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Torre Bela
(1975)
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Serge Daney
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Torre Bela is first of all an extraordinary document, the kind that is sometimes produced in the center of a struggle or an an extreme situation, when the determination to "continue to film" prevails over all of the ideas... of the person filming.
Posted Nov 29, 2023
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Eskimo Limon
(1978)
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Serge Daney
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In the future, beware of Golan-Globus productions.
Posted Nov 29, 2023
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The Pied Piper
(1972)
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Serge Daney
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With this English film, beautiful and inexplicably unprecedented, Demy refines his mythology.
Posted Nov 29, 2023
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Night of the Living Dead
(1968)
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Serge Daney
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Clumsily shot, awkwardly acted and as for being scary, completely ineffective.
Posted Oct 04, 2023
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The Kingdom of Naples
(1978)
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Serge Daney
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A completely astonishing film by Werner Schroeter.
Posted Oct 04, 2023
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In Cold Blood
(1967)
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Serge Daney
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In Cold Blood, designed to disturb, reassures, designed to bewilder, dots every i (and uses a hammer to do it).
Posted Oct 04, 2023
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A Song of Love
(1950)
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Serge Daney
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Compared to this silent film, produced in 1950 by the writer Jean Genet and banned for the following twenty-five years, most films with "love" in the title are likely to be seen for what they are: a sham.
Posted Oct 04, 2023
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Son of Blob
(1972)
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Serge Daney
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Once again, a parody is less effective than what it parodies.
Posted Oct 04, 2023
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Inspector Blunder
(1980)
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Serge Daney
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Coluche has such a strong onscreen presence (like all actors who come from cabaret) that we are not bored by Inspector Blunder, and of course we laugh at it. And yet, although it is not a terrible film, it is a weak one.
Posted Oct 04, 2023
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My Sister My Love
(1966)
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Serge Daney
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Every face is an open book, but there might be nothing in it to read. Since Stiller, we have rarely seen a filmmaker discover, patiently, the beauty of faces in this way, like something to earn, to conquer.
Posted Oct 04, 2023
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Daisies
(1966)
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Serge Daney
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Madness follows austerity, arbitrariness follows discipline, an orgy of colors follows gray. The inconsistencies in the story, the strangeness of the setting feel effortlessly modern, as does the extremely original use of photography.
Posted Oct 04, 2023
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Who's Minding the Store?
(1963)
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Serge Daney
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Exemplary in its subject, rigorous in its style, troublesome in what eludes it.
Posted Oct 04, 2023
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The Departure
(1967)
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Serge Daney
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Skolimowski has concealed the threads of his story even more deftly in The Departure than in his previous films . And so he proves that he can succeed at almost anything: for example, a commercial film.
Posted Oct 04, 2023
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Katerina Izmailova
(1969)
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Serge Daney
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A Shostakovich, rightfully unsung and certainly unnecessary to wrench from oblivion.
Posted Oct 04, 2023
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Incubus
(1966)
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Serge Daney
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What remains is two films in one -- with none of Private Property's charms -- a parable and a horror film, both failures.
Posted Oct 04, 2023
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Warrendale
(1967)
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Serge Daney
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Because he takes his premise to the limit, King, surpassing the small, scattered beauties that would have satisfied less demanding filmmakers, achieves the rigor of observation.
Posted Oct 03, 2023
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Bluebeard's Eighth Wife
(1938)
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Serge Daney
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Lubitsch has rarely come so close to zaniness... Made by a man who is confident about himself and his merchandise, the film is no longer about focusing on a flame that consumes itself, but of gathering up, here and there, left and right, the sparks.
Posted Oct 03, 2023
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Three Days and a Child
(1967)
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Serge Daney
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The relationship between Eli and the child is portrayed with an accuracy that is all the more satisfying since it would have been easy to slip into mawkishness or pathos (depending on whether we pity the hero's dark thoughts or the child's innocence).
