A Streetcar Named Desire

Kazan, Leigh, Brando, 117m, 1953, Tennessee Williams
This drama of explosive emotions provides an ideal canvas to showcase the precocious acting gifts of the lead stars. Vivien Leigh's portrays the tormented and foredoomed Blanche as her life begins its journey of decline. Brando oozes masculine animality, yet tempered with a feline grace which makes him unforgettable. It is a movie about loss, the frustration of possibilities, about people who come down in life. With leashed power the story portrays the tragic aspect which is the reality of human existence. The themes are universal, transcending time and place.

A Man for all Seasons

120m, 1966, Robert Bolt, Paul Scofield
A riveting drama about moral choice based on the life of Thomas More, who was executed for antagonizing Henry VIII by not acquiescing to the dissolution of his one marriage and blessing of the next. The movie more than any other feature stands out for the density and richness of the script, full of reason, thought and philosophy. Robert Bolt also wrote the scripts for two of David Lean's best known films.
Bosley Crowther:

"...the solid substance of "A Man for All Seasons"... presents us with an awesome view of a sturdy conscience and a steadfast heart...within such magnificent settings as only England itself could provide to convey the resplendence and color of the play's 16th-century mise en scène... crystallized the essence of this drama in such pictorial terms as to render even its abstractions vibrant...the play is essentially a showing of just one prolonged conflict of wills, one extended exposition of a man's refusal to swerve from his spiritual and intellectual convictions..."

The Importance of being Ernest

97m, 2002
This is a brilliant and enjoyable introduction to Oscar Wilde's frothing and witty comedy set in high Victorian society. The camera gives us beautiful and intimate view of their sumptuous and leisurely ways. We see where the fat of the Empire went. It is another side of the Gunga Din saga. This of course is incidental to the deadpan brand of British humor to which Wilde made his unique contribution.

On the Waterfront

1954, 103m, Elia Kazan(dir), Marlon Brando
Revisiting after many years this riveting drama of moral heroism, I observed the amazing fluidity of Brando's expressions and masterly projection of the persona of a dim witted ex boxer who resurrects as a human being when a storm of life breaks out. His face is a rippling canvas on which the drama is written. The eyes and brows contort crookedly in anguish or soften in gentleness, compassion, hurt. One wonders how it comes about. It is not acting, but immersion. The look in his eyes as he pushes away the gun his brother points at him is an unforgettable moment. To quote the director: “ ... what was extraordinary about his performance, I feel, is the contrast of the tough-guy front and the extreme delicacy and gentle cast of his behavior. What other actor, when his brother draws a pistol to force him to do something shameful, would put his hand on the gun and push it away with the gentleness of a caress? Who else could read `Oh, Charley!' in a tone of reproach that is so loving and so melancholy and suggests the terrific depth of pain?”
CLIP

Sobibor, October 14, 1943, 4 p.m.

Claude Lanzmann, 100m, 2001
The eponymous date marks the largely successful uprising at the Sobibor concentration camp. Claude Lanzmann has carved a unique place in the annals of cinema through his documentaries on the most hellish chapter in history. These films, more than any monument, chronicle the events through first person video narratives. The present film, apart from the narrative of Yehuda Lerner, mainly comprises images of trains moving in the environs where these things happened, as they appear in 2001. Trains are eminent symbols of the transportation of human cargo which occurred in the silence of night, shrouded in secrecy, even the hapless sheep unaware of the slaughter which waited. The indirectness and restraint of Lanzmann's films accounts for their power and truthfulness. However, for those not from the effected community, this austere documentary populated by trains, trams and a single speaking torso could be tedious.
SHOAH