Moderato Cantabile (Seven Days... Seven Nights) [1960]

Adapted from Marguerite Duras’ book of the same name by Peter Brook, Moderato Cantabile is an interesting psychological drama about a bored, lonely housewife whose mundane life takes an unexpected and dramatic swing. Anne (Jeanne Moreau) is married to the wealthy owner of a large company which employs a significant percentage of the population of the small wan French town she resides in. Most of her daily activities revolve around her son; her dull, routine, however, life goes for a toss when, one day while her son is being given piano lessons at his stern teacher’s home, she hears a woman screaming. Unable to get the better of her curiosity, she rushes down to find that a beautiful young lady has been murdered by her fiancé at the café downstairs – and she ends up getting morbidly attracted to the crime. This gets her acquainted to Chauvin (Jean-Paul Belmondo), a young working-class man who frequents that café and has been silently in love with her. The more her carefully chiseled, conservative life gets disrupted because of her growing attractions towards him, the more disillusioned and liberated she starts becoming on account of her growing existential crisis, much to the dismay of everyone. Moreau gave a wonderfully restrained turn as the complex protagonist who is, subconsciously, so much at odds with her existence; Belmondo, too, was noteworthy, even though his character needed better defining and a more plausible arc. The soft B/W visuals, the fine minimalist score, and the leisurely pacing, added to the subtle charm of this melancholic, if largely uneventful and unaffecting film.

Director: Peter Brook

Genre: Drama/Psychological Drama/Existential Drama/Romance

Language: French

Country: France

Love and Death [1975]

Love and Death, Woody Allen’s brilliant satire on classic Russian literature as well as Russian mores, traditions and history (especially with respect to their perceptions by the Western world), was arguably his best film from his pre-Annie Hall days. Filled to the brim with pinching observations, off-balancing wit, and incredibly hilarious one-liners, the film saw an early culmination of his quintessential traits that would come to define him. The movie concerns with the exploits of Boris (Allen), a diminutive and a rather timid poet who is in love with his married cousin Sonja (Diane Keaton), during the turbulent 19^th century Russia. Nothing is ever sacrosanct for Woody, and thus he used this canvas to take jabs at such topics as, god, religion, family, relationships, bravery, the meaning of existence, and the inevitability of death. He underlined the texts with a broad layer of socio-political commentaries, philosophical discourses, and personal statements, by making terrific use of his trademark irreverence, deadpan style and sardonic, self-deprecating humour. Woody was excellent in his inimitable portrayal of a non-conformist common man for whom life is a series of unfortunate occurrences, while Keaton too was good as the cerebral belle who makes lofty speeches on love and then falls for the crudest man possible. Woody made use of a wide range of comedic elements, ranging from wordplays and satire to slapstick and absurdist spoof, while also employing tongue-in-cheek techniques like breaking the fourth wall. Though admittedly not as personal a work as some of his more renowned masterpieces, this still managed to be that rare comedy that is as intelligent as it is funny.

Director: Woody Allen

Genre: Comedy/Social Satire/Parody/Slapstick

Language: English

Country: US

Dersu Uzala [1975]

Akira Kurosawa’s life and career had taken a tragic turn after his disastrous foray into Hollywood and the commercial failure of Dodesukaden that led to the dissolution of the ‘Club of Four Knights’ production company, which eventually led him towards a failed attempt at suicide. Dersu Uzala, a Japanese-Soviet co-production, finally stopped his downward spiral and took him back to his former glory (his next two films would be the epic masterpieces Kagemusha and Ran). Based on the memoirs of a Russian explorer about his expeditions in the Siberian wilderness, this was, on one hand, a backhanded morality play about the beauty of untamed nature versus the trampling progress of civilization, and on the other, a touching chronicle of friendship between two men who couldn’t be more different from one another. The above-mentioned men were, the story’s narrator Captain Vladimir Arseniev (Yuri Solomin), who had undertaken the incredibly challenging task of mapping the topography of the Ussuri region at the turn of the 20^th century, and the titular Dersu Uzala (Maxim Munzuk), a nomadic mountain-dwelling hunter belonging to the Goldi tribe who agreed to become the guide to Arseniev’s expeditions. Their journeys through some of the most dangerous and treacherous regions imaginable lead to the formation of a profound bond between two men representing, literally, two opposite spectrums of life – one representing knowledge and boxed civility, and the other, wisdom and freedom. Shot on location and in 70mm, the harsh and majestic beauty of nature, covered in one breathtaking vista after another, made this deeply philosophical (if a tad didactic) film a very satisfying watch.

