlying theme of the fraying of the family is handled delicately and with wit.
1982
My Dinner with Andre
A nourishing and delicious dinner conversation between playwright-actor Wallace Shawn and avant-garde theater director André Gregory is the unique plot of Louis Malle's latest film. Selectively recreated from hours of conversation, the two men play themselves — contrasts in reaction to the horrors of a deadened and technological world. André recounts his worldwide spiritual quest. His mysticism is a perfect foil for the pragmatic Wally, who has constructed a personal fortress from the simple enjoyable details of daily life. This philosophic dialogue about the meaning of life is provocative, sometimes irritating, but never dull.
1983
Man of Iron
Poland's Andrzej Wajda filmed this masterly and courageous fusion of fiction and documentary during the dramatic period in August 1980, when Solidarity established itself as a political force in Poland and a moral force in the world. Solidarity's story is told through the eyes of a once bold journalist, now a frightened hack. Sent to smear one of the strike's leaders, the reporter is caught between his fears of reprisal and his growing admiration of people who refuse to knuckle under. Winner of the Grand Prize at Cannes in 1981.
1983
Prince of the City
An authentic American tragedy created by Sidney Lumet from a real cop's experiences as an informer for the Knapp Commission. Treat Williams plays the tainted hero who further corrupts himself as he tries to expiate his crimes. His own lack of innocence plus his strong ties of loyalty to his partners cause him unbearable anguish as he is relentlessly caught up and crushed in the ambitions of other men. A perfectly paced, true horror story.
1983
Diner
A period piece set in Baltimore in 1959, concerning a group of young men in their early twenties — friends since high school — who cling to their old, comfortable camaraderie in late-night sessions at the Fells Point Diner. In the company of each other they can sound worldly and smart, but with girls they are constricted and fraudulent. Director Barry Levinson quietly reveals the depths of his wonderfully drawn characters, lingering over the psychologically telling moments.
1983
Diva
An audacious and brilliant thriller with romance as counterpoint. The story centers on an international opera star who refuses to be recorded, and an adoring postal messenger pursued because of an illegal tape he has made of her singing. The plot is further complicated when a tape about a vice ring accidentally comes into his possession. Director Jacques Beineix's first film is filled with fascinating contradictions in character and theme. It explodes in color, mixes style with chic hanky-panky, and is a great deal of fun.
1983
Pixote
This empathetic study of a 10-year-old wandering street boy from São Paulo shows the effect of childhood without nurture or affection. Pixote is swept up by the police into a brutalizing youth reformatory where he quickly learns to survive. Escaping with a gang, he drifts into murder — an "innocent" killer, not understanding the enormity of his acts. Shockingly lyrical, this Brazilian film has the appearance of a documentary but director Babenco is in perfect control of his terrifying subject matter.
1983
The Dark End of the Street
This strongly written movie moves at a chilling pace and portrays uncondescendingly the life of working-class people in the United States. Beginning with a meaningless tragedy, all the relationships in the young heroine's life are changed. To tell or not to tell — there is no right choice and only pain can result. Director Jan Egleson neither argues nor judges. This genuine moral dilemma is performed superbly by a mixed cast of professionals and beginners.
1983
Gregory's Girl
A new town in Scotland is the setting for a daft and charming social comedy concerning universal adolescent behavior patterns. The gawky and likable hero is infatuated with the adorable heroine who replaces him as center forward on the soccer team. Those amusingly awkward and self-conscious preliminaries to the mating game are both familiar and exotic seen with a Scottish flavor. Writer-director Bill Forsyth has a wry comic vision and shares with his hero an open-eyed sense of discovery as Gregory's romantic experiences develop.
