An exercise in style, La Ronde was one of the few films of the 1950s to contain overtly sexual themes. The story is a series of character vignettes, set in Vienna in the early 1900s and held together by a narrator (Anton Walbrook). Read More
Francois Girard directed this drama tracing the history of a musical instrument through five countries and three centuries. In 1681, to keep the spirit of his wife alive, an Italian paints the violin with a red varnish made from her blood.…Read More
Max Ophuls' final film (and his only movie in color) is a cinematic tour-de-force masquerading as a biography, in this case a dazzling fictionalized life of the notorious 19th century dancer, actress, and courtesan. A still beautiful, but weary and disillusioned (and, as we later discover, ailing) Lola Montes (Martine Carol) is first seen as the featured attraction at a seedy American circus, appearing at the center of a series of various tableaux…Read More
Masculine Feminine was Jean-Luc Godard's first (but not his last) foray into the burgeoning "Children of the Sixties" generation -- or, as Godard described it, "the children of Marx and Coca-Cola.…Read More
'30 Beats' follows ten characters drawn into a ring of love and desire, each one caught beyond his or her control in a chain reaction of seduction, impulses and self-discovery.…Read More