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Jean Renoir’s The Rules of the Game has been part of the film canon for so long that it’s valuable to remind audiences how gloriously alive and just plain fun it is. Low comedy walks hand and hand with tragedy and beauty throughout the film, which is frothy one minute, nearly apocalyptic the next—and so you’re never fully allowed to gather your bearings. It has a tone that could be symbolized by the escalating merry-go-round that prominently plays into the climax of Strangers on a Train—up and down, all around and seemingly totally out of control. The film, as Paul Schrader says in this Criterion edition’s liner notes, represents all of cinema’s possibilities in 106 minutes.

That controlled chaos is partially driven by anger and despair. Renoir often said that the film was a response to his frustrations with the bourgeoisie at a time...

"Let the game begin." Janus Films has revealed a brand new trailer for the 4K restoration and re-release of the Jean Renoir 1939 classic The Rules of the Game, considered one of the best films ever made despite opening to very negative reviews. The film depicts members of upper-class French society and their servants just before the beginning of World War II, showing their moral callousness on the eve of destruction. At la Colinière, the deceptively idyllic country estate of a wealthy Parisian aristocrat, a selection of society’s finest gather for a rural sojourn and shooting party, and reveal themselves to be absurdly, almost primitively, cruel and vapid. Starring Nora Gregor, Paulette Dubost, Mila Parély, Marcel Dalio, Julien Carette, Roland Toutain, Gaston Modot, and Pierre Magnier. The film received terribly negative reviews and even provoked near riots in Paris upon its initial release. As a result, Renoir cut 23 minutes from the film at the time.

Warner Brothers released “Casablanca” in New York on Nov. 26, 1942, which just happened to be Thanksgiving. But the romantic World War II drama starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman and Paul Henreid was anything but a turkey. To say the New York Times review was effusive is something of an understatement: “Warners here have a picture which makes the spine tingle and the heart take a leap….And they have so combined sentiment, humor and pathos with taut melodrama and bristling intrigue that the result is a highly entertaining and even inspiring film.”

And critical praise and audiences’ adoration continued when it opened in Los Angeles and nationwide in January 1943. It went on to win three Oscars for Best Picture, director for Michael Curtiz and adapted screenplay for Julius J. and Philip Epstein and Howard Koch. Let’s take a look back on the occasion of the 80th anniversary.

As time has gone by,...

The messy politics of the Indo-China War didn’t confuse writer-director Samuel Fuller; as the machine gun- toting Nat King Cole snarls, hating Commies is an end unto itself! Fuller’s second outrageous Cold War combat fantasy pits a handful of French Legionnaires and mercenaries against the might of the International Communist Conspiracy, to stop the flow of Chinese and Russian weapons into Vietnam. Commander Gene Barry has an ally who could be straight from a Terry and the Pirates comic strip: Eurasian adventuress Lucky Legs. Young Angie Dickinson is the good-time-girl / wronged spouse / caring mother who also maintains cordial pillow-talk relations with the Red vermin. If those are the Good and the Bad, Lee Van Cleef’s Chinese General is the Ugly: his troops guard the China Gate, the key to Commie victory!

China Gate

Blu-ray

Viavision [Imprint] 111

1957 / B&w / 2:35 widescreen / 95 min. / Street Date April 8, 2022 / Available from Amazon.

Good Old Tony Curtis! We could always depend on Tony for a sly, ingratiating smile, charm that ranged from candid-sweet to barracuda insincerity, and a desire to please that never quit. Some of his best work came while schmoozing and nice-nice clawing his way to the top, where he epitomized the glamorous movie star with universal appeal. Kino gathers three of Curtis’s better mid-career starring vehicles, directed by three top talents — Blake Edwards, Robert Mulligan and Norman Jewison.

Tony Curtis Collection

The Perfect Furlough, The Great Impostor, 40 Pounds of Trouble

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

312 minutes

Street Date August 4, 2020

available through Kino Lorber

49.95

Starring: Tony Curtis

Tony Curtis appears to have become a Golden Boy at late-’40s Universal-International by playing the role of ambitious actor to the hilt. Everybody caught him dancing a mean rumba with Yvonne de Carlo in Criss Cross; it’s fun to seem him perform a ‘look,...