1983 – 1984 Season
Theater, Communication Arts Building, Howard Community College & Wilde Lake High School · 8:30 P.M. · Nine Fridays/Saturdays · $15.00
1983
The Night of the Shooting Stars
Written and directed by the Taviani brothers (Padre Padrone), this is a tough-minded but warm-hearted memoir of a little girl in a Tuscan village during the brief interval of Nazi retreat before the rumored approach of the Allies. The girl is part of a disorganized band of villagers hurrying along hoping to reach the Americans in a desperate but joyous freedom-seeking adventure. In these authentic experiences, perceived through a child's eye and colored by the passage of time, we see the villagers' day of wrath and their survival.
1983
Three Brothers
In this modern folktale, an aged man summons his three sons home to the funeral of their mother. In the tormented dreams and debates they have in their childhood home, they expose differing humanistic commitments reflecting their personal urban worlds. They are contrasted to their old father, who represents the timeless values of peasant life. This profound and beautiful film is ultimately hopeful, for the brothers are troubled by the right problems and they do not give up in despair.
1983
Time Stands Still
The subject of this provocative, courageous, and enjoyable film is the troubled adolescence experienced by the generation following that of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. The all-encompassing political past and present shapes and distorts the typical teenage activities of romance and rebellion, accompanied by the insistent beat of Elvis and western rock — symbol of their fantasy of escape. Winner of the Best Foreign Language Film of 1982 by the New York Film Critics Circle.
1983
Tender Mercies
Bruce Beresford (Breaker Morant) directs his first American film — a simple, muted tale that finds its pace and meaning in the slow, plaintive tempo of rural Texas life. The story is about a once-successful country songwriter, now on the skids, who finds spiritual redemption and happiness through the love of a young woman. The entire cast gives an inspired performance in response to the effortless honesty of Robert Duvall's portrayal of the hero. Called the best American film of the year.
1984
La Traviata
A highly original conception of Verdi's passionate and tragic love story. Teresa Stratas sings Violetta, and the contrast she achieves between the two Violettas — one dying, the other a glamorous hostess bubbling with life — shows the wizardry of director Zeffirelli. Plácido Domingo is a charismatic Alfredo. The timing is natural and spontaneous, with each detail of the action corresponding to the music, recorded by the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus under James Levine.
1984
Muddy River
This lyrical and delicate first film by Kōhei Oguri is a study of relationships in the working-class world of a 10-year-old boy. The sorrows and harsh difficulties caused by the war color the lives of the adults around him and lead to his awakening from childhood innocence. His first experiences with death, courage, shame, and the transitoriness of friendship are deeply moving. Done with the artful eye for composition characteristic of Japanese films; Silver Medalist at the Moscow Film Festival in 1981.
1984
Moonlighting
Jerzy Skolimowski has directed a trenchant and sardonic comic-tragedy — winner of Best Screenplay at Cannes, 1982. Jeremy Irons provides a sensitive portrayal of the leader and only English-speaking member of a crew of Polish workmen illegally in England. Irons alone is aware that the Polish government has imposed martial law. From the moment he decides to withhold this vital fact from his fellow workmen, he begins the inevitable transition into a petty and brutal dictator. The analogy is clear.
1984
The Return of Martin Guerre
Based on a true story with the status of legend in France. In 1549, Martin Guerre — a callow and distant young man — leaves his wife and child. No word is heard from him. In 1557, a witty, educated, loving husband and father returns. Only several years later, when he claims family money, does anyone question his unusual transition. Deceptively simple, as are all great fables, this tale is actually complex and ambiguous, with modern social themes and a powerful love story. Gérard Depardieu is the second Martin.
1984
Local Hero
Writer-director Bill Forsyth (Gregory's Girl) has created a delicately charged comic atmosphere in this whimsical film. Mac, an ace mergers-and-acquisitions executive, is sent to buy a Scottish town in order to turn it into an oil refinery. Stranded in a fog-bound car overnight, he falls under a spell and enters the town without the will to dominate, open to happiness for the first time. Incongruities pile up, but by the end a kind of harmony triumphs over the demands of rationality.
