griggs's - 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die List

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'Gertrud' is the story of a woman's search for a romantic ideal of total and perfect love. A once famous singer now in her early forties, Gertrud makes the decision to leave her lawyer husband for her lover, a young composer.

Discovering the next day that her lover has betrayed her, and is unable to give her his total love, Gertrud rejects both husband and lover, choosing a life of solitude and study over the compromise of love that is merely half-measure.

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During Napoleon's invasion of Spain, two soldiers discover a strange manuscript at an Inn. The book chronicles the adventures of Alfonso van Worden (Zbigniew Cybulski).

Alfonso's passage through the dangerous Sierra Morena mountains is repeatedly interrupted by seemingly random encounters with an assortment of larger than life figures. Tunisian princesses inform Alfonso that he is their cousin and their betrothed; an occult scholar ensnares Alfonso with confounding stories about feuds between Merchants and hardships faced by gypsies. And of course, Alfonso never did expect the Spanish Inquisition.

The magical, heart-warming story, which has become the most popular family film of all time, tells the story of a spirited young woman, Maria (Julie Andrews), who leaves the convent to become governess to the seven children of the autocratic Captain von Trapp (Christopher Plummer).

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Kon Ichikawa's documentary record of the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo looks like a deliberate bid to make a film as different as possible from Leni Riefenstahl's notorious Nazified Olympiad Triumph of the Will--shot at the 1936 Berlin Games.

Where Riefenstahl glorifies muscular young Aryan bodies in heroic struggle and victory, Ichikawa goes for a more unassuming, human touch. Working with 164 cameramen, he undercuts the official pomp and pageantry with moments of humor and informality. Thousands of doves are released to mark the opening ceremony, and spectators duck and cover against a shower of droppings; meanwhile an official trots anxiously after one dove that doesn't feel like taking off. Ichikawa sidelines the competitive spectacle to dwell on small idiosyncrasies and revealing displays of emotion--a Russian shot-putter goes through an elaborate pre-throw ritual of twitches and tweaks; an American swimmer weeps when she's awarded her gold medal; a Japanese weightlifter emits a rousing Samurai yell as he hoists his barbell; a racing cyclist, grounded in a collision, clutches his leg in agony and frustration; and the camera impishly zooms in on the ungainly wobbling bottoms of competitors in a walking race. There are moments of sublime beauty, too: rowers scull over a mist-shrouded morning river; the Ethiopian marathon winner, slim and sinewy, calmly outpaces the field with a stoic dignity worthy of Buster Keaton. Finally, after all the fine speeches about aspiration and international brotherhood, a lone sweeper totes his broom across the vast deserted stadium.

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Written and directed by Godard, 'Alphaville' is the strangely beautiful futuristic tale of Lemmy Caution (Eddie Constantine), an American private eye sent to a planet ruled by Von Braun (Anna Karina), a malevolent scientist who has outlawed human emotions in favour of logic.

The film deals with the fight between individualism in the face of inhumanity and blind conformity...

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Small-town Slovakia 1942. Nazi concentration camp deportations have begun. Tono, a poor carpenter, is appointed 'Aryan controller' of the elderly and frail Jewish widow Rozalia's shop.

Believing Tono is her new assistant, the two develop a friendship in which he maintains that illusion to try and protect her from the encroaching Nazi terror. Wonderfully written and performed, and with an extraordinary Zdenek Liska score, the film becomes a devastating examination of how minor compromises can finally lead to complicity in the horrors of tyranny.

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Carol (Catherine Deneuve), a young French girl living in Sixties' London, is repelled, yet fascinated by men. Her radiant beauty attracts the opposite sex, but she shrinks from their advances.

Her days are spent in an intensely feminine atmosphere: working in a beauty salon, and clinging to her sister Helen (Yvonne Furneaux) for love. Things start to unwind however when Helen goes away with her married boyfriend (Ian Hendry). As Carol incarcerates herself in her sinister, shadowy flat, men begin to invade her dreams night and day, mixing her terror with delight as bizarre hallucinations take hold of her mind. The walls start to crack, literally, before her eyes. Finally, racked and depraved through her delirium, she is left with only one instinct towards the men who invade her life - that of a killer...

