Selections from Mabee Library's Collection of Foreign Films in Four Parts

Part One...


Z (France)
PN1997 .Z2 2002

Turning the events preceding the 1960s military junta in Greece into a kinetic political thriller, Costa-Gavras' Z (1969) is a cinematically compelling argument against state repression. In a story based on the assassination of pacifist Gregoris Lambrakis, Greek expatriate Costa-Gavras' French New Wave techniques create visual energy and documentary immediacy while humanizing the Lambrakis analogue (Yves Montand) and his wife (Irene Papas). Cinematographer Raoul Coutard's moving camera and location shooting pump up suspense as key witnesses are pursued by mysterious thugs; newsreel-style crowd scenes become threateningly chaotic, emphasizing the government's collusion in the assassination. The couple's flash-cut memories of their married life emphasize the personal loss inflicted in the name of "democracy." Despite the film's basis in fact, Costa-Gavras neither identifies the country nor gives names to the main characters, turning the story into a universal warning against the rise of totalitarianism. An international hit (though banned in Greece), and all the more relevant amid late-'60s cultural upheavals in the U.S. and France, Z won awards as Best Film of the Year from both the National and New York film critics groups and became the first film nominated for Oscars as both Best Picture and Best Foreign-Language Film. It won the latter, along with Best Editing. ~Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

Babette's Feast / Babettes Gæstebud (Denmark)
PN1997 .B18 2001

The sophisticated and subtle screenplay for Babette's Feast, adapted by director Gabriel Axel, is based on a story written by Isak Dinesen, the writer memorably played by Meryl Streep in the biopic Out of Africa. In the film's first half, the emotional detachment of the pious characters is mirrored in the directorial approach, which allows the narrator to explain the matters before us, keeping us at a distance. When the feast begins, the narrator steps aside, Axel's direction becomes more evocative, and our participation becomes more active. Axel plays things low-key: his camera doesn't swoop or dance, but lingers lovingly over every aspect of the meal. The soundtrack includes some beautiful period music, but Axel mostly allows the sounds of the meal to become the symphony of the feast. Made out of humility and love, the feast is Babette's supreme artistic expression, and her hedonistic present encourages the feasters to look a little more closely at their own lives, as the magical and voluptuous feast dramatically counterpoints their puritanical existence. Babette's offering is a ritual sacrifice, intended to encourage the austere characters with the possibility that their material nourishment may provide spiritual sustenance as well. The film also contains a cultural context, as the political revolutions in 19th century Europe lead to Babette's displacement and the resultant cultural blending of Babette's southern European Catholic sensuality with sober northern European Protestantism. Their pact, to say nothing about the magnificence of the feast, ironically reveals the ineffable truth that Babette's artistic expression of love cannot be properly praised with words. Like the guests' spiritual values, it exists on a higher plane, where simple acts of generosity can erase personal prejudices. The film leaves us with a haunting echo of the roads not taken, as the characters must ponder the paths they have chosen and ask themselves: have they made the most of their gifts? Babette's Feast won several major awards, including the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film and the British BAFTA Award for Best Film of 1987. ~Dan Jardine, All Movie Guide

Hidden Fortress / Kakushi Toride No San Akunin (Japan)
PN1997 .K345 2001

Kurosawa's light adventure is probably best known as one of the primary inspirations for George Lucas' Star Wars (1977), but it's a masterful entertainment in its own right. Toshiro Mifune stars as a famous general who uses a couple of clownish peasants to help him transport a gold shipment and a volatile young princess through enemy territory. The film was the pioneering effort of the Japanese film industry in the use of the widescreen ratio, and, in a sense, Kurosawa's brilliantly supple deployment of the process is the star of the film. Especially in the early sequences in the prison and the quarry, the director achieves extraordinary effects of mass and scale as he suggests the smallness of the squabbling peasants and the stature of General Rokurota. He also uses the available space to spread the characters as far as he can, expressing the common distrust that is, at times, the only emotion these four very differently motivated characters share. Kurosawa has often suggested to his actors that they imagine themselves as various animals in an effort to elicit a more overtly physical performance, and that seems to be the case here, as the slightly exaggerated ensemble acting style enhances the humor of a film that is sometimes reminiscent of an early silent. Mifune, a virtuoso of physical acting, did all his own stunts, the most impressive being a horse-mounted pursuit while swinging a sword. Like Star Wars, the film has something of the quality of a fairy tale, one which can be appreciated both by children and adults. ~Michael Costello, All Movie Guide