1984 – 1985 Season
Theater, Communication Arts Building, Howard Community College · 8:30 P.M. · Nine Evenings · $15.00
1984
The Return of Martin Guerre
Based on a true story with the status of legend in France. In 1549, Martin Guerre leaves his wife and child with no word. In 1557, a witty, educated, loving husband and father returns — only years later questioned when he claims family money. Deceptively simple, as are all great fables, this tale is complex and ambiguous with modern social themes and a powerful love story. Gérard Depardieu is the second Martin.
1984
That Sinking Feeling
The first film by today's master of understated comedy, Bill Forsyth (Gregory's Girl, Local Hero). The hilarious story of some unemployed young men who steal sinks from a warehouse in the most charmingly inept heist in the history of such things. There is an irresistible blend in this Glasgow scene of sweetness, silliness, and social conscience.
1984
Lonely Hearts
Almost an Australian version of Marty, this delightful tale is about older and reticent lovers brought together by a dating service. She, belatedly leaving home, and he, released by the death of his adored mother, cautiously establish a relationship. Beautifully acted, the story is neither sentimental nor condescending. It tells the small, tender, and sometimes amusing details of romance in the slow lane.
1985
Yol
Filmed while writer and editor Yılmaz Güney was actually in a Turkish jail, and edited after his escape to Switzerland. Out of his own prison experiences and those told by fellow inmates, he created an epic. Starting in the jail, we follow five prisoners on a week's leave as they pick up the threads of their former lives. Turkey itself is seen as a metaphorical jail due to the bigotry and ignorance of its near-feudal society. A compelling film experience.
1985
Danton
A haunting study of the psychological contradictions and personal conflicts that superimpose themselves on the social decisions of revolutionary leaders. Ostensibly about the terror phase of the French Revolution, it is also a metaphor for the revolutions Wajda has observed in Eastern Europe. Gérard Depardieu gives a stunning performance as the life-loving Danton while his rival, the dictatorial Robespierre, is chillingly portrayed by Wojciech Pszoniak.
1985
Another Time, Another Place
A delightful film about three Italian prisoners-of-war sent to work in a Scottish island farming community at the end of World War II. Regarded suspiciously by most of the natives, one young woman is fascinated by their very differences, gradually coming to feel a shared bond with them as she senses her own imprisonment and longing for freedom. At times almost exotically moving, this film may grip you without warning.
1985
Entre Nous
A superb movie about two women, both of whom have made unsuitable marriages and much later find the fullness of life in the intensity of their friendship. With honesty and a gentle touch, director Diane Kurys reveals the largely unconscious cruelty of the women and the pain they inflict. She admires their bravery but deals fairly with the men also. Kurys took this story from her own parents' lives. A social comedy, but also a morally unsettling love story.
1985
Muddy River
This lyrical and delicate film by Kōhei Oguri is a study of relationships in the working-class world of a 10-year-old boy. The sorrows and harsh difficulties caused by the war color the lives of the adults around him and lead to his awakening from childhood innocence. Done with the artful eye for composition characteristic of Japanese films; Silver Medalist at the Moscow Film Festival in 1981.
1985
Fanny and Alexander
Bergman has called this his last film, and in it he has played all the notes in his repertoire. An epic family chronicle opening at an affectionate and colorful Christmas gathering, moving to the grey and evil home of Alexander's new stepfather, then on to the magical home of a close family friend, and ending full circle surrounded once again with the security and simple joys of family celebration. Bergman moves with a virtuoso's control from comedy to Gothic horror and on to psychological realism.
1985 – 1986 Season
Theater, Communication Arts Building, Howard Community College · 8:30 P.M. · Nine Evenings · $15.00
1985
The Purple Rose of Cairo
Woody Allen shows again his fascination with film and fantasy in this movie within a movie. Set in a small New Jersey town during the Depression, a young woman (Mia Farrow) finds escape from her drab life at the local movie house. Suddenly the hero steps out of the screen and sweeps her away, leaving chaos behind him. This delicate parody of an old film reveals the transcendent effect such films had on their audiences in the thirties — not so very long ago.