A classic from the underrated filmography of Henri Decoin, 1955’s Razzia sur la chnouf (Raid on Drugs) is based on a novel by Auguste Le Breton, who wrote Rififi and Bob Le Flambeur, which would end up being seminal titles directed by Jules Dassin and Jean-Pierre Melville, respectively.

Decoin’s film has been eclipsed by those more famed titles, but is nevertheless one of Jean Gabin’s more notable later period roles, who stars as Henri Ferre (aka the Man from Nantes), who arrives back in Paris after a notable criminal career in the Us. Immediately tailed by law enforcement upon his return to France, he’s recruited by Paul Liski (Marcel Dalio), who wants Ferre to improve his hustle in narcotics.…...

“You know you don’t have to act with me, Steve. You don’t have to say anything, and you don’t have to do anything. Not a thing. Oh, maybe just whistle. You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? You just put your lips together and… blow!”

Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in To Have And Have Not screens at Webster University Tuesday February 5th. The screening will be at 7:30 at Webster University’s Moore Auditorium (470 East Lockwood). The film will be introduced by Cliff Froelich, Executive Director of Cinema St. Louis and Adjunct Professor of Film Studies at Webster University.A Facebook invite for the event can be found Here. This is the first of four Humphrey Bogart/Lauren Bacall collaborations that will be screening at Webster in February. The others are: The Big Sleep Feb 12th, Dark Passage Feb 19th, and Key Largo Feb 26th.

Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Grand Illusion (1937) is showing July 27 - August 26, 2017 in the United States as part of the retrospective Jean Renoir.Considering Jean Renoir's Grand Illusion today in no small part involves an awareness of status and stature, the most prominent (or maybe just the most intimidating) aspect of which surely being the cherished status the film continues to enjoy in the canon of film history. To this day, it remains a singular achievement, not only as one of Renoir's foundational masterpieces, but also as a film of its time whose contents have remained timeless. Released in 1937 to great acclaim, it bid farewell to one era of European history and warfare as another, far darker one was about to begin; thus, more than the grimly comical The Rules of the Game (made and released two years closer to the brink...

William Wyler’s 1960s screwball heist comedy is a squeaky-clean high fashion vehicle for stars Audrey Hepburn and Peter O’Toole — who of course aren’t really crooks despite pulling off a major art theft. It’s lush, beautiful to look at and directed with verve by Wyler; with some funny jabs at the art world from screenwriter Harry Kurnitz.

How to Steal a Million

Blu-ray

Twilight Time

1966 / Color / 1:35 widescreen / 123 min. / Street Date April 11, 2017 / Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store / 29.95

Starring: Audrey Hepburn, Peter O’Toole, Charles Boyer, Eli Wallach, Hugh Griffith, Fernand Gravey, Marcel Dalio, Jacques Marin. .

Cinematography: Charles Lang

Film Editor: Robert Swink

Original Music: John Williams

Production design: Alexander Trauner

Written by Harry Kurnitz story by George Bradshaw

Produced by Fred Kohlmar

Directed by William Wyler

There’s no denying that Audrey Hepburn had a fairly incredible run of hits in the 1960s: The Nun’s Story,...

Close-Up is a column that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. The retrospective The Many Sins of Walerian Borowczyk is showing February 12 - June 18, 2017 in the United States and in many other countries around the world.As the reverberation of horses fervently neighing and clomping their hooves begins to permeate the opening credit soundtrack of The Beast, one may recall the similarly orchestrated donkey brays that introduce Robert Bresson’s Au hasard Balthazar (1966). Or, given its title, and the very basic concept of a young woman becoming enamored with an savage creature, one may be tempted to compare this 1975 feature to the many variations of Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve’s classic fairy tale, La belle et la bête. One would be more than a little confounded, however, by making either inadequate association. If Walerian Borowczyk’s semi-porn-semi-art-semi-monster movie bears any resemblance to another film or story, it would be...

