“Unhappiness is our own invention. At times I’m sad that I lack the imagination for it.” ‘Madame de…’, directed by Max Ophüls in 1953, follows an unnamed aristocrat as she becomes involved in a love triangle during the Belle Époque in Paris. The shifting allegiances of her marriage and affair is charted through the journey…

“Thank you, thank you. Now, to do this feat, I must fill myself up like a tire. If a blood vessel should break, I would spit blood. For instance, in Milan a man weighing 240 pounds lost his eyesight doing this trick. That is because the optical nerves take a beating, and once you lose…

“Krystyna: So often, are you as a blazing torch with flames, of burning rags falling about you flaming, you know not if flames bring freedom or death. Consuming all that you must cherish if ashes only will be left, and want Chaos and tempest… Chelmicki: …Or will the ashes hold the glory of a starlike…

“We now might open a parenthesis on Odile’s, Franz’s and Arthur’s feelings… but it’s all pretty clear. So we close our parenthesis and let the images speak.” ‘Bande à part’, directed by Jean-Luc Godard in 1964, is a more accessible movie than his later ‘Pierrot le fou’, but includes many of the same anarchic and…

“Colonel: Marijuana isn’t a drug. Look at what goes on in Vietnam. From the general down to the private, they all smoke. Thévenot: As a result, once a week they bomb their own troops. Colonel: If they bomb their own troops, they must have their reasons.” ‘The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie’, directed by Luis…

“Cooper. Two coffins… No, maybe three.” ‘Yojimbo’, directed by Akira Kurosawa in 1961 is a truncated and less epic, but no less effective, version of ‘Seven Samurai’. It tells the story of a lone, nameless rōnin who finds himself embroiled in a power struggle in a small town. A precursor of Sergio Leone’s trilogy of…

“The inhuman thing about American TV is not so much that they hack everything up with commercials, though that’s bad enough, but in the end all programmes become commercials. Commercials for the status quo. Every image radiates the same disgusting and nauseated message. A kind of boastful contempt. Not one image leaves you in peace,…

‘High-Rise’, directed by Ben Wheatley in 2015, is an adaptation of a J. G. Ballard novel by a director known for his eclectic range and his distinctive style. It’s the story of Robert Laing, played by Tom Hiddleston, a psychiatrist in a version of the 1970s who moves into an apartment in a high-tech residential…