1985
Careful, He Might Hear You
A wrenching custody battle between two sisters over their young nephew, in this prize-winning Australian film. The boy, P.S., has been living happily with Lila and George in their modest home where the doors are always open. When P.S. is 6, his Aunt Nessa arrives — and in her mansion the doors are shut. This movie seems to say it doesn't matter what a child hears; he or she has already sensed all the truths, even the ones never spoken.
1985
Bizet's Carmen
Directed by Francesco Rosi, this is one of the most exciting opera films ever made. Set in Andalusia, the Spanish themes of love, honor, and ritual death are recreated. The opening bullfight scene foreshadows the story soon to unfold in music. Carmen (Julia Migenes-Johnson) is the temptress no man can possess, and Don José (Plácido Domingo) is the bull, lured into and destroyed by his unrequited passion. The visual images are so powerful that we hear this familiar opera once again with new understanding.
1986
A Sunday in the Country
Bertrand Tavernier uses a commonplace and uneventful plot about two grown children on a Sunday visit to their aging father to study the dramatic issues of risk versus security, of life's possibilities versus death in life. The old man, an academic artist, has won the Légion d'honneur but never dared to find his place in the dynamic art movements of his time. He knows he has let life pass him by. His children represent these warring tendencies within himself.
1986
Blood Simple
A bored wife and her lover, the jealous husband and his hired detective/killer are the characters in this maliciously entertaining Gothic tale of murder. In this amazing first film by Joel and Ethan Coen, a labyrinth of misunderstandings and double crosses creates a subtle and surprising plot which leads to a surreal and hair-raising conclusion. The striking and unforgettable images create the nightmare atmosphere of murder gone awry.
1986
The Shooting Party
The theme is the end of an era as a cross-section of English nobility gathers at Sir Randolph Nettleby's estate for a weekend shoot — a metaphor for the wars to come. James Mason plays superbly (in what became his last role) the distracted and eccentric host, an archetype of the English landed gentry and the embodiment of their values. As Winston Churchill said, "The old world in its sunset was fair to see."
1986
The Ballad of Narayama
An epic drama set a century ago in a remote northern Japanese village where the people are joined in continuous, precarious struggle with the natural elements. The story centers on Orin, a grandmother and the backbone of her family. She nears age 70 and it is time for her reluctant son to carry her to the mountaintop — a ritual considered essential for the survival of the next generation. The viewer comes to understand this bizarre and fascinating world with its mystical interludes, intense organic rhythms, and grim necessities. Winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1983.
1986
The Brother from Another Planet
Science fiction blends with social conscience in John Sayles' unconventional spoof about an extraterrestrial who can't go home — an outsider who looks (almost) like an insider. Ending up in Harlem, the Brother is regarded as either a crazy or a wino by the locals who help him find a job and a home. In a series of often-hilarious vignettes, he deals with the always-perplexing task of entering a new community. This gentle comedy is a delightful fable with an important moral.
1986
Man of Flowers
This likable, wry Australian film stars Norman Kaye as a charming deviant — a rich and middle-aged art collector with Victorian tastes who becomes inextricably caught up in the messy life of a young model and her trendy artist/lover. Director Paul Cox maintains a delicate balance between the quirky humor and the essential loneliness and privacy of the hero's fantasy life.
1986 – 1987 Season
Theater, Communication Arts Building, Howard Community College · 8:30 P.M. · Nine Fridays/Saturdays · $16.00
1986
Turtle Diary
This optimistic parable about freedom and imprisonment stars Glenda Jackson and Ben Kingsley as two lonely Londoners who spend their spare time watching the sea turtles at the zoo. Brought out of their shells somewhat by finding they both want to free the turtles, the analogy between the turtles and their liberators becomes very clear. Harold Pinter's wry and ironical script works by implication. The understated charm is reminiscent of Bill Forsyth's Local Hero.