Bogart finds Bacall and movie history is made; for once the make-believe romantic chemistry is abundantly real. Howard Hawks' wartime Caribbean adventure plays in grand style, with his patented mix of precision and casual cool. It's one of the most entertaining pictures of the 'forties. To Have and Have Not Blu-ray Warner Archive Collection 1944 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 100 min. / Street Date July 19, 2016 / available through the WBshop / 21.99 Starring Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Walter Brennan, Hoagy Carmichael,Dolores Moran, Sheldon Leonard, Walter Szurovy, Marcel Dalio, Walter Sande, Dan Seymour. Cinematography Sid Hickox Art Direction Charles Novi Film Editor Christian Nyby Original Music Hoagy Carmichael, William Lava, Franz Waxman Written by Jules Furthman, William Faulkner from the novel by Ernest Hemingway Produced by Howard Hawks, Jack L. Warner Directed by Howard Hawks

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Speaking for myself, I can't think of a more 'Hawksian' picture than To Have and Have Not.

French film star fled Nazis with husband Marcel Dalio, who co-starred with her in famous 1942 movie set in occupied Morocco

Madeleine LeBeau, the last surviving cast member of Casablanca, whose tear-stained face framed in closeup while La Marseillaise played became a defining image of resistance during the second world war, has died aged 92.

LeBeau, who played Yvonne in the 1942 film, died in Spain on 1 May from complications following a broken thigh bone, her stepson, filmmaker Carlo Alberto Pinelli, told the Hollywood Reporter.

Continue reading...

Madeleine Lebeau, the French actress best known as Yvonne in Oscar-winning 1942 film Casablanca, died on May 1 in Estepona, Spain, following a hip injury, her stepson told The Hollywood Reporter. She was 92. Lebeau, who played Rick's girlfriend and performed "Le Marseillaise," was the last surviving actress from the iconic film, preceded in death by all of her co-stars, including leads Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. Other roles included that of an actress in Fellini's 8 1/2, Gentleman Jim and in French cinema like Angélique". Lebeau stopped acting by the end of the 1960s, however. Born in 1923 near Paris, Lebeau later fled the...

Madeleine Lebeau, the French actress best known as Yvonne in Oscar-winning 1942 film Casablanca, died on May 1 in Estepona, Spain, following a hip injury, her stepson told The Hollywood Reporter. She was 92. Lebeau, who played Rick's girlfriend and performed "Le Marseillaise," was the last surviving actress from the iconic film, preceded in death by all of her co-stars, including leads Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. Other roles included that of an actress in Fellini's 8 1/2, Gentleman Jim and in French cinema like Angélique". Lebeau stopped acting by the end of the 1960s, however. Born in 1923 near Paris, Lebeau later fled the...

Banished by Josef Goebbels and threatened by the Reich, the creative core of the German film industry found itself in sunny Los Angeles, many not speaking English but determined to carry on as writers, directors and actors. More than simply surviving, they made a profound impact on Hollywood moviemaking. Cinema's Exiles: From Hitler to Hollywood DVD-r The Warner Archive Collection 2009 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 117 min. / Street Date April 12, 2016 / available through the WBshop / 21.99 Cinematography Joan Churchill, Emil Fischhaber Film Editor Anny Lowery Meza Original Music Peter Melnick Written, Produced and Directed by Karen Thomas

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Cinema's Exiles: From Hitler to Hollywood is the perfect docu to introduce people to the way film and world history are intertwined... and also to generate interest in older movies and classic cinema. Instead of a story about the making of movies, it's about a fascinating group of filmmakers forced to abandon...

Mark Rappaport, the film essayist, is long gone from New York and from America, but he’s back with more of his often-acerbic reflections on cinema and society. His five new films, which premiered at the Viennale, are short—most of them under half an hour. Their subjects range from tough guy John Garfield to the French actor Marcel Dalio to the largely forgotten actress Debra Paget, a "kitsch princess," as Rappaport calls her. As always, these are the reflections of a man who has seen a lot of cinema, maybe too much. Rappaport is best known for two feature-length film essays—"Rock Hudson’s Home Movies" (1992), and "From the Journals of Jean Seberg" (1995), both wry views of art and society from unexplored perspectives. Since moving to Paris some 12 years ago, Rappaport has been most visible in the media for a dispute with the American film professor Ray Carney over...

