Synopsis :
À Nous la Liberté is an early talkie from French filmmaker René Clair. Louis (Raymond Cordy) and Emile (Henri Marchand) are a pair of convicts whose lives take decidely different paths after prison. Emile works his way up the ladder of capitalism, becoming a phonograph factory boss, a job that finds him overseeing a bleak outfit of automatous drones. Louis, on the other hand, lives the life of a poverty-stricken vagabond. Despite their contrasting lots, the pair meet up again later in life. À Nous la Liberté is perhaps best remembered for being the main inspiration for Charlie Chaplin's 1936 classic Modern Times. Matthew Tobey
Title : A Nous la Liberte (1931)
Directed : René Clair
Duration : 97 min.
Subtitles : English, Spanish, Portuguese
Genres : Comedy, Drama, Music
Countries : France
Sunday, December 31, 2023
À Nous la Liberté (1931) Directed by René Clair | VIDEO (ISO)
Friday, December 29, 2023
The Blood of a Poet (1930) Directed by Jean Cocteau | VIDEO (ISO)
In the first of this film's four episodes, a tall smokestack starts to collapse. Then the scene shifts to a young poet who is sketching faces. He sees that a sketch's mouth is moving and wipes it off with his hand; the mouth attaches itself to his palm. Eventually he transfers the mouth to a statue in his room. In the second episode, the statue tells the poet to enter a mirror. He falls into the darkness of the mirror's interior and finds himself at the Hotel de Folies-Dramatiques. The poet crawls along the hallway and peers into the keyholes, where he sees various bizarre situations. He reaches the end of the hallway, someone hands him a gun, and he shoots himself. The poet returns to his room and smashes the statue; then he becomes a statue himself in a courtyard. In the third episode, a group of boys engage in a snowfight in the courtyard. The statue is destroyed and one boy is left bloody and possibly dead after being hit with a snowball. In the final episode, the courtyard is revealed to be a stage on which a young woman and the poet play cards next to the boy's body, which is still lying on the ground. The woman tells the poet that he is lost without the Ace; he takes the card from the boy's jacket. The boy's guardian angel appears and covers him. He takes the Ace from the poet and leaves; the poet shoots himself in the head and the audience applauds. The woman walks away and it is revealed that she is the statue; then the film ends with the final collapse of the tall smokestack. Todd Kristel
Title : The Blood of a Poet (1930)
Original Title : Le sang d'un poète
Directed : Jean Cocteau
Duration : 58 min.
Subtitles : English, Spanish, Portuguese
Genres : Fantasy
BONUS : Documentary Jean Cocteau Autobiography
Countries : France
Tuesday, December 26, 2023
The General (1926) Directed by Clyde Bruckman, Buster Keaton | VIDEO (ISO)
Synopsis :
Buster Keaton plays Johnny Gray, a Southern railroad engineer who loves his train engine, The General, almost as much as he loves Annabelle Lee (Marion Mack). When the opening shots of the Civil War are fired at Fort Sumter, Johnny tries to enlist -- and he is deemed too useful as an engineer to be a soldier. All Johnny knows is that he's been rejected, and Annabelle, thinking him a coward, turns her back on him. When Northern spies steal the General (and, unwittingly, Annabelle), the story switches from drama and romance to adventure mixed with Keaton's trademark deadpan humor as he uses every means possible to catch up to the General, thwart the Yankees, and rescue his darling Annabelle -- for starters. As always, Keaton performs his own stunts, combining his prodigious dexterity, impeccable comic timing, and expressive body language to convey more emotion than the stars of any of the talkies that were soon to dominate cinema. Emru Townsend
Title : The General (1926)
Directed : Clyde Bruckman, Buster Keaton
Duration : 79 min.
Subtitles : English, Spanish, Portuguese
Card : English
BONUS - Cops 18 min.