1986
Dim Sum
Director Wayne Wang, an admirer of Ozu's chronicles of Japanese cultural change, attempts to capture the Americanization of the U.S. Chinese community. This process of cultural cross-fertilization is caught in wonderful pictorial images. A charming and quiet family comedy centering on the relationship of a proudly traditional mother and an assimilated but still obedient daughter. With small, telling gestures, Wang introduces most of us to a hidden corner of our country.
1986
Dreamchild
It is 1932, the year of the Lewis Carroll centenary. A haughty 80-year-old dowager, Alice Liddell Hargreaves — the Alice of Wonderland grown old — has come to receive an honorary degree from Columbia University. In this film fantasy she slips back into Wonderland confronting and acknowledging the love that the shy and stammering Reverend Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) had felt for her long ago. A treasure of a film, with wonderful performances by Coral Browne as Alice and Ian Holm as the dotty and touching Dodgson.
1987
The Official Story
The evil of Argentina under the Junta is revealed obliquely in this gripping, prize-winning story of a mother's relentless search for the truth about her adopted daughter. A subtle character study showing the gradual transformation of a woman who, at the beginning, is proud and conservative — a teacher of history absorbed in her family and their bourgeois life. In her awakening to the terrorism that had been around her, she recognizes her own complicity with it.
1987
When Father Was Away on Business
This 1985 Cannes winner is a nostalgic and bittersweet saga of a family trying to survive the state. Set in Yugoslavia during the early 1950s, most events are seen through the eyes of the youngest son. The philandering father is sent to a labor camp because of a stray remark to his jealous mistress. Part magic, part melodrama, and part political satire.
1987
Salvador
Based on the actual experiences of American photojournalist Richard Boyle in strife-torn El Salvador in 1980. The story and its protagonist are raw, compelling, and vivid. Irresponsible and crude at the outset, Boyle sobers up when confronted with the incredible magnitude of suffering in this tortured country. James Woods plays Boyle with nervous energy and self-mocking wit. Director Oliver Stone has caught the essential truth with his documentary style.
1987
The Makioka Sisters
The setting is Osaka and the year is 1938 in this lyrical adaptation of Tanizaki's novel about four sisters facing the erosion of traditional social structures and the loss of their family fortune. The youngest sister dresses in Western clothes and starts a business while the next sister refuses her suitors. Directed by Kon Ichikawa — an elegant, ironic, and involving elegy to a passing society.
1987
My Beautiful Laundrette
Hanif Kureishi has written a rambunctious and vivid socio-economic satire about upper-class Pakistani immigrants who have become the exploiters in the land that once exploited them. The 18-year-old hero is torn between the values of his defeated father and those of his cynical but successful uncle. Set up in the laundromat business, he draws in an old English school friend, now a street tough. Their gay relationship is the only hopeful element in this portrayal of the racist and ever-narrowing world at the bottom of England's working class.
1987
Kaos
Four pastoral parables, loosely taken from Pirandello, have been transformed by the talented Taviani brothers as they explore the relationship between man and the land. Linked by the symbol of a raven with a bell around its neck, the four haunting tales include a tragic melodrama, an erotic folktale, a farcical fairy tale, and a last testament, ending with an elegiac epilogue about Pirandello himself. All are set in turn-of-the-century Sicily, a land of dazzling and sinister landscapes.
1987 – 1988 Season
Theater, Communication Arts Building, Howard Community College · 8:30 P.M. · Nine Fridays/Saturdays · $16.00
1987
Thérèse
Alain Cavalier's moving and austere film about St. Thérèse of Lisieux uses a stark, minimalist cinematic style to create sensuous images. This quiet, lovely biography tells of a young French girl of 15 who gets special permission to enter the rigorous Carmelite order, adapting so cheerfully that she is resented by her peers. Her fervor is untouched by the tuberculosis from which she dies at age 24 in 1897. A rare work of art.