Loosely based on Anthony Burgess's 'A Clockwork Orange', 'Vinyl' tells the story of Victor (Gerard Malanga), a "JD", who is betrayed to the police by his sidekick, Scum Baby (Bob Olivo, aka Ondine), and after being tortured by The Doctor (Tosh Carillo), becomes a useful member of society.

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Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill! Is a story of a new breed of superwomen… three buxom go-go girls: Varla, Rosie and Billie, wildly dancing the watusi before the leers, jeers and lecherous come-ons on their drooling all-male audience.

The violence, implicit in the girls' tease, is quickly moved out of the microcosmic bar into outside world as they literally let go of themselves, embarking on a wild, violent, deadly journey of vengeance on all men. Varla, the outrageously abundant karate master leader of the pack, breaks the arms and back of one man, runs her Porsche over two others, grinds a fourth, a muscleman, against a wall and, eventually, deliberately goes down the path of her own self-destruction, dragging her two buxotic cohorts along with her.

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Based on Lionel White's novel 'Obsession', 'Pierrot le Fou' transforms a story about a couple on the run into an entertaining, existential romance. Tired of his bourgeois life, Ferdinand Griffon (Jean-Paul Belmondo) leaves his wife and elopes with his former baby sitter, Marianne (Anna Karina).

When a dead body is found in Marianne's apartment, the two lovers flee to the South of France in a futile bid to escape Marianne's dangerous past.

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Made in 1962 (but not released until 1965), Bengali director Ritwik Ghatak’s film starts soon after the 1947 partition of Bengal. At a socialist refugee colony, Ishwar and his younger sister, Sita, adopt a low-caste boy, Abhiram, who has been separated from his mother.

To keep the two children from poverty, Ishwar abandons the colony to take an administrative job at an iron mill. Years pass. During one school vacation, the now-grown Sita and Abhiram acknowledge their love for each other. Ishwar, turned grimly bourgeois, opposes their match, and his interference leads to disaster for all three.

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Giulietta Masina gives a superb performance as the bored, timid, frumpy and ultimately unfilled housewife who suspects her husband is being unfaithful.

In an effort to escape the hurtful reality of her situation she enters a surreal fantasy world of her own by conjuring up spirits who lead her into a world a world of sensual pleasure. The images that Fellini creates become more and more dazzling and hypnotic in their effect. Much of the fantasy involves Juliet's fabulously outgoing and sexually liberated neighbour Suzy, but are they part of plot or is Fellini exploring his own desires?

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A fearless heroine...a kung-fu master in hiding...a seemingly invincible villain...and a film that's universally regarded as one of the greatest ever made in Hong Kong.

The heroine is Golden Swallow (Cheng Pei-Pei) She is been dispatched by her powerful father to rescue her brother who's been taken hostage by bandits. The kung-fu master is Fan Da-Pei (Hua Yueh); he may look like a drunken beggar but he's one of the best fighters around. Trouble is, the only man who can beat him is helping the bandits...'Come Drink with Me' shook up martial arts movies and influenced everyone from Bruce Lee to Jackie Chan and beyond.

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Few films have caused such controversy as Peter Watkins' The War Game, a drama documentary made for BBC TV in 1965 about a "limited" nuclear attack on Kent, England.

Blending fiction and fact to create a moving and startling vision of the personal as well as the public consequences of such an attack, Watkins exposes the inadequacy of the nation's Civil Defence programme and questions the philosophy of the nuclear deterrent. Conspicuously absent from TV screens until 1985, it was mainly through cinema release in 1966 - and its Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 1967 - that it gained a loyal and vociferous following, providing a sharp focus for CND and other peace movements.

In this 16 minute short, a director faces a rebellion of sorts when his star tells him she is fed up having to appear naked in pretty well every scene. What follows is an incoherent sequence of scenes - many with female nudity - and it's left entirely to the viewer to determine what it all means.