The marriage between flighty romantic Wanda and the overly practical Ivan was never going to be an easy one, though at least the wild romp across Rome that emerges from their odd mismatch brings both newlyweds down to earth, as Federico Fellini offers divine redemption in The White Sheik to those who seek it out in the right places.
Federico Fellini’s love of theatre would take on great symbolic meaning in his later films, but it emerges quite directly here as the setting of his directorial debut Variety Lights, fuelling the drama between the flighty members of a travelling troupe dreaming of fame, money, and love.
There might not be any historical record that the cultural traditions in The Ballad of Narayama existed anywhere outside of Japanese folklore, and yet it is exactly in that heightened, mythical realm where Keisuke Kinoshita’s film dwells, intertwining kabuki theatre, musical storytelling, and vibrant cinematic innovations within a distant dream of forgotten legends.
Ordet’s parable of dwindling spirituality is stark in its dogmatic minimalism, enveloping Christians and non-believers alike in rural landscapes of harrowing scarcity, and yet still there is hope in Carl Theodor Dreyer’s deliberations on divine miracles that espouse the indivisibility of life, faith, and the profound resurrection of both.
Max Ophüls’ untethered camera sways freely with the currents of history and destiny that swirl around renowned dancer Lola Montes, exposing the tragedy that sees the perverse celebrity culture of 19th century Europe simultaneously glamourise her rise to fame, and degrade her into an object of commodified, gaudy spectacle.
While post-war Rome crumbles in Umberto D., Vittorio de Sica interrogates the isolating shame of poverty through the trials of one elderly pensioner, confronting the bleak realities of homelessness within an urban landscape of rich cultural history and cold, harsh discomfort.
Akira Kurosawa’s landscapes of ambition, fate, and consequences make for a perfect marriage with Shakespeare’s Macbeth in Throne of Blood, formally integrating the narrative’s treacherous power plays with historical elements of Japanese Noh theatre, and mounting the forces of nature and destiny against the dishonourable samurai at its centre.
Japanese soldier, prisoner, and pacifist Kaji seems to live multiple lives across the modern odyssey of The Human Condition trilogy, waging his soul as the last battleground of moral fortitude in the final years of World War II, and becoming the compelling centrepiece of Masaki Kobayashi’s devastating study on humanity’s most vital essence.
The sensitivity that is absent on the faces of Robert Bresson’s actors can be found instead in the dextrous movements of their fingers, palms, and wrists in Pickpocket, drawing a transgressive eroticism from the penetration of personal spaces, and building out a subtle interrogation of one thief’s unlikely guilt.
There is certainly something poignantly poetic in the way Guru Dutt’s premature passing mirrors the ending of his final film, tracing the tragic fall of a once-famous filmmaker, but Kaagaz Ke Phool also captures the essence of an artistic imagination profuse with creative joy, lyrically reminiscing the love which inspired him to craft some of India’s finest cinema.