1987
The Great Wall
Peter Wang directed this low-keyed comedy of manners in which he plays his own alter ego, Leo Fang — a computer executive who takes his family to Beijing to meet their Chinese relatives after a separation of thirty years. An endless stream of beautifully realized vignettes creates real people with depth and contradictions. He shows without commentary what happens when the two cultures collide, as when the Americans are awed by The Great Wall but then begin to teach touch football on its ancient walkways.
1987
Tampopo
A delicate and often hilarious satire that director Juzo Itami calls a "noodle western." An essay with comic digressions as well as a narrative about Tampopo (her name means Dandelion), a youngish widow who aspires to reach the top in noodle making — stealing recipes, confronting rivals, and consulting gourmet street people who know about noodles from the best trashcans. This buoyant comedy has an excellent cast, some of whom may be familiar from the films of Kurosawa and Ozu.
1988
Men
An entertaining social satire by West German filmmaker Doris Dörrie, in which a successful and self-centered advertising executive is enraged to discover his wife loves someone else. He becomes the roommate of her bohemian lover. Motivated to regain his wife, he gradually turns the lover into another version of himself — thus ending the wife's fascination with him. This playful and perceptive comedy resists predictable conclusions.
1988
The Assault
Toward the end of World War II, a Dutch family sees the murder of a Nazi collaborator outside their window and the body being dragged into their yard. Summarily shot, except for 12-year-old Anton, who is jailed, this nightmarish scene haunts him thirty years later. We see the story in bits and pieces until the puzzle is complete. For this man, the past has never been past. Directed by Fons Rademakers; winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
1988
Summer
In this haunting story of loneliness, a Paris secretary recently left by her boyfriend moves about on her vacation, unable to find happiness in herself or her life. She decides she has no inner life and seeks the moment of insight in the green flash described by Jules Verne. Director Éric Rohmer reveals his characters in the choices they make, and gradually, as we watch this young woman, we realize we are witnessing true anguish of the heart. Rohmer has transformed a search for a vacation into a spiritual odyssey.
1988
Withnail and I
Down and out in a seedy London flat, two unemployed actors eventually seek harmony and fresh air at Withnail's uncle's country cottage. Withnail, dashing and sensitive, is a master of self-dramatization — a ruling principle for end-of-the-Sixties characters. Marwood (the "I" in the title) will outdo this master in what he calls his Withnail period and find a legitimate job by the end of the film. Meanwhile there is no harmony at the randy, sodden uncle's home, but there is much amusement — often hilarity — for us.
1988
My Life as a Dog
When life becomes unendurable for 12-year-old Ingemar, he gets down and barks like a dog. Because his beautiful mother is dying of tuberculosis, he is sent to his uncle in a rural Swedish village. There, baffled and traumatized, he comforts himself by reading of other disaster victims. He meets many eccentric adults and has an intense, bittersweet romance with his tomboy boxing partner. This gentle coming-of-age film emphasizes the wisdom and resilience of childhood.
1988
Jean de Florette
More successful in its first week in New York City than any other foreign film had ever been, Gérard Depardieu and Yves Montand give magnificent performances in this first part of a two-movie adaptation of an epic novel by Marcel Pagnol. A gullible city man brings his family south to farm his inheritance of rocky soil. His seemingly helpful neighbors have hidden the spring, however, and his plans have been doomed from the start. A story that pulsates with primal emotions as it moves relentlessly towards its tragic ending. It leaves the viewer longing for Part II.
1988 – 1989 Season
Theater, Communication Arts Building, Howard Community College · 8:30 P.M. · Nine Fridays/Saturdays · $20.00
1988
Manon of the Spring
Marcel Pagnol's tragic melodrama of love and revenge can stand alone or be seen as a sequel to Jean de Florette. Manon, older now and unbelievably beautiful, begins her revenge all unknowingly when she causes the half-witted Ugolin to fall madly in love with her. Before she is done she has gained retribution against all who wronged her father; good has been rewarded and evil punished. Claude Berri has directed a full-blooded and old-fashioned folk epic. Daniel Auteuil won a César for his performance of Ugolin.