Genres : Comedy, Romance, Action, Adventure, War
Countries : United Kingdom, United States
Friday, December 22, 2023
Metropolis (1927) Directed by Fritz Lang | VIDEO (ISO)
Synopsis :
The biggest-budgeted movie ever produced at Germany's UFA, Fritz Lang's gargantuan Metropolis consumed resources that would have yielded upwards of 20 conventional features, more than half the studio's entire annual production budget. And if it didn't make a profit at the time -- indeed, it nearly bankrupted the studio -- the film added an indelible array of images and ideas to cinema, and has endured across the many decades since its release. Metropolis had many sources of inspiration, including a novel by the director's wife, Thea von Harbou -- who drew on numerous existing science fiction and speculative fiction sources -- and Lang's own reaction to seeing the Manhattan skyline at night for the very first time. There are some obvious debts to H.G. Wells (who felt it "the silliest of films"), but the array of ideas and images can truly be credited to Lang and von Harbou. In the somewhat distant future (some editions say the year 2000, others place it in 2026, and, still others -- including the original Paramount U.S. release -- in 3000 A.D.) the city of Metropolis, with its huge towers and vast wealth, is a playground to a ruling class living in luxury and decadence. They, and the city, are sustained by a much larger population of workers who labor as virtual slaves in the machine halls, moving from their miserable, tenement-like homes to their grim, back-breaking ten-hour shifts and back again. The hero, Freder (Gustav Froehlich) -- the son of Joh Fredersen (Alfred Abel), the master of Metropolis -- is oblivious to the plight of the workers, or any aspect of their lives, until one day when a a beautiful subterranean dweller named Maria (Brigitte Helm) visits the Eternal Gardens, where he spends his time cavorting with various ladies, with a small group of children from the workers' city far below. They are sad, hungry, and wretched looking, and he is haunted by their needy eyes -- something Freder has never seen or known among the elite of the city -- and by this strange and beautiful woman who tells all who hear her, workers' children and ruler's offspring, that they are all brothers. He follows her back down to the depths of the city and witnesses a horrible accident and explosion in the machine halls where the men toil in misery. Haunted by what he has seen, he tries to confront his father, only to find that the man he loves and respects believes that it is right for the workers to live the way they do, while he and his elite frolic in luxury. Freder decides to do something about it, but he must first learn more, and also locate Maria. With help from Josaphat (Theodor Loos), Fredersen's recently dismissed office manager, he goes below again and takes over the job of one of the workers, in order to find Maria. Meanwhile, Fredersen is concerned about the rumblings of unrest among the workers, and his son's sudden interest in their plight; he assigns "Slim" (Fritz Rasp), his investigator, to follow Freder. Meanwhile, he goes for advice to an old acquaintance, the inventor C.A. Rotwang (Rudolf Klein-Rogge). Rotwang once was a rival to Fredersen for the love of the woman Hel, who married Fredersen and died bearing his son, Freder. Rotwang still feels the loss, but he is a cunning and practical man, and is willing to help his old "friend," but not before showing off his latest creation -- a robot that he has modeled in the image of his beloved Hel, that he may have her again. Rotwang answers Fredersen's question by taking him to the catacombs below the modern city, where they see Maria preaching the gospel and counseling patience, in the hope that a "Mediator" -- who will be able to reconcile the "head" and "hands" of society (i.e. the ruling and working classes) -- will come among them. Fredersen will hear none of it, and sees the need to break the workers' resistance and destroy Maria's influence among them. He arranges with Rotwang to make his robot creation into a duplicate Maria (which requires his kidnapping her), and to send her out among the workers to incite them to violence, so that Fredersen can use force against them. But he doesn't reckon with Rotwang, who despises Fredersen and his ruling class, and has commanded the robot to obey his orders and follow a plan that will destroy the city, both above and below ground. Fredersen also doesn't reckon with his own son Freder, who not only believes in what Maria is preaching but is beginning to see himself as the "Mediator," and is right in the midst of the conflagration when the workers' uprising starts. Soon, fires and floods spread, threatening to doom the children of the workers, abandoned in their parents' frenzied attack on the machines, and the city of Metropolis faces an impending disaster of biblical