“See? You said last night you couldn’t live without me, but you can. Romeo couldn’t live without Juliet, but you can.” ‘Breathess’, directed by Jean-Luc Godard in 1960, is a French crime thriller and one of the founding movies of the French New Wave. Jean-Paul Belmondo plays Michel Poiccard, a criminal in Marseille, obsessed with…

“Once, when all my shorts were at the laundry, I put on silk panties that belonged to my sister. Ah! Some funny sensation it gave me! From that day on I understood why they all crave it, why they never have enough. Because we men, we have pants on. But girls, with their short dresses,…

First published on ‘We Are Cult’ on the 27th of March 2017 The BFI are releasing on DVD two early Martin Scorsese movies on the 27th of March: Who’s That Knocking at My Door from 1968 and Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore from 1974. The two films are different, tonally, stylistically and in terms of…

‘Les Bicyclettes de Belsize’, directed by Douglas Hickox in 1968, is a short British romantic vignette starring Judy Huxtable and Anthony May as a fashion model and a young man obsessed with her. May plays a cyclist who, after colliding with a billboard, becomes smitten with a girl. After a series of searches they finally…

“He chose you, honey! From all the women in the world to be the mother of his only living son!” ‘Rosemary’s Baby’, directed by Roman Polanski in 1968, is an American horror movie starring Mia Farrow as the titular Rosemary, the wife of an aspiring actor called Guy, played by John Cassavetes. Rosemary and Guy…

“No horseguards, no palaces, but Islington’s Chapel Market, pie shops, and Spitalfields tenements. Carnaby chicks and chaps, the 1967 we have been led to remember, are shockingly juxtaposed with feral meths drinkers, filthy shoeless kids, squalid Victoriana. Camden Town still resembles the world of Walter Sickert. There is romance and adventure, but mostly there is…

“Where is the beginning? But what beginning? God created heaven and earth. But one should be able to put it better. To say that the limits of language, of my language, are those of the world, of my world, and that in speaking, I limit the world, I end it. And when mysterious, logical death…

“The finished film is disturbing, contains unsimulated violent acts and is not very audience-friendly.” Either a strong disrecommendation or a strong recommendation, depending on your proclivities. And if none of that draws you, maybe the soundtrack including Martha and the Vandellas, The Kinks, The Rolling Stones, and the The Isley Brothers will. Did Warhol pay to…

“No, you’re not ugly. You’re not the fairest of them all, but you’re neither ugly nor stupid. You have plenty of time. You think you’re in love, but love is something different. You do not just fall in love with a face in the street.” ‘Les Parapluies de Cherbourg’, directed by Jacques Demy in 1964,…

“Mam called me barmy when I told her I fell of a gasometer for a bet. But I’m not barmy, I’m a fighting pit prop that wants a pint of beer, that’s me. But if any knowing bastard says that’s me I’ll tell them I’m a dynamite dealer waiting to blow the factory to kingdom…

“I’ll tell you the story of Ramakrishna and his disciple. Ramakrishna was a Hindu wise man. And he had a disciple who had absolutely no faith in his teachings. So the disciple went off all by himself. Fifteen years later, he came back and said, “I have found the Way!” He told Ramakrishna, “Come, and…

“You know, I got a hunch, fat man. I got a hunch it’s me from here on in. One ball, corner pocket. I mean, that ever happen to you? You know, all of a sudden you feel like you can’t miss? ‘Cause I dreamed about this game, fat man. I dreamed about this game every…

“I thought my ideas were so clear. I wanted to make an honest film. No lies whatsoever. I thought I had something so simple to say. Something useful to everybody. A film that could help bury forever all those dead things we carry within ourselves. Instead, I’m the one without the courage to bury anything…

“Absolutely. For a Communist, Pascal’s wager is very relevant today. Personally, I very much doubt that history has any meaning. Yet I wager that it has, so I’m in a Pascalian situation. Hypothesis A: Society and politics are meaningless. Hypothesis B: History has meaning. I’m not at all sure B is more likely to be…

“Paris belongs to no-one” ‘Paris nous appartient’, directed by Jacques Rivette in 1961, is a French thriller set in the bohemian communities of Paris in the 1950s. Betty Schnieder plays Anne, a student who uncovers a plot to murder left-wing immigrants. She learns that Gérard Lenz, a theatrical director played by Giani Esposito is being…

