Values:
Gandhi (Richard Attenborough, 1982) "Gandhi goes by in a cloud of serenity, and everyone who sees him knuckles under (with the exception of a few misguided fellows, of course). Ben Kingsley ... is impressive; the picture isn't ... Kingsley can't give his role a core, because it has been written completely from the outside. A viewer's reaction: 'I felt as if I had attended the funeral of someone I didn't know.'" — Pauline Kael
"The movie earns comparison with two classic works by David Lean, Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago, in its ability to paint a strong human story on a very large canvas." — Roger Ebert
Intolerance (D.W. Griffith, 1919) "D.W. Griffith's epic celebration of the potentialities of the film medium—perhaps the greatest movie ever made and the greatest folly in movie history." — Pauline Kael
Il Decalogo (Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1988) "[Kieslowski] confirmed his status as a major contemporary director with Decalogue(1988), an ambitious series of ten hour-long films funded by Polish TV, telling stories "based" on the Ten Commandments. (InDecalogue 10, for instance, two brothers, an accountant and a punk rocker, both covet the stamp collection they have inherited from their father.) In the same year, Kieslowski expanded segments five and six into two features, A Short Film About a Killing and A Short Film About Love. Partially set, like the rest of the series, on a Warsaw housing estate, A Short Film About a Killing is a grim and powerful tale drawing formal parallels between the act of murder and the workings of the criminal justice system." — from theBaseline biography of Kieslowski
Au Revoir, Les Enfants (Louis Malle, 1987) "Deeply felt film based on an incident from Malle's youth, during WWII, when the headmaster of his Catholic boarding school decided to shield several Jewish children in the midst of Nazi-occupied France." — Leonard Maltin
Dersu Uzala (Akira Kurosawa, 1975) "A poignant, poetic examination of contrasting lives." — Leonard Maltin
The Tree of Wooden Clogs (Ermanno Olmi,1978) "A year in the life of a community of peasants in Northern Italy, just before the turn of the century. Simple, quietly beautiful epic; a work of art." — Leonard Maltin
Open City (Roberto Rossellini, 1945) "Roberto Rossellini burst open the world with this film, made just after the Allies took Rome. The fame of his brutal, melodramatic account of the underground resistance to the Nazi occupation rests on its extraordinary immediacy and its rough, documentary look. . ." — Pauline Kael
Wild Strawberries (Ingmar Bergman, 1957) "Ingmar Bergman's first big popular success in the United States. It's a very uneven film: an eminent physician (Victor Sjöström) looks back over his life, which is tricked up with gothic effects and contrasts ... and with peculiarly unconvincing flashbacks and overexplicit dialogue. It's a very lumpy odyssey, yet who can forget Sjöström's face. . .?" — Pauline Kael
"Still a staple of any serious filmgoer's education." — Leonard Maltin
The Seventh Seal (Ingmar Bergman, 1957) "The images and the omens are medieval, but the modern erotic and psychological insights add tension, and in some cases, as in the burning of the child—witch (Maud Hansson), excruciation. The actors' faces, the aura of magic, the ambiguities, and the riddle at the heart of the film all contribute to its stature." — Pauline Kael
Chariots of Fire (Hugh Hudson, 1981) "The picture is a piece of technological lyricism held together by the glue of simpleminded heroic sentiment; basically, its appeal is in watching a couple of guys win their races." — Pauline Kael
"This is strange. I have no interest in running and am not a partisan in the British class system. Then why should I have been so deeply moved by Chariots of Fire, a British film that has running and class as its subjects?" — Roger Ebert
The Bicycle Thief (Vittorio DeSica, 1950) "This neorealist classic, directed by Vittorio De Sica and written by Cesare Zavattini, is on just about everybody's list of the greatest films. It isn't a movie that warms you, though; it doesn't have the flawed poetry that De Sica's Shoeshine and Miracle in Milan have. It's a more impersonal great film." — Pauline Kael
It's A Wonderful Life (Frank Capra, 1946) "What is remarkable about It's a Wonderful Life is how well it holds up over the years; it's one of those ageless movies, like Casablanca or The Third Man, that improves with age. Some movies, even good ones, should only be seen once. When we know how they turn out, they've surrendered their mystery and appeal. Other movies can be viewed an indefinite number of times. Like great music, they improve with familiarity. It's a Wonderful Life falls in the second category. ." — Roger Ebert
"Frank Capra's most relentless lump-in-the-throat movie ... This picture developed a considerable—if bewildering—reputation, based largely on television viewing, about three decades later." — Pauline Kael
Schindler's List (Steven Spielberg, 1993) "In this movie, the best he has ever made, Spielberg treats the fact of the Holocaust and the miracle of Schindler's feat without the easy formulas of fiction. The movie is 184 minutes long, and like all great movies, it seems too short." — Roger Ebert
On the Waterfront (Elia Kazan, 1954) "The director, Elia Kazan, and the writer, Budd Schulberg, start out to expose racketeering in the waterfront unions, and wind up trying to make the melodrama transcend itself. They fail, but the production took eight Academy Awards anyway, and most of them were deserved. It is one of the most powerful American movies of the 50s, and few movies caused so much talk, excitement, and dissension—largely because of Marlon Brando's performance as the inarticulate, instinctively alienated bum, Terry Malloy." — Pauline Kael
The Burmese Harp (Kon Ichikawa, 1956) "Extraordinary anti-war drama is affecting and memorable if a bit overlong." — Leonard Maltin
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Next week: Art
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