Director: Akira Kurosawa

Genre: Drama/Adventure Film/ Buddy Film/Docu-fiction

Language: Russian

Country: Russia (erstwhile Soviet Union), Japan

Blast of Silence [1961]

Allen Baron showed both promise and maturity with his low-budget debut film Blast of Silence. This intense psychological study on the existential crisis of a lonely hitman also remains as a memorable New York film. Frank Bono (Baron himself), a contract killer, has arrived in the Big Apple during the Christmas time in order to bump off a mobster. During his meticulous study of his target before carrying out his job, he inadvertently ends up meeting an old friend from the days of his growing up in an orphanage, and Lorrie (Molly McCarthy), the girl he was always in love with, thus making his detached, cloak-and-dagger existence suddenly appear burdensome for him. And, to further complicate matters for him, Big Ralph (splendidly played by Larry Tucker), a slimy and obese dealer of guns, gets an inkling of his target which was supposed to remain absolutely hush-hush. Baron’s looks and natural style seemed to be a combination of Robert De Niro and Jean-Pierre Leaud, and that managed to mask his limited acting abilities. The movie also faltered a bit during the softer and more emotional moments. But for most parts it was a tremendously gripping film, drenched in nihilism and with an incredibly fatalistic tone – it literally seems, at times, on the verge of bursting out of the seams. The glorious B/W photography and the brilliant jazz score added, respectively, pathos and dissonance to the proceedings. The fabulous gravelly voiceover by Lionel Stander was arguably the most fascinating aspect of the movie – though dripping with caustic bitterness and hardboiled cynicism, there was something bleakly poetic about it.

Director: Allen Baron

Genre: Crime Thriller/Psychological Drama/Gangster Film/Post-Noir

Language: English

Country: US

Intentions of Murder (Unholy Desire) [1964]

Intentions of Murder formed the final chapter of a thematically linked trilogy also comprising of Pigs & Battleships and The Insect Woman, ingeniously named by Criterion as Pigs, Pimps & Prostitutes. That said, Imamura’s pet explorations of the grotesque, of women who are moved more by carnality than morality, and of people, devoid of gentility or elegance, residing at the very edge of Japanese society, have abounded throughout his filmography. The film’s central protagonist is Sadako (Masumi Harukawa), a bored, plump, lower-middle class lady married to Koichi (Ko Nishimura), her grumpy common-law husband who is having an affair on the sly with his comically bespectacled colleague. Hiraoka (Shigeru Tsuyuguchi), an asthmatic drummer in a seedy bar, invades into her place one not so fine day with the intent of stealing, but ends of raping her. She initially plans to commit suicide, but instead starts getting curiously attracted to the moody vagabond despite her outwardly protestations; interestingly, he fell in love with her the moment he violated her. Meanwhile Koichi’s enamored mistress takes on the mission of revealing Sadako’s double life to him. With this intriguing, Hitchcockian plot Imamura set into play a fascinating study of the sordid and baser human instincts while audaciously turning genre-tropes on their heads. Brilliantly photographed, filled with gleefully twisted imageries, and comprising of excellent performances led front the front by the brilliant Harukawa as the deeply complex anti-heroine, Imamura managed to combine pitch-black humour and wry irony with humanistic undertones and layered social commentaries into a rewarding whole. He sure knew how to subtly counterbalance sleaze with beauty.