proportions. Meanwhile, the now-mad Rotwang tries to reclaim his lost Hel, and Maria and her evil robot twin are both stalked by crowds of workers driven to a murderous rage. When it was premiered in Germany in January 1927, Metropolis ran 153 minutes when projected at 24 frames per second. That complete version was heavily cut for release in America, removing a quarter of the movie -- this included the personal conflict between Fredersen and Rotwang; a subplot involving double-dealing, espionage, and the mysterious "Slim"; a section taking place in the "red-light" district of the city; a good deal of the symbolism in the movie's original dialogue; and a large chunk of the chase at the end. In Germany in the spring of 1927, an edited version modeled roughly on the American edition, though running slightly longer, was prepared and released, and that became the "standard" version of the movie, for both domestic (i.e. German) distribution and export. In subsequent years, other editions were circulated and still others were found deposited in various archives; in a surprising number of instances -- including that of a source stored at the Museum of Modern Art in New York -- there were tiny fragments to be found of the lost, longer version of Metropolis. The movie's reputation was further compromised with the lapsing of its American copyright in 1953, after which countless copies and duplicates, in every format from 8 mm to 35 mm (and, later, VHS tape and DVD) came to be distributed in the U.S. by anyone who could lay their hands on a print, of whatever quality and with whatever music track they chose (or didn't choose) to put on it. While several versions of the movie from these sources -- each with plot elements missing -- circulated, various restorations of the movie were attempted over the decades by responsible parties, as well. The BBC did a very effective one in the mid-'70s that was a hit on public television in America, utilizing an electronic music track that sometimes mimicked some of the industrial images on the screen. Also, there was the Giorgio Moroder version from 1984, heavily tinted and re-edited, with a rock score grafted onto it, which introduced the movie to a whole new generation of fans and turned it into a modern pop-culture fixture. The copyright was re-established in 1998 by the F.W. Murnau Foundation, and a restoration in 2002 brought the movie back to a 127 minute running time, in addition to utilizing a full orchestral score based on Gottfried Huppertz's original 1927 music. In 2008, it was reported that a significant part of the "lost" footage from the 1927 153-minute version of Metrpolis had been found in Argentina. The newest restoration of the complete Metropolis was on-going as of 2009, and a theatrical premiere was anticipated for 2010. Bruce Eder
Title : Metropolis (1927)
Directed : Fritz Lang
Duration : 123 min.
Cards Subtitles : German, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese
Genres : Drama, Science Fiction, Science & Technology
Countries : Germany
Tuesday, December 19, 2023
I Was Born, But... (Otona No Miru Ehon) 1932 | Directed by Yasujiro Ozu | VIDEO (ISO)
Synopsis :
One of the last great Japanese silent films and one of director Yasujiro Ozu's first masterpieces, this gentle family comedy contrasts the complexities of adulthood with a child's innocence. Two young brothers, who are the unquestioned alpha-males of fellow classmates in their suburban Tokyo neighborhood, are outraged by their father's clownish and subservient behavior at his office. As the film progresses, the children come to accept that their father is not a great man, as they imagined, and in the process, they lose some of their innocence. Ozu reworked this film for his 1959 opus Ohayo. Jonathan Crow
Title : I Was Born, But... (1932)
Original Title : Otona No Miru Ehon
Directed : Yasujiro Ozu
Duration : 100 min.
Subtitles : English, Spanish, Portuguese
Audio Original
Genres : Domestic Comedy, Coming-of-Age, Family Drama
Countries : Japan
The Birdcage Inn (Palan Taemun, 1998) Directed by Kim Ki-Duk | VIDEO (MKV)
Synopsis : Birdcage Inn is a drama about experiences moulding people's lives. After the clearing of the red light districts in Seoul, a ...
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPsjI75uzBG1Hsmcsu2HXwBBcTybQnqw00KmSZs-jV3JwqnKhWOGc6XL_zMLwU02mxSYtLL3wTJRfc7SSSvrEmjBlzvbvPCCAyCIsBKmhke2rXk1yDUQ1YsXNd9qDJQ9hTSujVqyVgQAuHI4XUemKtO7yJF2wLAMGZo7lKpsSJx6AVjGtUBoBK0LL6E-f9/w438-h640/birdcage-inn-cover.jpg)
-
In the year 1783, a mystic called Dr. Caligari, wandered through the cities of northern Italy with a somnambulist named Cesare, performing ...
-
Synopsis : The German The Haunted Castle (Schloss Vogelrod) has been described as director F.W. Murnau's "warm-up" for his su...
-
Synopsis : The biggest-budgeted movie ever produced at Germany's UFA, Fritz Lang's gargantuan Metropolis consumed resources that wou...