1988
Maurice
A melodrama of sexual awakening and loneliness, James Ivory's exquisite screen translation of the novel E. M. Forster felt was his best. Personal feelings prevail over the cruel, repressive strictures of society amidst glorious Edwardian settings. Maurice arrives at Cambridge only to discover his homosexuality as his platonic relationship with Clive deepens and grows. After graduation, Clive compromises his true feelings and marries. Maurice can't. Edwardian England was a prison under rainy skies for the unconventional.
1988
The Dead
John Huston's last film before his death has caught the beauty and spirit of James Joyce's finest and final story in The Dubliners. All his major themes are here: the paralysis Joyce felt inherent in Irish life, the sense of betrayal felt by the hero, and the interaction between the living and the dead. Set on a snowy evening at an annual Epiphany Day party, the hero moves through the infinite detail of such an event only to meet real despair with his wife's revelation of her memory of her long-dead lover. Anjelica Huston is excellent playing the wife.
1989
A Taxing Woman
Juzo Itami has turned his satirical eye to the Japanese obsession with money and the national reluctance to pay high taxes. His heroine is an ardent tax collector fanatically determined that everyone must pay whatever the cost in human despair. The anti-hero is an implacable, unscrupulous, and lively miser who celebrates his financial successes with lust. Itami concentrates on the incredible lengths to which the victims of any passion are driven and on the fascinating similarity of their behavior however opposed their fixed ideas.
1989
Babette's Feast
Gabriel Axel won an Oscar giving cinematic life to Isak Dinesen's story of two aging women living lives of service and self-denial to their late father's ever-diminishing Protestant congregation on the gray coast of the Jutland peninsula. Assisting them is a secretly vibrant refugee, Babette — an artist of the palate who has lost her natural audience. Her gift of a magnificent and sensuous feast fills her benefactors with fear of sin but, ironically, allows them to momentarily live their faith more fully. Apparent opposites are reconciled in this witty fable.
1989
A World Apart
Written by the daughter of two anti-apartheid activists, this powerful film is a grim story of courage, commitment, and loss based on her actual experiences as a 13-year-old girl in South Africa in 1963. Her parents' cause is already her cause, yet it also competes for their devotion. When her father is forced to flee in the night and her mother (Barbara Hershey) is imprisoned, the community turns its back on her. Told without pretension, it is poignant to realize these sacrifices were made twenty-five years ago. The female leads shared the Best Actress award from Cannes.
1989
Wings of Desire
Written by Peter Handke and directed by Wim Wenders, this metaphysical fairy tale is a celestial tribute to earthly pleasures. We watch two angels follow humans about, observing their plights and overhearing their thoughts with sympathy — yet they can't enter in. Living forever yet never truly experiencing life seems boring and incomplete, a black-and-white existence, to the angel played by Bruno Ganz. Only by accepting mortality as the price of living will life take on the full range of color. An enchanting fable filled with eerie beauty.
1989
Boyfriends and Girlfriends
This delightful study of young love is the last in Éric Rohmer's series Comedies and Proverbs. Only the surface is placid as four mismatched lovers analyze and discuss their own and each other's motives, with subsequent actions often contradicting their thoughts so recently expressed. A central issue is to whom one owes loyalty — an old friend or a lover. The answer is decided in favor of passion as the couples exchange partners. A charming film set in our sister city, Cergy-Pontoise.
1989
Au Revoir les Enfants
Set in a Catholic boys' boarding school in Occupied France in the cold winter of 1943–44, Louis Malle recreates the traumatic experience of his boyhood. The monks are hiding Jewish children among their largely privileged student body. Julien (the young Malle) feels challenged at first when he meets one of them, Bonnet. Gradually, overcoming volatile moments, they experience their first real friendship. But the war bursts in and with it the moment for which Malle can't forgive himself. It's hard not to see the parallel between the commonplace bullying of a school and the ultimate cruelties of a fascist regime.