Director: Shohei Imamura

Genre: Drama/Black Comedy/Psychological Drama/Marriage Drama/Romance

Language: Japanese

Country: Japan

McCabe & Mrs. Miller [1971]

The Western, or as Altman had put it, the anti-Western, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, ranks amongst the finest achievements for the maverick filmmaker, and it came at the most creative phase of his career when he was at the forefront of an audacious and iconoclastic wave in American cinema. Rarely has a Western been so meditative in its tone, so hypnotic in its pacing, and so notably devoid of heroism and chivalry, making this a splendid deconstruction of the iconic genre as well as an absorbing watch – or, as Pauline Kael had so memorably opined, “a beautiful pipe dream of a movie”. John McCabe (Warren Beatty), a mysterious and reclusive man, is a businessman with plans to set up a fancy brothel in a small town, and Constance Miller (Julie Christie), a madam with sharp business acumen, joins him in this enterprising venture. However, his success begets enemy in the form of a mine owner who, upon being turned down when he offers to buy him out, lets loose vicious killers to bring him down. Unlike as expected, McCabe is anything but a gun-slinging valorous person, despite his reputation suggesting so, thus taking the movie to a grimy, unspectacular, decidedly realistic, and ultimately fascinating struggle for survival. The film’s elegiac and dream-like feel, and improvisational storytelling, were wonderfully complemented by incredibly nuanced and understated performances by Beatty and Christie, and terrific songs by Leonard Cohen laced with melancholia and nostalgia. The dark underpinnings of organized business and capitalism formed a key theme of this sadly beautiful movie.

Director: Robert Altman

Genre: Drama/Western/Revisionist Western

Language: English

Country: US

La Verité (The Truth) [1960]

Henri-Georges Clouzot’s La Verite was quite a few things rolled into one – courtroom drama, searing social critique, dark depiction of love gone awry, and the sad tale of a misunderstood girl, among others. Dominique Marceau (Brigitte Bardot) is accused of murdering Gilbert (Sami Frey), her former boyfriend, and is on trial to determine her fate. Her seemingly sordid lifestyle stand in direct contrast to the picture-perfect perception of a model citizen that Gilbert continues to possess even after her death. Their socio-economic disparity, compounded by her inherently rebellious nature vis-à-vis his social standing as a talented music conductor, make the heavily biased judges convinced of her guilt; her striking good looks make their presumption of guilt complete. But nothing could be further from the truth as elaborate flashback sequences reveal not just her freewheeling choices in life – something that her middle-class parents and the conservative judges find impossible to accept, leave alone understand – but also the deeply tragic love affair she gets hopelessly enmeshed and burnt by. As a sad consequence, she is tried by a staunchly bourgeois society for her rebellious spirit and her anti-establishmentarian choices, as opposed to the crime she has been accused of. Brigitte Bardot, the reigning sexpot of her generation, didn’t just memorably play the role of the protagonist, she seemed to be ironically the very embodiment of what her character symbolized; and her sensuousness was as electric, as her vulnerability was heartbreaking. Though neither flawless nor subtle, the engaging narrative style made this beautifully photographed and scored movie both a compelling character study and a bleak observation on society’s hypocritical responses to deviation.

Director: Henri-Georges Clouzot

Genre: Crime Drama/Romantic Drama/Courtroom Drama/Psychological Drama

Language: French

Country: France

A Generation [1955]

Andrzej Wajda, one of the most renowned and revered filmmakers to have emerged out of Eastern Europe, made a striking debut with the lyrical and harrowing drama set during WWII. The first installment of the highly acclaimed ‘Three War Films’ trilogy (also known as ‘Underground’ trilogy), also comprising of Kanal and Ashes and Diamonds, A Generation is a touching coming-of-age tale at the backdrop of Nazi-occupied Poland. The story concerns the journey of the protagonist Stach (Tadeusz Lomnicki), a callow youth belonging to a poor family, from a life of delinquency and waywardness, to becoming a hero of the Polish resistance movement against the Germans. Two chance events transform and shape his life – the death of a friend during a silly act of bravado, and meeting Dorota (Urszula Modrzynska), the beautiful leader of an underground Communist youth cell. He is immediately besotted by her and eventually falls in love with the irresistible lady, and that makes him take the first step towards heroism. The movie is, at times, quite sentimental in its depictions of love and loss at the times of war and turbulence, as well as in its strong romanticization of heroism, bravery and courage. But Wajda, who had himself been part of the Resistance during that era, imbued the proceedings with gritty realism and authenticism, and maintained reasonably tight control during the mellower moments, making this beautifully photographed film an emotionally affecting watch. The movie comprises of an audacious single-take dolly sequence, during the opening credits, slowly panning across the Warsaw slums where the protagonist resides.

