Robert Altman's wry comedy tackles the origins of modern showbiz and media manipulation in Buffalo Bill's Wild West show. Paul Newman plays the legendary 'star' as a bundle of neuroses who more than meets his match when the show is joined by Sitting Bull (Frank Kaquitts)—a man of principles, unimpressed by the razzamatazz. An enjoyable indictment of Hollywood.
Great, gritty, noir-ish French thriller from '82, a controversial sensation in its homeland. Writer/director Bob Swain (an American who'd lived in Paris for 20 years) casts Richard Berry as the undercover cop who uses informers to bust pimps. He presses prostitute Nathalie Baye to betray the alpha gangster. The climactic action recalls The French Connection.
Sam Fuller once claimed that the point of any opening sequence was to give the viewer an erection. Here we have Barbara Stanwyck in black, on a white stallion at the head of her 40 hired men. As lawman Barry Sullivan exclaims succinctly: "Whoa!" Shot in 11 days, in Cinemascope, this is Fuller firing on all cylinders, taking the '50s pulp western and squeezing more juice out of it than any of his contemporaries.
Jean Cocteau's 1949 reworking of the myth of Orpheus (Jean Marais) portrays him as a beat poet torn between his art, his wife (Marie Déa) and the love of Death (Maria Casares) herself. The effects are a miracle of low-budget ingenuity, the dream-like imagery unforgettable: mysterious motorcycling assassins, poetry from beyond the grave on the radio, and all mirrors lead to the Underworld. A masterpiece.
With grim, grubby retro-future styling, Michael Radford's movie, originally released in the eponymous year, is the best adaptation of George Orwell's feel-bad totalitarian parable. As reluctant rebel Winston Smith, John Hurt is perfect—looks like he's spent his life in misery. The revelation is Richard Burton, weighed down with strange love, melancholy and menace in his final role as O'Brien, the investigator who takes Hurt under his wing to crush him.
The title translates as "I remember" in dialect, but Fellini's visionary 1973 work (an Oscar winner) wasn't the rosy nostalgia about childhood he'd originally planned. His unique, untethered imagination bleeds into every frame of these '30s-set seaside snapshots, with—of course—sex and religion figuring prominently. Warring parents, twisted priests, Fascists, fantasy, farce and melancholy. As they say, very Fellini.
It wasn't until Frank Tashlin's 1956 screwball comedy, starring Jayne Mansfield at her most buxom, that Hollywood finally exploited the nascent rock'n'roll boom. The result is a Technicolor feast of Gene Vincent, Little Richard and Eddie Cochran in their hip-swivelling prime, rivalled only by Julie London's (literally) haunting shiver through "Cry Me A River". Camp, corny, but classic.
This dark treasure from 1945 was Robert Bresson's second feature. Scripted by Cocteau, it's erotic longing and revenge, as spurned spider woman Maria Casares seeks the downfall of her ex and his lover. In contrast with the grey, static textures of Bresson's celebrated work, there's near-noirish lustre, but the intriguing, deceptive narrative bareness, the sense of forces moving beneath the surface, are his alone.
The simmering sexuality. The blood lust. The savaging of bourgeois restraint. The horse flagellation. Ken Russell and DH Lawrence were made for each other. The nude wrestling scene is the one that everyone remembers, but the satire bites best in the form of Hermione, Eleanor Bron's caricature of avant-garde pretence. Made in 1969, this is probably the last time Russell showed restraint before he hurtled into kitsch overkill.