Posted Oct 03, 2023
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The Unknown Man of Shandigor
(1968)
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Serge Daney
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Jean-Louis Roy's overt ambition to make a comic-strip [is] courageous. But it is strange that no one asked the question of whether the comic strip, when translated to the screen, loses its essential charm (if only that of being drawn).
Posted Oct 03, 2023
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Closely Watched Trains
(1966)
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Serge Daney
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Menzel has the distinction of never raising his voice (choosing a resolutely monotone, neutral tone) and of casting the same gaze, cold and amused, over everything. That dryness is both its value and its limit, which is quickly reached.
Posted Oct 03, 2023
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I Am Curious (Yellow) (Jag är nyfiken - en film i gult)
(1968)
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Serge Daney
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Vilgot Sjöman resembles a modern filmmaker -- in that he constantly questions cinema's powers -- but he gives modernity a theoretical and lifeless vision that leaves at best the bland aftertaste of a good deed (in capital letters) performed under duress.
Posted Oct 03, 2023
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Taggart
(1965)
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Serge Daney
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The film [suffers] from a tedious and predictable monotony from which the from which the beauty of a landscape, on occasion, emerges.
Posted Oct 02, 2023
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The Road to Fort Alamo
(1964)
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Serge Daney
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What strikes those unfortunate enough to see this film is its desire for
authenticity at all costs, its efforts to make us forget the artifice of the endeavor. Tiny details succeed, but cannot make up for a non-existent whole.
Posted Oct 02, 2023
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The Bridge on the River Kwai
(1957)
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André Bazin
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There are very few examples each year of cinematic enterprises that are carried out with such intelligence and above all with such care. But the quality of this film must ultimately be put in its artistic place, and that place is not the highest.
Posted Jun 15, 2023
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Who's Got the Black Box
(1968)
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Serge Daney
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[Alfred Hitchcock] has closed the doors behind him, slamming them shut, leaving Chabrol behind, an illusionist without illusions, bearer of a glittering, empty trousseau.
Posted Jun 13, 2023
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The Gold of Naples
(1954)
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André Bazin
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As for the professional actors, it would be an understatement to say that De Sica brings out the best in them: he reconstitutes them entirely.
Posted Jun 12, 2023
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The Mystery of Picasso
(1956)
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André Bazin
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The Picasso Mystery is [Clouzot's] most revealing work, for this filmmaker’s genius appears here in its purest state by taking itself to the limit.
Posted Jun 12, 2023
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Heaven Over the Marshes
(1949)
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André Bazin
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It is to Genina’s credit that he made a hagiography that doesn’t prove anything, above all not the sainthood of the saint. Herein lies not only the film’s artistic distinction but also its religious one.
Posted Jun 12, 2023
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The Forbidden Christ
(1951)
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André Bazin
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I believe that such indeed is the paradox of this astonishing film: that it should so deeply bear the mark of a personality which is almost deprived of nobility and that it should be a great film all the same.
Posted Jun 12, 2023
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Diabolique
(1955)
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André Bazin
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What is certain is that Clouzot has achieved 100 percent of his goal and that the viewer cannot help but experience all the emotions the director has prepared for him, as if along a scenic highway.
Posted Mar 29, 2023
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Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
(1975)
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Danièle Dubroux
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All familiar things, the house, the home, become instances of the 'unheimlich' (bloodstained hands, darkness, silence), the kind of horror that is attached to things we have known for a long time, that we have under control.
Posted Dec 07, 2022
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King Kong
(1933)
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Claude Ollier
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King Kong, a masterpiece of the fantastic and certainly one of the finest and most disturbing examples ever made, recalls a period in cinema when every true audacity was permitted and often inscribed on the screen.
Posted Nov 08, 2022
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The Goddess
(1958)
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André Bazin
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The method in Chayefsky's scripted films is transcendent; it's the essence of the human condition that is being examined and questioned in the context of American civilization.
Posted Oct 13, 2022
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Caged
(1950)
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André Bazin
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All of these qualities give the film a unity of tone and style that we don't run into so frequently.