Director: Andrzej Wajda

Genre: Drama/War Drama/Romantic Drama/Resistance Film

Language: Polish

Country: Poland

Gangs of Wasseypur 2 [2012]

The opulent and sprawling gangland saga that Anurag Kashyap begun with the first part of Gangs of Wasseypur, reached its conclusion – and I daresay, a reasonably satisfying one – with the sequel. It begins right where the earlier part ended, with Sardar (Manoj Bajpayee) going down in a hail of bullets. When Sardar’s headstrong eldest son too is massacred, the perennially doped out Faisal (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) becomes the unlikely successor to their clan. Contrary to his seemingly passive nature, he possesses panache for sudden and excruciating violence, and that instills enough fear into everyone to accept him as their leader. Meanwhile, Sardar’s son from his mistress, the slippery Definite (Zeishan Quadri), becomes Faisal’s principal henchman. Before long a bloody turf war starts between Faisal and the all-powerful mobster turned politician Ramadhir Singh (Timangshu Dhulia), who was behind the murders of Faisal’s father and grandfather; it destroys everyone in its path, and leads the film to its explosive, blood-soaked and nicely orchestrated climax. Like its predecessor, this too comprises of a darkly humorous script, and solid performances by the ensemble cast led from the front by the brilliant Siddiqui, and a notable supporting turn by Huma Qureshi as Faisal’s voluptuous wife. And though it too drags in the middle on account of being overlong, Kashyap managed to keep his over-indulgences under a stricter leash this time around. Consequently, I found the sequel comparatively tighter, more gripping, and with lesser distractions. As rightly observed by another critic, the best version of this epic saga would be to cut the excess flab and present the two parts as a single film – the way it was originally meant to be.

Director: Anurag Kashyap

Genre: Drama/Crime Drama/Gangster Film/Black Comedy/Ensemble Film

Language: Hindi

Country: India

Vertigo [1958]

Rear Window, Vertigo and Psycho make for a superb trilogy – not just because the three were the best works of Alfred Hitchcock, they were also bound by the disturbing themes of voyeurism, obsession, and obfuscation of identity, and the classic Hitchcockian elements of slow suspense, MacGuffins, and the darker human shades and impulses dominating over the whodunit storytelling. James Stewart gave a sterling and quietly explosive turn as John “Scottie” Ferguson, a former cop with the San Francisco police department afflicted with acrophobia. When a friend from his past offers him a rather bizarre job of trailing his wife Madeleine (Kim Novek), he takes it up after some persuasion, but before long he finds himself falling for the seductive beauty of the icy platinum-blonde. However, after her shocking “suicide”, the debilitating psychological impact starts imploding him from within; and his rabid obsession with the dead woman (bordering on necrophilia) starts bursting off the seams when he has a chance encounter with an earthy girl bearing striking resemblance to her. One might argue over the director’s choice of revealing the twist well before the climax, but there’s no arguing the distressing, and disorienting effect that the movie possesses, brilliantly accentuated by its eerie tone, the intense psychological deliberations combined with its thematic underpinnings and dashes of surreal effects, great visual design and camera work (the seminal “vertigo shot”), and an excellent mood-establishing score. The scenes where Ferguson is silently trailing and observing the mysterious Madeleine through the city rank amongst the most compelling sections of the movie.

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Genre: Thriller/Psychological Thriller/Romantic Thriller/Mystery

Language: English

Country: US

Vengeance Is Mine [1979]

Serial killer movies come dime a dozen, but rarely does a director delve into the psychological angles of the crime and deftly paints a picture that is at once grim, disturbing and "real". Imamura’s true-life account of a sociopathic killer who became national news in Japan during the 60’s, is a dark and grimy chronicle of a man who took to crime and violence as a duck takes to water. The film begins with Enokizu, the vicious and cocky bespectacled antagonist, in police custody, and thereon Imamura made use of an exquisite fractured narrative to present who this mysterious man was and what led him to leave a trail of innocent bodies on his way. Played with incredible power and intensity by Ken Ogata, Enokizu is shown as a naturally aggressive, masochistic and volatile individual with pathological and anti-social tendencies, and a voracious libido. His strained relationship with his staunchly Catholic father and his twisted psyche do not just turn him into an aimless drifter, but also eventually into a murder – there’s hardly ever any well-set agenda to his crimes apart from his existential angst, general sense of apathy, the need to keep alive, and that he is, quite simply, a force of nature at direct odds with the world he lives in. Fine supporting turns by Miluni as his passive father, Baisho as his beautiful but neglected wife, and Ogawa as a luscious inn-keeper and the only person with whom he shares a semblance of relationship, made this well photographed, darkly comic exploration into the grotesque and primitive sides of human behavior an arresting watch.

