Dostoevskiy (2011)

 English title: Dostoevsky

Biographical mini-series about the Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881). We get to witness his prison years, his conservative views, his several women, his gambling addiction, his health problems, his financial problems, his writing, etc.

Exceedingly well-done biopic. I usually don't enjoy this genre very much, and I frankly don't know how accurate this mini-series was, but overall I found it quite watchable and also lovely to look at on account of the many natural and urban views on display throughout the narrative. The acting was splendid too. I feel like I know more about Dostoevsky now than before I watched it.

Rating: 66

Olivia (1951)

U.S. title: The Pit of Loneliness 

At a French finishing school, an English student falls in love with the headmistress. There is another teacher who is always indisposed and jealous of the attention the headmistress receives.

This is similar to Mädchen in Uniform, but for some reason which is not exactly clear in my memory I liked that film a lot more than I liked Olivia. Anyway, so many films depicting so similar situations makes me think that colleges for girls used to be cesspools of unnatural desires; I suppose parents maybe looked the other way with the comforting thought that at least they wouldn't have to worry about unwanted pregnancies. In this film, the headmistress refrains from fully indulging her desires towards the protagonist, out of scruples. It is implicit, though, that she had had no such scruples with some of the other students, besides having relationships with one or more of her colleagues. The film is not explicit about her reasons, but seems to suggest that the intensity of the girl's passions, as well as her inexperience, raised a red flag on the older woman. The villain of the film is the German teacher. I guess Germans were still an easy target in 1951. Maybe one of the main flaws here is that the protagonist's feelings are aroused too soon and without a development which would make it more convincing. Or maybe the shadow of a previous better movie with a similar plot made this one feel kind of redundant.

Rating: 37

Un homme à abattre (1967)

 English title: A Man to Kill

A small organization locates a possible former SS officer in Barcelona. They try to ascertain his identity with the intent to kill him in case he is really the man they think he is.

Rather gloomy thriller which possibly would inspire more sympathy for its "good" guys if some scenes depicting the alleged cruel acts of their nemesis were actually shown. As it is, the film feels rather cold and mechanical. The only memorable scene is when a female character reveals her real hair. I am not sure this is memorable in a good way, though.

Rating: 34

Evel Knievel (1971)

A motorcycle daredevil is about to perform a great stunt and he recalls his early life and how he got where he is now.

This is a conventional biopic except for the unusual fact that the subject matter was still alive and only 32 at the time of its release. I really cannot find anything useful to say about the film, which is watchable in a trivial way but has all the banal clichés one usually finds in biopics. In fact I was led to watch it due to a probable mistake: I had read a mention to it (by Christopher Mulrooney) which probably meant to refer to another movie -- the later Viva Knievel! (1977) -- and got the titles mixed up. I think the only thing I will remember from this film is how impressed I was by the vocals on the two songs which play during the movie (one during the opening and closing credits and another during the film proper), and how intrigued I was that the name of the singer was absent from the film's credits, and even from the IMDB and Wikipedia pages. It was not very easy to find that name by searching the web, but I did find it (here): it is Jim Sullivan. Here is a piece on him and the mystery surrounding his disappearance.

Rating: 31

Clérambard (1969)

 A nobleman goes through a transforming experience (there are more detailed summaries online).

This isn't a terribly interesting film, I'm afraid. Partly, that's because the actions of the protagonist after his metamorphosis do not make much sense, despite the film's attempt, through some of the dialogue, to make us think otherwise. Well, from where I stand, giving away one's meager possessions at random is not a very rational or efficient way to end the world's "injustice". And it's the story of a man who goes from broke to destitute, therefore not exactly a paragon of self-sacrifice if you ask me. Anyway, what happens in this movie is rarely funny, and, while it's not extremely dull either, it is mostly barely entertaining.

Rating: 40

Un nuage entre les dents (1974)

English title: A Cloud in the Teeth

Two reporters roam Paris in search of newsworthy incidents. During a news coverage, one of them loses his two kids. After a fruitless search, they begin to suspect the kids have been kidnapped. They get in touch with their newspaper, who in turn decides to run headlines with the story. A citywide search is put in motion, with comical results.

The vogue of buddy movies was rising at the time, only this movie is a little atypical for having reporters instead of cops as protagonists. The only review in English I found for this movie, by IMDB commenter Klaas-2, sums it up well: "hilarious, perhaps somewhat overdone". Anyway, I think their depiction of newspapers' ethical standards is perfectly believable.

Rating: 51

Città violenta (1970)

 English titles: Violent City; The Family

A professional assassin is betrayed by one of his clients and by his girlfriend. He goes to prison and upon release receives an offer to join a criminal organization.

