Category: Non-English Film

After killing the leader of his gang who had murdered the girlfriend he had been keeping secret, Edgar Flores runs away as a stowaway on a train heading to the United States. He meets an Honduran family also making the journey, trying not to develop a relationship with Paulina Gaitán who is travelling with her […]

Real life famous mistress of many well-known men Lola Montez, portrayed by the fantastic Martine Carol, is at last left to performing in a circus act that regales audiences with the details of her notorious life, which are told in flashbacks for movie viewers. While not my favorite of director Max Ophüls’s films that I’ve seen thus far, it presents a harsh take on celebrity, romance, and the treatment of women through the ages. The garish spectacle of the circus makes for a compelling parallel to Montez’s whirlwind life and a further parallel between how the men and world at large have treated her and so many others like her with the circus audience’s disregard for the humanity of the performers.

Parisian neighbors Micheline Presle and Georges Marchal have fallen in love but their parents’ long standing feud sits in the way of their long-term bliss. Enter cabaret star Josephine Baker and World War II with its necessary bomb shelter drills to bring the families together. A short and fluffy Romeo and Juliet tale, I really checked it out to see Baker in one of her film roles. She really lights up a screen, making everyone else, who are more than competent in their roles, dull in comparison.   

Upon meeting painter David Bursztein and his girlfriend Emmanuelle Béart, blocked fellow artist Michel Piccoli finds his creative spark renewed with a desire to use Béart as the model for a painting he was unable to finish long ago. A thorough reflection on the artistic process, it is four hours long and tedious. Full minutes go by where the only sound that is heard are scratches made on a sketch pad. In the end both the artist and his subject are broken and reborn in ways, but every grueling moment of that is felt by the viewer.