Director: Shohei Imamura

Genre: Crime Drama/Psychological Drama/Black Comedy

Language: Japanese

Country: Japan

Eroica (Heroic Symphony) [1958]

Andrzej Munk, who was one of the founding fathers of the Polish Film School, had his career tragically cut short by a car accident while he was shooting only his fourth feature film; nonetheless, he managed to leave behind an exceptional body of work as his legacy. Made right after his wonderful debut feature Man on the Tracks, Eroica remains a strong competitor to his last completed film, the magnificent Bad Luck, for the title of best work of his short career. This brilliant satire set during WWII comprised of two segments that, despite their differing tones and compositions, were joined by their common themes of the romanticization of heroism. The first was a whimsical tragi-comedy about a callous, drunken man (Edward Dziewonski) who unwittingly becomes a vital keg in Warsaw Uprising against Germans by the underground Resistance movement, while the second was a searing tale of a POW camp where the only thing that keeps the hopes of the imprisoned Polish officers alive is the legend of a former prisoner who managed to escape from the hell-hole. The key element that Munk devised this grand and acerbic satire on was the dichotomy between truth and perception, and the need for heroism during an otherwise bleak period marked by war, death, loss, suffering and a sense of hopelessness. Consequently, he filled the movie with tongue-in-cheek observations, wry and subversive humour, sardonic wit, and scorching ironies, at the backdrop of grim realism. The stark B/W photography laced the proceedings with strong sense of doom and moodiness. The film was interestingly supposed to have a third story which Munk didn’t eventually go ahead with.

Director: Andrzej Munk

Genre: Drama/Comedy/Black Comedy/Political Satire/War Drama

Language: Polish

Country: Poland

Le Boucher (The Butcher) [1970]

Though French auteur Claude Chabrol made a string of highly acclaimed movies in his prolific career, Le Boucher undeniably remains his most widely reckoned work among foreign film enthusiasts. This moody and slow-burning psychological thriller was a riveting character study and a disturbing love story, and has been likened as distinctly Hitchcockian in its style, themes and execution. The movie starts with an elaborate Catholic wedding sequence (reminiscent of the opening sequence of The Godfather) where the two principal protagonists, viz. Helena (Chabrol regular Stephane Audran), the young headmistress of a school, and Popaul (Jean Yanne), the local butcher and a former army man, are introduced to the viewers as well as to each other. Both being reserved, introverted and lonely individuals with few, if any, friends, they take an instant liking to each other, and the bond keeps growing stronger the more they meet and interact with each other. In a distressing twist to their burgeoning friendship and platonic relationship beautifully captured by the director and the actors, he has a deeply scarred past on account of the violent memories of his army days, and his sense of alienation is not helped by her strong apathy towards any forms of intimacy. Meanwhile, the quaint town that they live in gets terrorized by a vicious serial killer who is butchering one young woman after another – and this starts adding subtexts to their already complex relationship. Despite the exquisite evocation of suspense and mystery, Chabrol never intended this as just another plot-based thriller, and neither did he provide any easy answers, as he led the viewers to a haunting, deeply ambiguous and memorable finale.

Director: Claude Chabrol

Genre: Thriller/Psychological Thriller/Mystery

Language: French

Country: France

The Pornographers [1966]