1989 – 1990 Season
Theater, Communication Arts Building, Howard Community College · 8:30 P.M. · Nine Fridays/Saturdays · $20.00
1989
Pelle the Conqueror
This powerful film version of a Danish national epic tells the tale of a recent widower and his 12-year-old son emigrating from Sweden to Denmark at the turn of the century. Seeking the proverbial better life, they find instead further suffering and exploitation as agricultural workers on aptly named Stone Farm. Many extraordinary secondary characters back up Max von Sydow's elemental portrayal of the father and Pelle Hvenegaard's sensitive performance as the son.
1989
Salaam Bombay!
This film won prizes in Montreal and at Cannes and caused a standing ovation in honor of its young director, Mira Nair. With a background in documentaries, she chose real street children as her cast, giving them seven weeks of training and allowing them to reshape the story. The film centers on 10-year-old Krishna alone in the red light district of Bombay. His commitment to friends seems nearly a miracle because survival in this environment would seem to demand total self-absorption. These rootless, sometimes resilient, sometimes doomed children speak to us of a central issue of our time.
1989
Boyfriends and Girlfriends
This delightful study of young love is the last in Éric Rohmer's series Comedies and Proverbs. Four mismatched lovers analyze and discuss their own and each other's motives, with subsequent actions often contradicting their thoughts. A central issue is to whom one owes loyalty — an old friend or a lover. The answer is decided in favor of passion as the couples exchange partners. A charming film set in our sister city, Cergy-Pontoise.
1990
High Hopes
A witty and gentle pair of lovers is the center of this fresh and searching satiric comedy which bases its humor on the what's-in-it-for-me spirit of Margaret Thatcher's England. These lovers aren't sanctimonious in their regrets about society; rather they're delightfully odd as they interact with family members and neighbors who have usually accepted the newer, less generous values. Bouncing back and forth from farce to social realism, this is a series of social moments we share along the way in lives very honestly portrayed.
1990
Chocolat
A diffident young woman wanders through West Africa falling into memories of her childhood in the French colony of Cameroon. Claire Denis is an astonishing first-time director weaving a subtle story with small moments and ravishing moods, using instantly recognizable images to wordlessly suggest conscious and unconscious realities in the foreboding quiet of this isolated outpost. The emotional core of the film is her adult recognition of the constant humiliations endured by the family's young houseboy, and his dignified response to them.
1990
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
An exuberant and hilarious farce beginning in the highly charged moment when a woman is abandoned by her lover, and continuing as she faces one emotional complexity after another and the bizarre coincidences multiply. Pepa, the feisty heroine played by Carmen Maura, has a sense of double vision: ultimately alone and trapped by her emotions, yet also one of life's multitudinous helpless victims. Humor and compassion are equal in this effervescent film as it yields its delightful riot of small and sunny explosions.
1990
Murmur of the Heart
Louis Malle's sensitive and affectionate reminiscence of his own coming of age. With sharp observation and keen detail, the insular French upper-middle class before Dien Bien Phu is revealed in this family with its untroubled warmth and jokes. The two older brothers are "educating" the 15-year-old Laurent when illness requires him to visit a health spa with his mother. The unexpected and tender conclusion to his education made this film a cause célèbre in France; its re-release proves it to be a gently humorous and enchanting film classic.
1990
Sex, Lies, and Videotape
Twenty-six-year-old Steven Soderbergh's mesmerizing first feature. Winner of the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, the film turns intimacy into art. Soderbergh described it as an effort to explore the ulterior motives inherent in many relationships, while keeping one eye cast on the often painful humor found there as well. An acclaimed work of cinematic chamber music, scored for four young instruments, tightly strung.