Through one Italian filmmaker’s struggle with creative block, contemptuous shame, and overwhelming pressures, Federico Fellini crafts a surrogate representation of himself, elusively traversing a surreal sea of memory and dreams in a film that seeks to intuitively examine the arduous processes of its own self-reflexive construction.
Tony Richardson’s adaptation of classic novel Tom Jones is imbued with the rebellious spirit of the young maverick himself, throwing out the playbook of cinematic convention to skilfully blend highbrow social satire and lowbrow slapstick in its coming-of-age narrative, while finding comfort in the frivolities of an absurdly unpredictable world.
The only place willing to embrace those who have endured life’s deepest psychological pains in The Haunting is the cursed estate of Hill House, consuming its vulnerable visitors in Robert Wise’s expressionistic set pieces and writing out their chilling destinies in ghostly prophecies.
In place of open dialogue between characters in The Silence, Ingmar Bergman leaves an apathetic void of love and communication, formally manifesting his long-running existential fears of an unresponsive, godless universe within a stifled relationship between estranged sisters.
Akira Kurosawa’s riveting narrative in High and Low may start small with an agonising moral dilemma, but by the end of its criminal hunt it feels as if we have touched every corner of a sprawling city wracked with class warfare, forcing the rich and poor into bitter games of twisted revenge which turn both into miserable losers.
A pair of lonely masses bookends Winter Light’s spiritual crisis with a robust endurance of faith, focusing Ingmar Bergman’s intensive screenplay and severe direction upon a doubting priest bearing numerous similarities to a forsaken Christ, and uncovering a humanistic resilience which transcends religious boundaries.
Just like the infectious disease slowly killing Hud’s family ranch, this selfish child of the Old West callously destroys the proud legacy that his ancestors spent lifetimes nurturing, as Paul Newman takes the abrasive, hyper-masculine archetype of the individualistic hero to its logical conclusion against Martin Ritt’s bleak landscapes of a dying Texan town.
Stanley Donen’s eclectic mix of calculated plotting, screwball antics, and authentic location shooting makes for a fascinating blend of tones in Charade, and yet he skilfully integrates all three with playful ease, infusing its Hitchcockian espionage narrative with an air of Parisian romance and peril.
With a playfully postmodern approach to classical conventions of both mise-en-scène and Greek mythology in Contempt, Jean-Luc Godard aims his incisive wit towards the gods of storytelling themselves, while critiquing those who degrade history with visions of crude, dishonest entertainment.