 “They’ve created a desert and have called it “peace”.” ‘Culloden’, directed by Peter Watkins in 1964, is a British docudrama focusing on the aftermath of the Scottish Jacobite rising of 1745. The film follows the events of the battle that took place in 1746 in which the British army, supported by antagonistic Scottish clans, defeated…

“Suddenly I don’t know what to say. It happens to me a lot. I think first about whether they’re the right words. But when the moment comes to speak, I can’t say it. Why must one always talk? I think one should often just keep quiet, live in silence. The more one talks, the less…

There is an debate that divides historical movies into two camps. The first attempts to depict history without mediation, in essence films that try to access a past before cinema began to shape it  through genre. The second embraces this mediation by presenting the past as a series of genre tropes and iconography, the past…

“I don’t care about the clemency you offer me but the salvation of my soul.” ‘Juliet of the Spirits’, directed by Federico Fellini in 1965, is an Italian fantasy starring Fellini’s own wife Giulietta Masina. Giulietta (the character) is a wealthy, middleclass housewife who is married to an unreliable man and is locked into a…

“In this healthy and beautiful life my share has been nothing but suffering. Why has it been given to me?” ‘The Colour of Pomegranates’, directed by Sergei Parajanov in 1969, is an unconventional Armenian biopic of Sayat-Nova. The movie tells the story of the 18th Century poet in a highly abstract and symbolic way, dividing…

“Now, look. I got no wife. I got no kids. Boy, I got a town that don’t want me. And I got an air conditioner that I have to oil myself, and a desk with a busted leg. And on top of that, I got this, uh… place. Now, don’t you think that’d drive a man to takin’ a few drinks? I’ll tell you a secret. Nobody comes here. Never.”

“Some people are resistant by nature. In other words, some people are naturally headstrong. Others on the contrary, try to adapt to the circumstances, and get what they can out of it. If you are a resistant over everything and nothing, you’re exaggerating. But if you accept everything, you’re lying.”

This review of ‘Two Women’ and ‘A Special Day’ on DVD first appeared on We Are Cult on the 6th of November 2016 CultFilms, a new independent label specialising in world cinema, have released restored versions of two award-winning Sophia Loren movies: ‘Two Women’, from 1960 and ‘A Special Day’ from 1977 on DVD and…

Released on its 50th Anniversary by StudioCanal, ‘La Grande Vadrouille’, directed by Gérard Oury in 1966, is a French comedy set during the Nazi occupation that stars Louis de Funès, André Bourvil and Terry Thomas.

“Do you have to open graves to find ghosts to fall in love with?” In dark and eldritch celebration of Halloween I’ve made the sign of the Devil, summoned up the spirits of the dead, called on the services of Mephistopheles, raised the dread demon Pazuzu, supped with the Great God Pan and abandoned my…

“Smile. Not too much.” ‘Eyes Without a Face’, directed by Georges Franju in 1960, is a French-Italian horror movie that tells the macabre story of a plastic surgeon who takes ever more extreme steps to repair the face of his daughter. Pierre Brasseur plays Doctor Génessier, the doctor who begins to kidnap women with the…

“Pompey, go find Doc Willoughby. If he’s sober, bring him back.” ‘The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance’, directed by John Ford in 1962, is an American Western starring Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne. Stewart plays Ransom “Ranse” Stoddard, a Senator who returns to the town of his youth to attend a funeral. In flashback, Stoddard…

“And like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself— Yea, all which it inherit—shall dissolve, And like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a…

“There’s no hope now.” ‘Rocco and his Brothers’, directed by Luchino Visconti in 1960, is an epic Italian drama that focuses on a family who move from the rural south of the country to the industrial north. Alain Delon plays Rocco Parondi, one of five brothers who, with their mother, struggle to make money and…

My experience of the films of Akira Kurosawa before I started this journey through international cinema was limited. I’d seen ‘Rashomon’, bits of ‘Seven Samurai’ and, because of the film’s connection with ‘Star Wars’, the beginning of ‘The Hidden Fortress’. As with Andrei Tarkovsy, it took a few films to adjust my expectations to what…