Satire as social criticism: Nagisa Oshima’s Three Resurrected Drunkards
Three Resurrected Drunkards (Kaette kita yopparai, 1968) starts with a long sequence showing three young men enjoying themselves on a…
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War as absurdity: Kihachi Okamoto’s Desperado Outpost
Desperado Outpost (Dokuritsu gurentai, Japan, 1959) starts with shots of a man on horseback in a landscape reminiscent of a…
Thousand Words: Inner Torments and Social Disease (The Quiet Duel, 1949)
In the long opening sequence of Akira Kurosawa’s The Quiet Duel (Shizukanaru kettō), which takes place in 1944 in one…
Lost Classic: Ulysses’ Gaze (Theo Angelopoulos, 1995)
As with the main character in Homer’s Odyssey, from whom Ulysses’ Gaze (1997) gets its name, Theo Angelopoulos’ sadly forgotten…
Screengem: General Mireau’s Sofa in Paths of Glory (Stanley Kubrick, 1957)
The most oft-discussed visual aspect of Stanley Kubrick’s morally exasperating anti-war polemic Paths Of Glory is the stunning camerawork that…
Brilliant Failure: Freedom Fighters (Vicente Aranda, 1996)
Vicente Aranda (who died last year) was part of the avant-garde Barcelona School of filmmakers in the 1960s and became…
Screengem: The tin of sweets in Grave of the Fireflies (Isao Takahata, 1988)
Childhood sweets are happy memories. They’re treats from loving parents, for being good, for being loved. It’s wartime in Grave…
Lost Classic: Overlord (Stuart Cooper, 1975)
Stuart Cooper’s dream-like interweaving of stunning archival footage with the fictional narrative of the training of a new recruit, Tom…