Well-filmed but poorly written crime thriller. The initial car chase is the high point of the movie. What follows seems to have been written as they went along (by a ridiculously high number of screenwriters), in such a way that sometimes we wonder whether we are watching one of those avant-garde movies where events do not follow a strictly logical order and the story repeats itself with minor variations, like in Last Year in Marienbad, or Cet obscur objet du désir, for two examples off the top of my head (but I watched those so long ago that I may be making a mistaken comparison). Also, the characters seem more like an evocation of earlier fictional avatars than any real life counterparts. As in most European genre productions, it is impossible not to sense a certain self-parodic quality. I don't understand, however, why IMDB categorizes the tarantula in the prison cell as a goof due to the fact that there are no tarantulas in Europe -- I thought he was in a prison in the Caribbean; well, maybe I was mistaken.

Rating: 38

Les intrigantes (1954)

 English titles: The Scheming Women; The Plotters

The two owners of a theater are walking on a footbridge inside the premises of their theater when one of them falls to his death on the floor below. A man working for their company as a kind of production manager sends an anonymous letter to the police accusing the surviving owner of murdering his associate. It turns out the accuser covets the wife of the man he accuses. She advises her husband to get himself  committed to a psychiatric institution while she tries to find proof of his innocence. But she soon strays from that purpose...

There is really not much in the way of a mystery here, things follow a more or less predictable course. The behavior of the female lead might be a little surprising to some, and might put others off a little, but movies are hardly to be expected to be psychology manuals. As a depiction of theater folks it is somewhat interesting, and as a criminal drama it is watchable but not top notch.

Rating: 45

Avenging Force (1986)

 A retired agent investigates a ring of White supremacists who resort to terrorism. The villains enjoy human hunting in the Louisiana bayous and seem to embrace a sort of Darwinist credo.

The chief baddie in this film gives a speech in which he warns of "rioting in the streets of our cities" and "civil disorder everywhere". Oh boy, where did he get such wild notions, I wonder? And in 1986, to boot. The plot is entirely along those lines, and we could objectively say that it is functional, in the sense that it provides support to a fair number of action set-pieces. Those are very watchable, with very competent second unit work.

Rating: 37

L'amour en question (1978)

English title: Question of Love

 A man is murdered as he was arriving at his house. The prime suspect is his wife's lover, a foreigner, with the possible complicity of the wife herself. The lover leaves the country, and so the two suspects face trials in different countries.

This is a very plausible and well-constructed narrative, but still not all that interesting or memorable. The culprit is not exactly hard to guess either.

Rating: 40

La souriante Madame Beudet (1923)

English title: The Smiling Madame Beudet 

A married woman lives in a chronic state of boredom and develops a disliking towards her husband as she daydreams about a celebrity tennis player. Out of an impulse, she sets a deadly trap for her husband.

Based on a stage play written by two men, the "feminist" plot is not terribly interesting. On strictly cinematic terms, the job of replacing words with images sometimes pays off in psychological intensity, while other times the absence of intertitles makes it simply incomprehensible.

Rating: 39

La cigarette (1919)

English title: The Cigarette

 A man decides to commit suicide after he deduces that his wife is cheating on him. He opts for an unconventional manner of ending his own life.

This is from a time when people thought there was such a thing as a non-poisoned cigarette. Anyway, this film is not likely to provoke many emotions in modern audiences (and I suspect it didn't even in its day). I am usually opposed to tragedies, as they feel artificial and unrealistic, but a tragic ending would at least bring some life to this dull story, in a paradoxical way.

Rating: 45 

Baby ryazanskie (1927)

 English title: Women of Ryazan. 

Alternative titles: The Village of Sin; The Devil's Plaything; The Peasant Women of Ryazan

(*mild spoilers*) Life at a small rural village. Vassili is a rich farmer; his son Ivan falls in love with poor peasant Anna, an orphan. They marry. Vassili's daughter Vassilissa wants to marry poor blacksmith Nikolai, but his father forbids their relationship, so she leaves home to live with him. World War One breaks out and both Nikolai and Ivan are drafted. During Ivan's absence, Vassili rapes Anna.

Mildly interesting as a chronicle of peasants' lives and customs, with some well-filmed sequences, such as of a wedding and of a primitive amusement park. As a narrative, it has an educational slant through a somewhat manicheistic schematism: older women are gossipy and bigotted against their own kind; older men are brutes and satyrs; youngsters are pure and often victimized; etc. It's interesting to notice how some of the U.S. titles of this film didn't seem to get the film's message.

Rating: 37

The Blot (1921)

 A teacher has difficulties in providing for the well-being of his family. A religious minister wants to marry the teacher's daughter, but he is also poor. A wealthy student has a crush on the young woman, and starts courting her as well.