One of the greatest pleasures for a cinephile is to serendipitously ending up viewing a movie by a hitherto untried filmmaker without any expectations whatsoever, and instantly becoming an ardent admirer of his. The concerned movie is Shohei Imamura’s curiously titled feature The Pornographers, a tar-black and outrageously funny satire on the seedy underbelly of the fast burgeoning Post-War Japanese society, and a brilliantly cheeky take on our hypocritical and stilted attitude towards matters related to sex. Subu Ogata (Shoichi Ozawa)’s deviant life is anything but what one might consider as “normal” – he is in a live-in relationship with his widowed (and much older) landlady Haru who thinks her husband has reincarnated in the form of a carp; he lusts after Haru’s Lolita-esque teenage daughter; he is in the shady and scandalous business of making adult films, and needs to continually dodge the police and gangsters in order to survive; and, he is fast losing his potency (both figuratively and literally), and thus embarks on a grand project as his final contribution to the society that so despises him. Mesmerizingly photographed and hauntingly scored, nothing was sacrosanct for Imamura as he went about audaciously tackling such taboo topics as, among others, pornography, pedophilia, incest, and Oedipal subtexts, and the result was a gleefully twisted journey for the hapless and marginalized protagonist, outstanding and unforgettably played by Ozawa. Yet, for all its delirious humour and trenchant commentaries, the film also had palpable and affecting layers of pathos and melancholia – and the two reached a dizzying union in the fabulous finale of this complex, absurdist, subversive, irreverent and fascinating work.

Director: Shohei Imamura

Genre: Comedy/Black Comedy/Social Satire

Language: Japanese

Country: Japan

Sansho the Bailiff [1954]

Kenji Mizoguchi, the most internationally celebrated filmmaker from Japan along with Akira Kurosawa and Yasujiro Ozu, attained the pinnacle of his career as an auteur with three back-to-back masterpieces, viz. The Life of Oharu, Ugetsu, and what most consider his greatest achievement, Sansho the Bailiff. The movie is set in 11^th century feudal Japan, when, as the opening credits suggest, human being had yet to imbibe humanity. Tamaki, the wife of a former Governor who has been banished on account of taking the side of his subjects instead of that of his superior, is on her way with her two kids – Zushio and Anju – to meet him, through the woods when they get kidnapped. The kids are turned into slaves for the ruthless eponymous bailiff, while, as they later found out, their mother has been thrown into a brothel. The somber, melancholic and leisurely paced film provides with the chronicle of the siblings, their harsh growing up in the concentration camp, and their tragic attempts at reuniting with their devastated past. The film’s key themes of standing for one’s integrity and convictions, love for fellow beings, forced separation, slavery, tyranny, sacrifice, coming of age, and coming to terms with one’s shattered existence, were imbued with dollops of humanism and observations on the tragic and unfair nature of life. However, that said, Mizoguchi never made the tale appear overtly sentimental or titillating, despite having every reason and chance for doing so; consequently, it managed to be layered, subtle, and understated. The exquisite cinematography and lilting soundtrack played vital roles in accentuating its contemplating nature and emotional impact.

Director: Kenji Mizoguchi

Genre: Drama/Period Film

Language: Japanese

Country: Japan

Crime Wave [1954]

There’s so much pleasure in stumbling across a relatively lesser known noir that turns out to be darker, grimmer, and more hardboiled than one had been expecting. That this was also such a breezy ride through hell and back, made the experience all the more worthwhile. The quintessential noir theme of a man being forced to the edge of the rope by bad luck and the circumstances was used to excellent effect by Andre De Toth – Steve Lacey (Gene Nelson), a reformed criminal, leading a straight life with his lovely wife (Phyllis Kirk), is coerced into being part of a planned bank robbery by the ruthless Doc Penny (Ted de Corsia) and his psychotic henchmen (including one played by a very young Charles Bronson). Sergeant Sims (Sterling Hayden), a no-nonsense detective who regularly resorts to realpolitik in order to pursue his belief in end justifying the means, turns a blind eye to Lacey’s pleas of innocence as all he cares about is getting hold of a gang of serial robbers (Doc Penny and his guys) who have killed a cop. Thus ensues Lacey’s torment as his life starts sliding downward real fast. Hayden delivered a superb and near-explosive turn – one of the best of his career – as the jaded and cynical cop whose layer of humanity is concealed under his hardened exterior. Nelson and Corsia too gave eminently watchable turns. The film was excellently paced, with very well defined character arcs despite the crisp length, thus speaking volumes about the effectiveness of the script – more so given the action-packed nature of the serpentine and immensely engaging plot. Great atmosphere was also created thanks to the expert photography.

