Profundo  Rosso 

Shock Treatment 

RSVP

Don't Torcher a Duckling

The Leopard

Murder by Decree

The Attic Expeditions

I liked "The Leopard" and Visconti is one of my favorite directors. I think his last two movies are the only ones I haven't seen.

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" rel="nofollow - 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 ... 

Some of these films, define me as a person ...

The Kieslowski film has one of the most amazing mixes of film and music, that to me was so big, and had already been touched by Vangelis, Maurice Jarre, and Bernard Herrman for me. The music made the film even more valuable and important, and was not just an add-on like the Hollywood variety of cheap factory movie!

A Woman's Tale, for one of the most incredible show of what acting is all about, and how someone looks at it ... the film is a mind burner!

Marat/Sade is probably the play I love the most and would most likely love to direct (and put the Trumps in the first row instead of the French Aristocracy!), and its political debates are what define me the most ... "I am the revolution! No you are not, you are another idiot that thinks you can change the world and will die for it!" (something like that!)

Performance, is for me, the ultimate best movie ever made. It defies description and no film has ever matched up its arts so well and so beautifully.

La Belle Noiseusse has the worst knock of all films I have ever seen ... it 4 hours long, but most people can not appreciate a complete painting being shown and done during that time ... to me, that is the ultimate in the human vision and desire to express it and show it ... but too many film folks thought it was stupid ... because art in their lives is not valuable at all!

le Fantome de la Liberte ... the title alone says it all, and it is by far one of the films that inspires me the most ... the hope that we can be free!

Aguirre, The Wrath of God ... Krautrock personified ... if folks that like what it became in music will ever learn to realize that improvisation is not just a music thing ... epic!

Allegro Non Troppo ... simply the best cartoon film of all ... a musical FANTASIA with different music, but not suited to American tastes ... it deserved a lot better!

El Maestro de Esgrima ... probably my favorite film of all next to BLADE RUNNER, and its content and filming and style is so far and above all the other films, specially those on Fencing ... very special and far out film that you will remember a long time!

Have fun!

I know Aguirre (my favorite of Herzog is "Strosczek".. I used to have "The Double Life of Veronique" but I needed space. But I'll expedite this. Thank you!

"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.

you probably mean "La Terra Trema" ("The Earth is Shaking")

Ah yes, thank you Jean.

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

Many of the films listed were scrapped from the floors of many video stores that are no more ... one of them here in Vancouver had a lot of foreign films, and I think I was the only one that probably watched everything they had, and was familiar with a lot of the stuff.

I think that many of these films can be picked up on Amazon cheap ... but many of the others are considered "art house" stuff and they are spendy ... which means no one will ever seen them again!

The ISLAND ON BIRD STREET, was listed in Portland, on the Film Festival as a film for youngsters, which was absolutely HORRIBLE and totally distasteful and it tells you that anyone who wrote that and listed the film there, never even saw it or was aware of its content. It has elements that make for a kid's story, but it is hardly that ... it is a story that goes under a fence that separated East and West and there were a lot of political things in it ... the kid is Jewish and he hides in a destroyed bunch of buildings and the food he finds? He has a little white mouse that chases food ... and that's what he eats mostly ... towards the later part of the film he meets a girl on the other side ... etc. etc ... and that gives him a reason to cross under the fence and all that ... and go around the guards ... in the destroyed building, the kid knows all the hiding places!

It is one of those films that just crushes your heart, and you want to much to help the kid ... but can't!

And its filming was incredible ... sensitive, quiet, slow when it needed to be (guards are coming around and watching everything) ... and so on ... a magnificent directing job ... and you know what? 19 people in the audience for its only showing in Portland ... and the Film Festival did not publish my review in time to help! In those days they were more concerned with kissing Almodovar!

Fassbinder ... is important in many ways, but I have only seen one of his films, although I had for a long time, a book that had 3 other scripts and I read them ... but I could never find the films, and nowadays, I have a hard time finding them ... and Netflix is ... I'm getting fed up with it! The Medici's was nice ... but the best films ever made? Forget it! Hopefully I can find more Fassbinder and watch it and review it ... he is on the early side of the experimentalists, and was also known to use a lot of ad-lib'ing ... so his whole filming style was not exactly unknown.

