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Admission 18+, unless the film has been rated in Australia
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Dir: Michael Powell On a wartime pilgrimage to Canterbury three young people in search of spiritual peace encounter strange attacks on the girls of a Kentish village. The journey is both literally and spiritually a journey in the shadow of Chaucer from darkness to light, an exploration of the spiritual values of rural England. Powell called it 'a crusade against materialism'. The living past is found in the countryside where a sense of magic and the bizarre is conveyed through a symphonic-like structure and camera poetry
Dir: Michael Powell
On a wartime pilgrimage to Canterbury three young people in search of spiritual peace encounter strange attacks on the girls of a Kentish village. The journey is both literally and spiritually a journey in the shadow of Chaucer from darkness to light, an exploration of the spiritual values of rural England. Powell called it 'a crusade against materialism'. The living past is found in the countryside where a sense of magic and the bizarre is conveyed through a symphonic-like
structure and camera poetry
Dir: Michael Powell Powell and Pressburger dramatise the life of Clive Candy spanning fivedecades from the Boer War to World War 2. Candy is Colonel Blimpbut he is more than David Low's symbol of British procrastination, regard for tradition and all the things that were losing the war. Although the film is dedicated to the New Army of Britain, Candy is portrayed in an essentially affectionate way but kept at a certain distance. He is clearly at odds with his times, out of touch with the great changes going on around him. But sympathy is extended to him as a loner who cannot change, although he is ultimately able to face up to the realities of the times.
Powell and Pressburger dramatise the life of Clive Candy spanning fivedecades from the Boer War to World War 2. Candy is Colonel Blimpbut he is more than David Low's symbol of British procrastination, regard for tradition and all the things that were losing the war. Although the film is dedicated to the New Army of Britain, Candy is portrayed in an essentially affectionate way but kept at a certain distance. He is clearly at odds with his times, out of touch with the great changes going on around him. But sympathy is extended to him as a loner who cannot change, although he is ultimately able to face up to the realities of the times.
Dir: Francois Truffaut In this society of the future the job of firemen is to hunt out and incinerate books. 451 degrees F. is the temperature at which they burn. Typically Truffaut sought for new ways to combine pre-existing elements and unsettle audience expectations. Here he makes the fantastic seem banal and the banal seem strange. He strips Bradbury's story of its futuristic elements and apocalyptic ending in blending elements of the recent past and the near future.
Dir: Francois Truffaut
In this society of the future the job of firemen is to hunt out and incinerate books. 451 degrees F. is the temperature at which they burn. Typically Truffaut sought for new ways to combine pre-existing elements and unsettle audience expectations. Here he makes the fantastic seem banal and the banal seem strange. He strips Bradbury's story of its futuristic elements and apocalyptic ending in blending elements of the recent past and the near future.
Dir: Ethan Coen and Joel CoenThis screwball comedy was the Coen Brother's follow up to their debut film 'Blood Simple' (1984). It's the story of Edwina, a policewoman who falls in love with Hi, while she's taking his mug shots.
Dir: Akira Kurosawa The story concerns a group of people inhabiting a wretched congregation of shacks which they call their 'town'. Each of the inhabitants has his particular dream which serves as a compensation for a miserable hand to mouth existence.
Dir: Akira Kurosawa
The story concerns a group of people inhabiting a wretched congregation of shacks which they call their 'town'. Each of the inhabitants has his particular dream which serves as a compensation for a miserable hand to mouth existence.
Dir: Akira Kurosawa Although the spoken word is sparingly used in this reworking of Macbeth, the structure of the play is closely adhered to by retaining the division of acts. Kurosawa plays on similarities between the European and Japanese Middle Ages. There are also essentially Japanese elements. The use of the chorus derives from the Noh drama as does the ritual, closed quality especially in the presentation of Lady Asaji and the witch. The film is 'founded on the principle of opposition between extreme violence or pathos and moments of static, restrained tension to be found in nearly all of Kurosawa's films'
Although the spoken word is sparingly used in this reworking of Macbeth, the structure of the play is closely adhered to by retaining the division of acts. Kurosawa plays on similarities between the European and Japanese Middle Ages. There are also essentially Japanese elements. The use of the chorus derives from the Noh drama as does the ritual, closed quality especially in the presentation of Lady Asaji and the witch. The film is 'founded on the principle of opposition between extreme violence or pathos and moments of static, restrained tension to be found in nearly all of Kurosawa's films'
Dir: Roberto Rossellini Planned while the Germans were still in Rome, with production commencing only two months after its liberation, 'Open City' draws on contemporary events, often filmed in the actual locations where they had taken place, to present the lives of a cross-section of a city under terrible stress
Dir: Roberto Rossellini
Planned while the Germans were still in Rome, with production commencing only two months after its liberation, 'Open City' draws on contemporary events, often filmed in the actual locations where they had taken place, to present the lives of a cross-section of a city under terrible stress
Dir: Roberto Rossellini In the desolation of post-war Berlin a young boy perpetrates a crime in the belief that he is performing an heroic act. Following 'Rome Open City' and 'Paisan' it was seen by Rossellini as 'the third panel of the triptych on war'. It was filmed in Berlin in 1947 not as a realist drama set in postwar Germany so much as a poetic portrayal of the malaise of Germany at the moment of defeat.
In the desolation of post-war Berlin a young boy perpetrates a crime in the belief that he is performing an heroic act. Following 'Rome Open City' and 'Paisan' it was seen by Rossellini as 'the third panel of the triptych on war'. It was filmed in Berlin in 1947 not as a realist drama set in postwar Germany so much as a poetic portrayal of the malaise of Germany at the moment of defeat.
Dir: Wallace Worsley A man, who as a boy had his legs needlessly amputated, swears revenge on the surgeon. He has become the master of the San Francisco underworld and contrives to take the surgeon's daughter as hostage in order to force him to graft on new legs - the legs of her fiancée.
Dir: Wallace Worsley
A man, who as a boy had his legs needlessly amputated, swears revenge on the surgeon. He has become the master of the San Francisco underworld and contrives to take the surgeon's daughter as hostage in order to force him to graft on new legs - the legs of her fiancée.
Dir: Victor SjöströmWhen a scientist's professional and personal life is destroyed by his patron, the unscrupulous Baron Regnard, he decides to lose himself in laughter and becomes France's most famous clown, 'He'. This tale of humiliation in the circus is curiously reminiscent of Ingmar Bergman's 'The Naked Night'. The phantasmagorical circus scenes are the central focus of the film. The relationship between the crowd and the performers is given a symbolic dimension while Sjostrom projects something of the psychological state of the main character in visual terms experimenting, for example, with the use of small amounts of light amidst darkness.
Dir: Tod Browning Probably the best of the ten films that Chaney and Browning made together, The Unknown has been described as "one of the most resplendently morbid features ever made ... one of the truly great silent movies". Chaney plays a strangler with two thumbs on one hand masquerading in a circus as Alonzo the Armless Wonder who uses his feet in a knife throwing act. He finds himself rival with the strong man for the affections of a pretty equestrienne (Crawford) who cannot bear to be touched by men. Alonzo believes he has won her love but when his mocking assistant reminds him that marriage would reveal his true identity he plans to have his arms amputated. Truly l'amour fou with a Grand Guignol ending.
Dir: Tod Browning
Probably the best of the ten films that Chaney and Browning made together, The Unknown has been described as "one of the most resplendently morbid features ever made ... one of the truly great silent movies". Chaney plays a strangler with two thumbs on one hand masquerading in a circus as Alonzo the Armless Wonder who uses his feet in a knife throwing act. He finds himself rival with the strong man for the affections of a pretty equestrienne (Crawford) who cannot bear to be touched by men. Alonzo believes he has won her love but when his mocking assistant reminds him that marriage would reveal his true identity he plans to have his arms amputated. Truly l'amour fou with a Grand Guignol ending.
Dir:Tod Browning Convincingly disguised as a little old lady, Echo and his two carnival cohorts perform a series of Park Avenue robberies. Echo's sweetheart Rosie (played by Mae Busch) plays along with the Unholy Three but changes her mind when their latest burglary, which ended in murder, threatens to send an innocent man (who is also Rosie's Lover) to the electric chair.
Dir:Tod Browning
Convincingly disguised as a little old lady, Echo and his two carnival cohorts perform a series of Park Avenue robberies. Echo's sweetheart Rosie (played by Mae Busch) plays along with the Unholy Three but changes her mind when their latest burglary, which ended in murder, threatens to send an innocent man (who is also Rosie's Lover) to the electric chair.
Dir: Peter WatkinsWatkin's portrayal of the life and work of the pioneer expressionist painter and graphic artist Edvard Munch uses an almost documentary approach to the narrative, incorporating meticulous detail to place the artist in a social and historical context. The use of non-professional actors, often communicating directly with the audience by glances into the camera, adds to the immediacy of the dialogue which was written in collaboration with the cast.
Dir: Jean-Luc Godard Juliette, the central character of Godard's film was inspired by journalist Catherine Vimonet's feature on housewives in the modern suburbs of Paris, who make extra money as part-time prostitutes. The fragmented story of 24 hours in Juliette's life is subordinated to sociological analysis and questioning of the filmmaking process itself made by Godard's voice on the soundtrack as he examines modern industrial life.
Dir: Jean-Luc GodardThe film is an adaptation of the novel Fools' Gold (Doubleday Crime Club, 1958) by American author Dolores Hitchens. The film belongs to the French New Wave movement. Godard described it as "Alice in Wonderland meets Franz Kafka"
Dir: J. Lee Thompson After spending eight years in prison for assault, Max Cady (Robert Mitchum) is released. He promptly tracks down Sam Bowden (Gregory Peck), a North Carolina lawyer and a man he holds personally responsible for his conviction.
Dir: Benjamin ChristensenThis combination of dramatised fiction, documentary footage and animated sequences was based on the records of witchcraft trials in the 15th and 16th centuries. Christensen (who also plays the devil) adopts a sceptical attitude to the occult in a portrayal, in turn grotesque and humorous, of witches' sabbath and black mass, extraction of confessions and contemporary scenes of possession.
Dir: Vittorio De SicaA man and his son search for his stolen bicycle which he needs to hold his job as a bill poster; without the bicycle he is condemned to unemployment.
Dir: Fritz Lang In this atmospheric melodrama in a late Victorian setting a young and unsuccessful writer accidentally strangles his maid when she resists his advances. The writer's crippled brother is implicated when he helps dispose of the body. This is a variation on an idea that interested Lang: that in certain situations very little distinguishes a law-abiding citizen from a lawbreaker. Another Lang concern - the ambiguity of guilt - focuses on the brother.