La torre de los siete jorobados (1944)

 English title: The Tower of the Seven Hunchbacks

A young man has visions of the ghost of an archeologist who helps him win at the roulette in exchange for doing him a favor. The young man gets acquainted with the dead man's niece, who is under the spell of a mysterious man.

This is a collection of tropes from fantastic novels and movies from the 19th and early 20h century and feels like an affectionate send-up of those works. The imagery is quite atmospheric, and overall the film is entertaining.

Rating: 51

Les grandes personnes (1961)

 English title: Time Out for Love

A young American woman spending some time in France nurses a woman through her recovery from a suicide attempt. A friendship is born between them, which is strained when the younger woman falls in love with her new friend's former lover.

Drama about the love-related troubles of some upper-class folks; actually there is only one guy and three women who revolve around him. The main dramatic point derives from men (as represented by this one guy) being passionate yet fickle and women being transported to amorous ecstasy only to have their feelings shattered subsequently. These women react somewhat differently to the experience. The two French women stand at the opposite ends of resilient cynicism and suicidal despondency, respectively; for the American it all eventually becomes part of the growing pains. This is an elegantly made film, with dialogue which seems a bit on the artificial side, and not infrequently a little enigmatic (though that's possibly only me).

Rating: 51

Las mujeres de mi general (1951)

English title: My General's Women 

Set in the Mexican Revolution, the film centers on a rebel general and his troubles with two women. Lupe, his "soldadera", marched alongside him in the battlefield until he takes over a town and establishes himself as the local chief. That town, coincidentally, is the place of residence of one of his former lovers, Carlota, who is now married to a wealthy man who is away on business.

This unusual film goes to such melodramatic extremes as to become a sort of satire. The two titular women, though in polar opposites of the spectrum as defined by the film's moral frame of reference, have a point in common in that they exist only for the purpose of fighting tooth and nail for their "general", who apparently is endowed with magnetic attraction powers of a supernatural order. The film goes in a crescendo of sexist display with such hilarious touches as having the protagonist leading the town's defense with his infant daughter under his arm, through to the delightfully heroic ending.

Rating: 43

King Lear (1982)

Based on the play by Shakespeare, in turn based on earlier works detailed in this Wikipedia page.

King Lear decides to divide his kingdom among his three daughters, but his daughter Cordelia falls short in her statement of devotion to him, and thus gets struck out of the inheritance. His other two daughters subsequently prove themselves very ungrateful and begin mistreating him. A subplot which intersects with that concerns the bastard son of a nobleman who plots against the latter's legitimate son.

This is a TV production with little cinematic value, yet with great actors and overall competently done. Based on its length I suppose it is one of the more complete movie adaptations of this play, though to be sure they did eliminate a few dialogue lines (and even an entire scene, if I remember correctly). The play itself is interesting, but frankly not among the best Shakespeare I know so far. And it has some problems. There is no doubt about whom we are supposed to think to be the good guys and the bad guys here, but the plot just seems to contradict that clear moral attribution. Because the supposedly good guys are in fact territorial aggressors, and the bad guys are the ones who are just defending their country. So, it's like we are manipulated into rooting for Hitler invading Poland, or something of the sort. Very weird. Maybe I am missing something, but I don't have a clue what it might be. Of course, rescuing old Lear and giving him shelter is a good thing, but it does not take a military invasion to do that. It's not like Goneril and Regan want to keep him. Even the terrible actions by the villains are a little more nuanced than one is led to believe. The original "fault" by the daughters is to cut down Lear's private entourage of one hundred men to a more modest size. This is perceived by Lear as the ultimate offense, but to be honest I think the daughters may have their reasons for not keeping a potential source of a coup within their premises. There is a book that raises other problems with the plot, named Macbeth, King Lear & Contemporary History, by Lilian Winstanley. I have read some excerpts where the author points out some apparent implausibilities, but I haven't read the whole book, which attempts to explain Shakespeare's choices historically. All that being said, the text of the play has enough entertaining bits, and it is surely admirable as a display of verbal creativity.

Rating: 50