Director: Andre De Toth

Genre: Thriller/Crime Thriller/Film Noir

Language: English

Country: US

Sorcerer [1977]

William Friedkin, fresh out of his back-to-back successes, viz. The French Connection and The Exorcist, nearly had his career destroyed by Sorcerer because of the large budget for its time and the unfortunate responses it elicited. Inspired from Clouzot’s Wages of Fear, it is a rarity in that, without going into comparisons with the classic French original (which was admittedly superior of the two), it was one of those rare American remakes that has managed to survive the test of time and stand on its own merit. Four men from different parts of the globe have taken refuge in a rundown, godforsaken South American town, in order to escape from their past crimes. However, they all long to leave the dreary place, and so, when presented with the opportunity by an oil company to earn good money if they drive a deadly cargo of nitroglycerine over 200 miles by two rickety trucks through some of the most treacherous terrains imaginable, they leap at it despite the incredible dangers the insanely arduous task is fraught with. Though the character arcs and dynamics weren’t as well portrayed as in the original, the hellish ride, along with the emotional toll that it takes on them, were nearly as well depicted. And since back-stories of the four disparate and desperate men were shown, their intents too were thoroughly understandable. Whatever the movie lacked in terms of the emotional coldness of the script, it made up through the nail-biting suspense, and the visceral, gritty, and grimy content courtesy the superb cinematography, set-pieces and pacing. The acting by the four leads, specifically Roy Scheider and Bruno Cremer, were also quite commendable.

Director: William Friedkin

Genre: Thriller/Psychological Thriller/Adventure Film

Language: English

Country: US

A Man Escaped [1956]

A Man Escaped is widely recognized as one of the finest escape dramas ever made, despite it being anything but an archetypal escape film. French auteur Robert Bresson, true to his love for minimalism and under-dramatization of proceedings, stripped the film to its bare essentials while chronicling the story (based on the memoirs of Andre Devigny) – the end result is a nerve-racking experience and an outstanding film. Fontaine (François Leterrier), a member of the French Resistance, is captured by the Nazis and put into a prison. Right from the moment he arrives there, there’s just one thing and one thing alone occupying his mind – finding a way to escape from the hell-hole. He makes exceptional use of his fecund mind, resourcefulness, observant nature, and searing will to accomplish his goal, and gets crucial assistance from some of his fellow inmates as well as in the form of much needed luck at times, in order to meticulously plan his escape. The first half of the film deals with the planning and preparatory process, while the second about the actual escape with a young cell-mate in tow. Stylistically the movie is anything but the kind of pulsating, edge-of-the-seat thrillers that one would generally expect, what with its stark B/W photography, long takes, matter-of-fact voiceover, and long moments of silence (only to be punctuated from time to time by Mozart’s compositions). Yet, despite the quintessential Bressonian elements, this managed to be a truly gripping account courtesy the minute detailing, clinical storytelling, brilliant narrative pacing, and the importance laid on subtleties over grandiosity.

Director: Robert Bresson

Genre: Thriller/Prison Drama/Escape Film/Docu-drama

Language: French

Country: France

Man on the Tracks [1956]

The exceptionally talented Polish filmmaker Andrzej Munk, who would go on to make the seminal classic Bad Luck, made his feature film debut with Man on the Tracks, one of the earliest works in the Polish Film School movement and one of the most influential movies of the country. Munk made wonderful use of Rashomon Effect, immortalized by Akira Kurosawa in Rashomon, to chronicle the tale of Władysław, a former railway engineer, who has died under mysterious circumstances. During an indoor fact-finding session to investigate his death that nearly resulted in the derailment of a passenger train, the engineer’s life and the possible explanation for the event under the lens, are meticulously pieced together from the accounts of various participants – the stationmaster who had once worked under him and later went on to fire him, the driver of the train which killed him and who had apprenticed under him for a period of time sharing a strained relationship, and a signal operator who was the last person to speak to him. Though some of the members of the small committee are quick to draw conclusions about him, the elaborate, brilliantly structured and exquisitely layered flashbacks present him as a complex, well-rounded human being – a gruff person whose love for the locomotive ultimately results in his downfall, and that the reality was quite different vis-à-vis the perceptions. Kazimierz Opaliński provided a superb turn as the deceased protagonist in this psychologically invigorating, darkly ironic, politically charged, and deeply humanistic commentary on the subjectivity of human memory.

Director: Andrzej Munk

Genre: Drama/Psychological Drama/Political Drama

Language: Polish

Country: Poland