"博士の愛した数式" ("The Professor's Beloved Equation") by Takashi Koizumi. The story centers around a mathematician, "the Professor," who suffered brain damage in a traffic accident in 1975 and since then can produce only 80 minutes' worth of memories, and his interactions with the housekeeper and her son "Root" as the Professor shares the beauty of equations with them. The equation in the title is this one:

"Messer im Kopf" ("Knife in the Head") by Volker Hauff. One night when seeking his estranged wife, Hoffmann goes to the youth center where she works. The police are there rounding up radicals who frequent the center - Hoffmann runs into the building and ends up being shot in the head. He awakens with brain trauma, partially paralyzed and unable to speak. The police accuse him of stabbing an officer; the radicals herald him as an innocent victim of police brutality. During his slow recovery at the hospital, Hoffmann must piece together his life and struggle to remember the events of that night.

"Schwarz und Weiß wie Tage und Nächte" ("Black and White as Days and Nights") by Wolfgang Petersen. A scientist who swore off playing chess after a nervous breakdown as a boy wunderkind, creates an undefeated chess program. But the Russian world champ beats Tommy Rosemund's masterwork in a televised match. So the West German mathematician becomes a top chess pro himself, which the West German media boast will prove the superiority of Germany and democracy. The jowly, white-faced Rosemund believes that the entire Red Communist bloc is out to stop him from vanquishing their atheist pretty boy, Stefan Koruga, to become the next Bobby Fischer and a symbol that capitalism is preferable to socialism. This movie has one of my favourite quotes in it (I will only give the English translation).

Rosemund to his wife: "Please write a letter for me".

Wife: "What shall I write"?

Rosemund: "Dear Sir! I invite you to a game of chess. I will give you the advantage of a pawn and two moves, and I will beat you nevertheless".

Wife: "And who shall I send this letter to"?

Rosemund: "To God".

This is actually attributed to Wilhelm Steinitz, the first World Chess Champion who became mentally ill in his latter years.

I think the only film of his I remember having seen was "Ali, Fear Eats the Soul" ... and I don't remember a lot of it, except that it was slow, and probably was mostly ad-lib. I have to see it again to get a better feel for it ...

BaldJean wrote: ... "Les lèvres rouge" ("Daughters of Darkness"; the literal translation of the title would be "The Red Lips") by Harry Kümel. ...

When I saw this, I thought it was fantastic ... and really out there. I would like to see this film again, as i saw this in downtown LA, where there used to be a theater, that only played odd ball films out of Europe and this was one of those films. Also saw, there, things like "Goodbye Gemini" which had Jane Asher in it, and then "Girl In a Motorcycle" that had Marianne Faithfull in it ... and a couple of other films including, I think, one of Christopher Lee's films based on a Dennis Wheatley novel ... "To The Devil A Daughter" which also had Nastassja Kinki in it. However, I do not remember a whole lot about the film and its story at all ... I have the book and probably should read it for a change!

Some of these films I need to find a way to get them and watch them again! They are worthy of a review and being listed!

Moon (2009)

Europa Report (2013)

Many (even some of his fans) don't seem to have seen "Whity"

Interesting that we can't post videos if there are two equal signs but here's the link

Kenneth Anger's film was well known, but the title sent a lot of folks away and most places were afraid of playing it ... nowadays, with its ability to be bought online and what not, this is not as much of a problem ...

Did you notice, btw, the cast in this thing? Kinda insane, and I have to admit I'm on the lookout to see/get this film now, as I do not remember a whole lot about it!

This is very unknown too and even accompanied by Prog: "Delired Chameleon Family" by Clearlight is the soundtrack to "Visa de Censure No. X", an experimental short movie by Pierre Clémenti:

"Lucifer Rising" is in my opinion actually slightly (very slightly) reminiscent of this movie.