Posted Oct 13, 2022
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The Path of Hope
(1950)
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André Bazin
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One of the most beautiful postwar Italian films on the eminently epic, and hence cinematic, theme of the journey to the Promised Land.
Posted Oct 13, 2022
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Leap Into the Void
(1980)
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Serge Daney
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Certainly, the filmmaker's talent remains intact and this Leap Into the Void is rich in filmic events big and small, which make it never boring, but rather fastidious.
Posted Oct 12, 2022
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When Time Ran Out
(1980)
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Serge Daney
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Here, it's a volcano that devotes itself to spewing some lava on a four-star hotel that a developer, mad with ambition, has built on a Pacific atoll. Naturally, this developer is the only slightly interesting character in the film.
Posted Oct 12, 2022
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The Miser
(1980)
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Serge Daney
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Louis de Funès has co-directed a hideous Miser with Jean Girault that falls far below aesthetics' minimum wage.
Posted Oct 12, 2022
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Die Schweizermacher (The Swissmakers)
(1978)
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Serge Daney
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All of the slightly harrowing scenes (interrogations of future Swiss citizens: an Italian, a Yugoslavian and a German) are filmed from a most unimaginative and crude point of view.
Posted Oct 11, 2022
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Saturn 3
(1980)
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Serge Daney
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[Donen] has not made a good film, certainly, but he has not managed to make an entirely impersonal one, either.
Posted Sep 14, 2022
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Accident
(1967)
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Serge Daney
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Accident is a vain and over-stylized film of relentless aesthetic stringency.
Posted Sep 14, 2022
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Rue de l'Estrapade
(1952)
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Michel Dorsday
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While Becker has affirmed himself as one of the very best of French filmmakers, he and Annette Wademant -- like Mlle. de Scudery -- have sought to please, in the full and germane sense of the French 17th century. They have marvelously succeeded.
Posted Jun 08, 2022
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Steak
(2007)
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Stéphane Delorme and Jean-Philippe Tessé
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Steak leaves us slack-jawed and wide-eyed.
Posted Jun 08, 2022
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O saisons, ô châteaux
(1958)
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Jean-Luc Godard
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It is as good as anything you are likely to see in the genre of fashionable splendour, or vice versa... If one is going to praise Agnès Varda to the skies, it should be for O saisons, ô châteaux.
Posted Jun 08, 2022
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Goha
(1958)
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Jean-Luc Godard
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Baratier’s mistake has been to present us not with Goha, but a documentary about Goha. Luckily for him and for us, it’s an engaging mistake.
Posted Jun 07, 2022
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A Simple Story
(1959)
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Jean-Luc Godard
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You may not like Une Simple Histoire, and you may be right. But if you don’t go to see it, you will certainly be making a mistake.
Posted Jun 07, 2022
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The Lusty Men
(1952)
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Jacques Rivette
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Nicholas Ray has always offered us the story of a moral dilemma where man emerges as either victor or vanquished, but ultimately lucid: the futility of violence, of all that is not happiness and which diverts man from his innermost purpose.
Posted Jun 07, 2022
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Flammes
(1978)
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Serge Bozon
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How do you achieve that nocturnal resonance that haunts films like a secret? Answer: through mise en scène, or rather mise en rumeur -- putting into rumor -- that ability to obtain maximum attention from the spectator.
Posted Jun 06, 2022
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The Rendez-Vous of Déjà-Vu
(2013)
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Cyril Béghin
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In describing Mack Sennett, Robert Desnos wrote that “burlesque is the most disconcerting form of lyricism.” The Rendez-Vous of Déja Vu is welcome evidence of Desnos’s observation.
Posted Jun 06, 2022
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The Tree, the Mayor and the Mediatheque
(1992)
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Antoine de Baecque
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What The Tree, the Mayor, and the Mediatheque teaches us is more than a study of political discourse. It is the art of telling stories, an art full of ifs.
Posted Jun 06, 2022
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