Movies You Love but Think Not Many Others Have See

One look in my website and this list will probably double ...

One of my comments that a lot of folks at the Portland International Film Festival disliked was that I was always telling people to stop watching/going to the American/English/Spanish/French films (Portland was probably the Almodovar's first lover!) ... and go watch all the films from the other countries that no one would ever know, or EVER see again.

And, of course, I wrote a review on them, which did not make some folks happy, and the following year I was not one selected by their group to help put together program notes for some of these films ... because I was not interested in getting more Pedro Almodovar's stories for them ... I had to find these and translate them ... which gave me an edge in a lot of Spanish, Portuguese, French and some Italian films ... that I normally went through ... but by that time, I was more interested in expanding my tastes ... not closing them down, as the Film Festival was doing!

I have no "favorite" but at least one film review of mine has helped the film be shown in another Festival ... and I'm proud of that ... to me, the idea of helping expand the consciousness ... with new and valuable moments and works ... is the ultimate ... the film?

THE ISLAND ON BIRD STREET

Other special films for me: ( http://pedrosena.com/others.htm )

32 Short Films About Glen Gould

Bitter Sugar

My 20th Century

Sunday's Children

The Double Life of Veronique

The Mysteries of Rampo

To Live

Yellow Earth

A Woman's Tale

Caravaggio

Jubilee

Marat/Sade

Orlando

Performance

Prospero's Books

Savage Messiah

Jean de Florette

Manon of the Spring

La Belle Noiseusse

Le Fantome de la Liberte

Aguirre, the Wrath of God

Allegro Non Troppo

The Icicle Thief

Burnt By The Sun

El Maestro de Esgrima 

Enough of a list for now ... 

"De Wisselwachter" ("The Pointsman") by Jos Stelling. surrealistic movie with very little dialogue. a French speaking woman gets off a train at the lonely post of a pointsman's post mistaking it for the station she wants to go to. since the woman speaks only French which the pointsman doesn't understand communication is difficult, especially since both are quite taciturn in the first place. nevertheless the two slowly develop a relationship that leads to violence when the postman begins to be sexually interested in the woman.

"Welt am Draht" ("World on a Wire") by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. his only SF movie made for German TV in two parts. in the present day (1973) the new supercomputer of the "Institut für Kybernetik und Zukunftsforschung" ("Insitute for Cybernetics and Future Science's) hosts a simulation program that includes an artificial world with over 9,000 "identity units" who live as human beings, unaware that their world is just a simulation. Professor Vollmer, the technical director, claims to be on the brink of great discovery and dies under cryptic circumstances. his successor, Dr. Fred Stiller, has some strange experiences like the mysterious disappearance of security chief Günther Lause, of whom apparently no-one but Stiller has any memory. this movie picks up the theme of "The Matrix" but 25 years earlier and is much better told.

"Chinesisches Roulette" ("Chinese Roulette") by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. creepy family drama involving a plot revolving about a disabled twelve-year old daughter, who walks on crutches, her family and her mute governess. the daughter lures both parents and their lovers into their summer cottage by making them believe they would have it for themselves. the daughter suggests they should play a game of "Chinese Roulette", in which one team has to guess a person the other team has picked by asking questions. soon tensions arise that culminate in a violent act. this movie reminds me of Sartre's saying "l'enfer, c'est les autres" ("hell, that's the others").

"Viva la Muerte" ("Long Live Death") by Fernando Arrabal. highly surrealistic movie settled in the Spanish civil war with lots of highly disturbing images that will haunt you forever. Fando is a boy about ten years old. his father is a communist, and his mother betrays him to the fascists. both his mother and his aunt are highly religious. Fando has visions about what happens to his father, and some of these visions are extremely disturbing, like Fando making love to his aunt among hundreds of maggots or a fascist soldier piercing the eyes of his father with a prong and eating them, and those are some of the tamer visions; I won't describe the wilder ones. you will definitely need a strong stomach to watch this movie!

"Malpertuis" by Harry Kümel. a great unknown horror movie based on the novel of the same name by Belgian author Jean Ray. Jan (Mathieu Carrière), who is a young seaman, returns to land, and while searching for his childhood home, is mysteriously abducted. he awakens in an isolated old mansion called Malpertuis, where he find himself among various relatives, including his sister Nancy (Susan Hampshire; the love between them appears to be more than just brotherly/sisterly), three strange sisters, one of them being Alice (Susan Hampshire) who has the hot pants for him, the mysterious Euryale (Susan Hampshire) who he has the hot pants for, a strange taxidermist, a resident madman called Lampernisse and lots of other creepy characters. the mansion turns out to be a labyrinth of corridors, staircases, and secret chambers, belonging to his family. his bedridden uncle Cassavius (Orson Welles) is about to divide the estate to his heirs, but, as it turns out, only if they commit themselves never to leave the premises. the atmosphere is surreal and absolutely creepy. Orson Welles is great, but the real star is Susan Hampshire. when Friede and I first watched the movie we did not realize that Nancy, Alice and Euryale were played by the same woman. one of the very best horror movies we ever saw.

"Les lèvres rouge" ("Daughters of Darkness"; the literal translation of the title would be "The Red Lips") by Harry Kümel. a recently married young couple are on their honeymoon. they check into a grand hotel where they encounter a mysterious Hungarian countess and her female secretary. at the hotel, the Countess quickly becomes obsessed with the newlyweds and the resulting interaction of the four people leads to sadism and murder.

"De vierde man" ("The Fourth Man") by Paul Verhoeven. Gerard Reve, an alcoholic, bisexual novelist, leaves Amsterdam to deliver a lecture at the Vlissingen Literary Society. there, he becomes sexually involved with its attractive treasurer, Christine Halsl*g. who, as he later finds out, lost three husbands by tragic accidents, or were they? is Christine a witch? the Virgin Mary appears to him in visions to show that he is targeted as her fourth victim. Mary says, "anyone given a warning must listen to it." he passes on the warning to Herman, Christine's other lover who Reve lusts for, but he ignores it, thinking that Gerard is trying to scare him off so that he can have Christine for himself.

Tapfret wrote: ^I have a friend who collects every possible release, movie poster, etc for Profundo Rosso. I suspect its not known in the main stream, but probably pretty well known to PA members given the soundtrack.

sorry for being nit-picky, but it is "Profondo Rosso" ("Deep Red", a horror thriller by Dario Argento). io adoro la lingua italiana, quindi ho dovuto intervenire