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Faat-Kine (Senegal)
PN1997 .F3 2000

A movie brimming with wisdom and energy, Faat-Kine offers a knowing appraisal of the state of the Senegalese nation as well as a delightful portrait of the country's middle-class. Directed by Ousmane Sembene, considered by many critics to be the dean of African cinema, Faat-Kine features a winning performance by Venus Seye as the movie's heroine, a single mother who leads a happy, successful life despite the numerous setbacks she has encountered. More than anything else, the movie is a platform for Sembene's message of personal responsibility and social uplift. In offering a plot that follows the pedestrian affairs of daily life, Sembene connects his grand pronouncements on Senegalese society to the familiar. Reflecting his desire to communicate his politics clearly, Sembene's camerawork is admirably simple and economical, refusing to call attention to itself. The result is a movie of high social ambition that remains accessible and unpretentious throughout. Though Faat-Kine verges occasionally into didacticism, the movie never loses its equanimity and is never less than likable. Anchored by an appealing central performance and Sembene's sagacity, Faat-Kine is of a rare breed: a message movie that oozes good humor. ~Elbert Ventura, All Movie Guide

Oblomov (Russia)
PN1997 .N47 1998

Russian director Nikita Mikhalkov takes a break from emulating his beloved Chekhov to film the classic Ivan Goncharov novel Oblomov. The title character (played by Oleg Tabakov) is a 19th century Russian civil servant and landlord who chooses to go to bed one day--and never get up. Preferring to sleep his way through life rather than confront it, Oblomov is shaken from his slumbers by the arrival of a childhood friend Shtoltz. A series of flashbacks show why it is that this friend's presence gets Oblomov out of his 'jammies and back on his feet. Also known as A Few Days in the Life of I. I. Oblomov, this sprightly film is an excellent early example of the work of the director who would win a 1994 Oscar for his Burnt by the Sun. ~Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Secrets of the Heart / Secretos Del Corazón (Spain)
PN1997 .S322 2000

A young boy's fascination with the deaths of several people close to him spark his growth from boyhood in this Spanish drama from writer-director Montxo Armendáriz. The hometown of nine-year-old Javi (Andoni Erburu and his brother Juan (Alvaro Nagone) is a rural farming village in the early 1960s. Their father, they are told, accidentally killed himself while cleaning his gun, and the room where the death occurred has been declared off limits to the boys. Juan tells his younger brother that ghostly sounds can be heard in the room, but when Javi sneaks in and hears the unearthly moans, it's really the sound of their mother making love with their uncle Tio (Carmelo Gomez). Javi's friend Carlos (Inigo Garces) has also suffered the loss of a parent, his mother, who committed suicide. Javi and Carlos sneak into a haunted house, also rumored to be a site where spectral sounds can be heard, and they overhear something in the basement. His adventures inspire Javi to question the deaths of his father and Carlos' mother, leading to a revelation. Secretos del Corazon (1997) was the winner of four Goya Awards, as well as an Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Language Film. ~Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

