Released in 1972, Federico Fellini's extended love letter to his adopted home city is less of a linear drama than an impressionistic anthology of autobiographical memories, sketchy anecdotes and documentary-style snippets. With sumptuous cinematography by Giuseppe Rotunno and a lush Nino Rota score, Roma is a minor Fellini work but a ravishing and innovative visual symphony.
Another belter from the late Kinji Fukasaku's back catalogue. Loosely based on a true story, Fukasaku presents a chaotic swirl of gangland melodrama torn from the prison diary of a Yakuza footsoldier (Bunta Sugawara), seasoning his wild rumination on the loss of the old warrior's code with frequent bursts of histrionic Day-Glo brutality.
Jules Dassin's 1955 heist flick is the genre's benchmark movie. The silent 28-minute set-piece robbery scene provides the film's highlight, but elsewhere there's much to admire in Jean Servais' hangdog protagonist and Dassin's pre-Nouvelle Vague documentary approach to shooting Parisian nightlife.
