The Battle of Algiers (La battaglia di Algeri, Italy-Algeria, 1966)

The Battle of Algiers is an extraordinary film for a number of reasons, primarily the impartiality with which the events are portrayed and the style in which it is shot. It was made just after Algerian independence from France and focuses upon the battle for the capital city in 1957, which although a failure for the [...]

Bicycle Thieves (Ladri di bicyclette, Italy, 1948)

What happens when you watch a ‘classic’ movie – and there are not a lot that are more ‘classic’ than Bicycle Thieves – and you think ‘that was good’;  ‘good’ is not  good enough for ‘classic’. The ‘good’ reaction was the first I had nearly 30 years ago, when I saw the film twice; in [...]

Germany Year Zero (Germania anno zero, Italy, 1948)

Germany Year Zero was director Roberto Rossellini’s third World War II film and it followed Rome, Open City (1945) and Paisa (1946) in filming, on location, the ‘here and now’ of the end and aftermath of the war. While both use melodrama as much as realism, Germany Year Zero is probably the bleakest, which is [...]

Gomorrah (Gomarra, Italy, 2008)

Whilst Gomorrah is clearly a gangster film, representing the Naples Camorra, it also resembles the (so-called) fly-on-the-wall documentaries that trace a number of contemporaneous narrative strands about lives in, say, airports or hotels. These, however, use voice overs thereby disallowing them as ‘observational’ documentaries as their meaning is anchored. That said, if Gomorrah had had [...]

The Passenger (It-Ger-Spain, Michelangelo Antonioni, 1975)

I’m a fan of arthouse but is it that Antonioni’s portentous (slow) and (would be/maybe is) style simply feels outdated or are my brain cells not what they used to be. The Passenger‘s interesting, and Nicholson’s always watchable, but does it really take 2 hours to tell this tale. As I say, maybe I’m getting [...]

Shoeshine (Italy, 1946)

Preceded Bicycle Thieves and follows the same tragic pattern – well it had to didn’t it in post-war Italy given the fact this is a neo realist film. Brilliantly done, particularly in the performances and cinematography (much of it shot in a prison). Maybe a tad too melodramatic (well there’s a contradiction in terms) at [...]

The Night Porter (Italy, 1974)

I guess it was quite daring for the time: a concentration camp victim has an ‘affair’ with her guard 30-odd years after the war. It still is quite daring but I found the 1970s’ multi-national arthouse style (ie use of dubbing and telephoto lens) irritating. I saw it first as part of my Film/Lit degree [...]

The Consequences of Love (Italy, 2004)

An arthouse genre film (ie it draws on the gangster movie but does so tangentially) that’s worth a watch. Focusing on an old(ish) guy who re-evaluates his life (the early shot of a horse driven hearse references Wild Strawberries) when he develops a relationship with a young woman. However, he is not exactly a painting [...]