This well-made drama is quite acceptable for the most part of its duration, but towards the end becomes considerably implausible. Furthermore, there are serious problems with the way it conveys its defense of a better payment for teachers. The main problem is that the newly enrolled champions of that cause were never interested students, and that does not have anything to do with the teacher's salary; neither is it a question of morals; it is perfectly plausible that people become better through experience, but that has no bearing on their academic interest. Another problem with that last section is that the love triangle does not get a satisfactory solution.

Rating: 50

Le roi des aulnes (1931)

 Based on the poem by J.W. Goethe, written in 1782.

English title: The Erl King

A man is riding with his son when their horse suffers a fall and the boy is wounded. They take shelter in a nearby house. The boy isn't feeling well, but the man must continue his journey. They go through a forest, and the child has hallucinations.

Rather boring translation into images of a famous poem; the images are nice to look at, but they don't capture the emotional strength of the poem.

Rating: 35

Elle boit pas, elle fume pas, elle drague pas, mais... elle cause! (1970)

 English title: She Does Not Drink, Smoke or Flirt But... She Talks

A housemaid learns compromising information about one of her employers and reveals it to another; she goes on doing that with all three of them; that entails mutual blackmailing among those employers.

Nonsensical farce which does not shy away from vulgarity but is mildly funny, though a bit too monotonous. The title is funny too, but has nothing to do with the film; the protagonist is a smoker and an occasional drinker; her talking is calculated and essential to the plot, rather than the annoying kind that is the product of an uncontrollable urge, as the title seems to imply; she indeed does not flirt but that is neither here nor there; in short, it is a deceitful title, perhaps intended at enticing a certain kind of audience.

Rating: 40

Le petit soldat (1960)

English title: The Little Soldier

(warning: *mild spoilers*) Geneva, 1958. A member of a rightwing organization refuses to perform an assassination. He is blackmailed into it, but plans to escape to another country. He is kidnapped by the rival leftwing organization and tortured. He later finds out that his girlfriend is part of that leftwing organization. She is kidnapped and tortured by the rightwing organization, which once more demands that the protagonist do the assassination he had earlier refused to do.

This is a very early film of this writer/director, and he was still somewhat bound by a narrative structure, of which he would progressively free himself along his career. Still, it is very evident that he is not interested in psychology, or in plot realism. His notion of a man who deserts from a war and subsequently goes to fight *for* that same war as a terrorist may make sense to him, but I honestly do not see how. Not only that, but he also *refuses* to obey orders within his organization. Why did he join in the first place? Well, apparently he is some kind of romantic hero. A loner who likes poetry and engages in literary quotations and philosophizing at every possible opportunity. And what about his girlfriend? In the first half of the movie she is a somewhat lethargic model from abroad and then she suddenly turns into a dangerous leftwing activist (though she somehow can't shake her lethargic looks). As an essayistic dissertation about political and assorted other themes, framed as a semi-parodic spy thriller, however, the film works reasonably well. It is well filmed and well photographed, and provides an interesting document about its time without being too boring.

Rating: 50

Le boucher (1970)

 English title: The Butcher

In a small town, a butcher meets a schoolteacher (and headmistress) and they start a friendship. Concurrently to that, a series of grisly murders of women terrorize the town, and the police doesn't have a clue as to who is committing them.

I can't say I find all, or even most, of this film's plot and characters very plausible, but somehow it manages to engage the viewer's attention and even produce an emotional response to it. The film might appear to some to be primarily concerned about the titular character, but is it really? It is left for the viewer to decide (or not) about some more obscure aspects of his psyche, e.g., what role, if any, his war experience had in his present psychological affliction. I think, however, that the moral point of the film is made through the character of Hélène, the schoolteacher. Her ordeal is ironic: she had been scarred by a first relationship in which she was abandoned, and got wary of men subsequently. Hers is a dead end, though: even if she comes to be loved, she will not feel loved, because she lost her faith in men. Unless, of course, the man proves it to her, but then she will learn that one cannot eat one's cake and have it too.

Rating: 60

La jument verte (1959)

Based on the novel by Marcel Aymé, first published in 1933.

English title: The Green Mare

Two rural families develop a rivalry which grows into a frank enmity due to a wartime incident. Years later, the young daughter of one of the families becomes enamored of the young son of the other. When a letter containing references to that aforementioned incident goes missing, things take an unexpected turn.

This is one of the most outrageous films I have seen, on account of the behavior of some of its characters. It's not exactly the most interesting, let alone exciting one, but I confess I found it entertaining enough. It was criticized at the time for its unflattering depiction of peasants, and I wouldn't know whether it's reliable as a sociological study of peasant life. But what matters in fiction is plausibility, and I think the film acquits itself nicely at that. There is a review in French (by Frédéric Mercier) which I think covers a wide range of aspects of this film; it may be read here.

Rating: 51