L'Enfant Noir (Guinea)
PN1997 .E63 1995

This unique French-Guinean drama is adapted from the 1953 autobiographical novel by Guinean author Camara Laye and features in its cast actual members of the author's family. It is set in French-ruled Guinea and centers on the adolescent Baba who lives with his family on the banks of the Niger River. But for Baba's tendency to get in trouble with his mother, Kouda, for hanging out with his friends after dark, he and his family are close and very happy. Wanting for his son to have a better life, Baba's father, Madou, decides to send the youth to boarding school; Baba is nervous about the prospect, but dutifully goes to the coastal city, Conakry where he is alternately exhilarated and bewildered by city life. The prospect of learning French and other lessons is at first daunting, but with the help of his middle-class uncle Moussa and his family, Baba learns to adjust. After experiencing the highs and lows of his new life for a year, Baba finally returns to his village a mature young man. ~Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

The Official History / La Historia Oficial (Argentina)
PN1997 .H576 2004

This is an emotionally gripping, fictional look at a couple torn apart by the infamous Argentine campaign of killings and torture that sent thousands of accused terrorists to unmarked graves in the mid-and late-'70s. Alicia (Norma Aleandro) and Roberto (Hector Alterio) adopted a little girl (Analia Castro) during this period of governmental terror in Argentina. Alicia has always wondered about the parents of their little girl, a topic her husband has forced her into forgetting as a condition of the adoption -- he alone knows the full story. Thanks to censorship, Alicia -- like others -- is not fully aware of how much killing has gone on until her students at school start complaining that their textbook histories were written by murderers. Add to this a long conversation with a friend who had been in exile after she was tortured by the government, and Alicia starts to do some serious political and personal research on her own. The results reveal the identity of the little girl's dead parents and reveal that Alicia's husband has had a nasty hand in the government repression and dirty dealings with foreign businesses. She also learns the identity of the girl's grandmother. Her next decision will determine what to do with this information. ~Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

The Bicycle Thief / Ladri di Biciclette (Italy)
PN1997 .L27 1998

Though not the first Italian Neo-Realist film seen outside of Italy (or even Vittorio De Sica's first Neo-Realist work), The Bicycle Thief (1948) is considered the seminal film of the movement, alongside Roberto Rossellini's Rome, Open City (1945). Following the guiding Neo-Realist precept of drawing stories from the daily life of post-war Italy, De Sica and writer Cesare Zavattini carefully interweave a wider view of Italian culture with a portrait of the bond between a father and son, revealing the impact of poverty and bureaucratic absurdities on one of many struggling families. Shooting on location with non-professional actors in the two leads (well-coached by actor De Sica), De Sica's mobile camera transforms moments of Antonio's odyssey into poetic images of isolation and despair, while never losing sight of the gritty hardships of quotidian experience. An even greater international sensation than his first Neo-Realist film (Shoeshine (1946)), The Bicycle Thief earned a special Oscar for Best Foreign Film and became a signature work for a movement that also included Bitter Rice (1948), Luchino Visconti's La Terra Trema (1948), and De Sica's Umberto D. (1952). Inspiring filmmakers across the world as an alternative to expensive Hollywood fantasy, The Bicycle Thief revealed the potential power of combining local concerns with an unflinching cinematic style. ~Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

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Macario (Mexico)
PN1997 .M253 1998

B. Traven, the reclusive author of Treasure of the Sierra Madre, used an old Mexican folk tale as the basis for his novel The Third Guest. The book was in turn adapted for film as Macario. Ignacio Tarso plays a poverty-stricken peasant who goes on a hunger strike, hoping that someone will take pity on him and give him a turkey dinner. Torres' wife Pina Pellecier steals a turkey, and just as Torres is about to wolf down his food, he is visited by Death (Enrique Lucerio). The grim reaper offers to bestow magical powers upon Torres in exchange for part of the meal. Torres is gifted with the ability to restore health to sick people, but he is permitted to utilize this gift only upon persons of Death's choosing. At first, Torres is lauded as a hero, but before long he is being shunned as an instrument of Satan. Torres' last-ditch effort to redeem himself causes him to renege on his bargain with Death--and you know what that means. ~Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide