Translator
Based on the famous Leopold and Loeb murder case (from which two other films, COMPULSION and SWOON, were also derived), ROPE both challenges and terrifies the audience. Alfred Hitchcock disdained the whodunit crime story, which he felt lacked emotional force, and ROPE shows the director’s preference for letting the audience know more than the characters onscreen. The film opens as two young men (Farley Granger and John Dall) strangle a friend just to prove they’re intellectually capable of committing the perfect crime. To add to the amusement, they hide the body in a trunk that will serve as the dinner table for a party honoring the deceased. The film hones in on an hour and a half of the party, with the constantly moving camera capturing the changing emotional atmosphere as the guests grow increasingly concerned about the fate of the missing boy. ROPE is a directorial tour de force, blending complex camera movement with intricate staging to present the entire story in near-real time in one location. Notably, the adaptation of the play by Patrick Hamilton was written by perennial Hitchcock actor Hume Cronyn.
Randy “The Ram” Robinson, a 1980s-era pro wrestler, has become a burnt-out shell of his former self. After he has a heart attack during a small-time match, a doctor tells him he could die if he fights again. In an effort to build a new life, Robinson takes a job at a deli, moves in with an aging stripper and tries to build a relationship with her son. But the prospect of a rematch with his old nemesis, the Ayatollah, proves too tempting to resist, even if it means risking his life.
The story of General George S Patton, Jr. during the World War II phase of the controversial American general’s career. A military historian and poet, Patton believes he was a warrior in many past lives, and that he is destined for something great during this life; however, his stubborn and controversial methods nearly prevent the fulfillment of that destiny.
In 1914, a group of German teenagers volunteer for action on the Western Front. Paul Baumer is a sensitive youth, but is persuaded to join up by a war-mongering professor advocating glory for the Fatherland. Paul and his friends are trained under Himmelstoss, a kindly postmaster turned brutal corporal, and then sent to the front lines to taste battle, blood and death.
Visionary filmmaker and poet Jean Cocteau responded to the terrors and creative constraints of occupied France with this elaborately realized take on the classic fairy tale BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. Suggested by his longtime collaborator and muse, French actor Jean Marais, the cinematic version of the fable first penned by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont became Cocteau’s most celebrated film. Cocteau renders the story of a gentlehearted beast in love with a simple and beautiful girl in the style of the luminous paintings of Dutch master Vermeer. From the quaint and humorous scenes of Beauty’s happy home to the ominous surreal spectacle of the Beast’s enchanted estate, Cocteau transforms the simple tale of tragic love into a surreal vision of death, desire, and beauty. Marais is chilling as the lonely and tormented beast, projecting a wounded love for the glacial yet endearing Beauty (Josette Day), whose simple request for a rose from her father brings tragedy crashing down on her whole family. Cocteau expands upon the cinematic inventiveness first seen in his masterpiece BLOOD OF A POET with mirrors made of water, living statues, and candelabras fashioned from living arms, transforming a children’s fable into a complex and radiant cinematic classic.
A fragile, anxious boy, 12-year-old Oskar is regularly bullied by his stronger classmates but never strikes back. The lonely boy’s wish for a friend seems to come true when he meets Eli, also 12, who moves in next door to him with her father. A pale, serious young girl, she only comes out at night and doesn’t seem affected by the freezing temperatures.Coinciding with Eli’s arrival is a series of inexplicable disappearances and murders. One man is found tied to a tree, another frozen in the lake, a woman bitten in the neck. Blood seems to be the common denominator–and for an introverted boy like Oskar, who is fascinated by gruesome stories, it doesn’t take long before he figures out that Eli is a vampire. But by now a subtle romance has blossomed between Oskar and Eli, and she gives him the strength to fight back against his aggressors. Oskar becomes increasingly aware of the tragic, inhuman dimension of Eli’s plight, but cannot bring himself to forsake her. Frozen forever in a twelve-year-old’s body, with all the burgeoning feelings and confused emotions of a young adolescent, Eli knows that she can only continue to live if she keeps on moving. But when Oskar faces his darkest hour, Eli returns to defend him the only way she can.
Set in the French Quarter of post WWII New Orleans, desperate and neurotic Blanche DuBois searches for someplace and someone to call her own when she is forced out of her hometown after trying to seduce a teenage boy whom she was teaching. What she finds is a wild town filled with characters more desperate than herself — namley the brutish Stanley who is in love with Blanche’s sister Stella and deeply mistrusts Blanche and her shadowy past.