Ingrid Bergman ca. early 1940s. Ingrid Bergman movies on TCM: From the artificial 'Gaslight' to the magisterial 'Autumn Sonata' Two days ago, Turner Classic Movies' “Summer Under the Stars” series highlighted the film career of Greta Garbo. Today, Aug. 28, '15, TCM is focusing on another Swedish actress, three-time Academy Award winner Ingrid Bergman, who would have turned 100 years old tomorrow. TCM has likely aired most of Bergman's Hollywood films, and at least some of her early Swedish work. As a result, today's only premiere is Fielder Cook's little-seen and little-remembered From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (1973), about two bored kids (Sally Prager, Johnny Doran) who run away from home and end up at New York City's Metropolitan Museum. Obviously, this is no A Night at the Museum – and that's a major plus. Bergman plays an elderly art lover who takes an interest in them; her...

Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson on the Oscars' Red Carpet Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson at the Academy Awards Eli Wallach and wife Anne Jackson are seen above arriving at the 2011 Academy Awards ceremony, held on Sunday, Feb. 27, at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood. The 95-year-old Wallach had received an Honorary Oscar at the Governors Awards in November 2010. See also: "Doris Day Inexplicably Snubbed by Academy," "Maureen O'Hara Honorary Oscar," "Honorary Oscars: Mary Pickford, Greta Garbo Among Rare Women Recipients," and "Hayao Miyazaki Getting Honorary Oscar." Delayed film debut The Actors Studio-trained Eli Wallach was to have made his film debut in Fred Zinnemann's Academy Award-winning 1953 blockbuster From Here to Eternity. Ultimately, however, Frank Sinatra – then a has-been following a string of box office duds – was cast for a pittance, getting beaten to a pulp by a pre-stardom Ernest Borgnine. For his bloodied efforts, Sinatra went on...

Marc Allégret: From André Gide lover to Simone Simon mentor (photo: Marc Allégret) (See previous post: "Simone Simon Remembered: Sex Kitten and Femme Fatale.") Simone Simon became a film star following the international critical and financial success of the 1934 romantic drama Lac aux Dames, directed by her self-appointed mentor – and alleged lover – Marc Allégret.[1] The son of an evangelical missionary, Marc Allégret (born on December 22, 1900, in Basel, Switzerland) was to have become a lawyer. At age 16, his life took a different path as a result of his romantic involvement – and elopement to London – with his mentor and later "adoptive uncle" André Gide (1947 Nobel Prize winner in Literature), more than 30 years his senior and married to Madeleine Rondeaux for more than two decades. In various forms – including a threesome with painter Théo Van Rysselberghe's daughter Elisabeth – the Allégret-Gide relationship remained steady until the late '20s and their trip to...

Simone Simon in 'La Bête Humaine' 1938: Jean Renoir's film noir (photo: Jean Gabin and Simone Simon in 'La Bête Humaine') (See previous post: "'Cat People' 1942 Actress Simone Simon Remembered.") In the late 1930s, with her Hollywood career stalled while facing competition at 20th Century-Fox from another French import, Annabella (later Tyrone Power's wife), Simone Simon returned to France. Once there, she reestablished herself as an actress to be reckoned with in Jean Renoir's La Bête Humaine. An updated version of Émile Zola's 1890 novel, La Bête Humaine is enveloped in a dark, brooding atmosphere not uncommon in pre-World War II French films. Known for their "poetic realism," examples from that era include Renoir's own The Lower Depths (1936), Julien Duvivier's La Belle Équipe (1936) and Pépé le Moko (1937), and particularly Marcel Carné's Port of Shadows (1938) and Daybreak (1939).[11] This thematic and...

“You know you don’t have to act with me, Steve. You don’t have to say anything, and you don’t have to do anything. Not a thing. Oh, maybe just whistle. You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? You just put your lips together and… blow!”

If Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall (who died last month) occupy the same screen, you can safely expect fireworks! To Have And Have Not (1944) was Bacall’s debut performance, the movie that introduced both audiences and Bogart {he would marry her the following year} to one of cinema’s most iconic beauties and to her erotically husky voice. To Have And Have Not is an interesting mixture of war-time adventure and hard-boiled film-noir, set on the island of Martinique under the Vichy regime, and Bogart’s Harry “Steve” Morgan is forced to navigate swathes of low-lifes and immoral authority figures.

Here we are, at the top of the mountain. We’ve had plenty from every war imaginable, some supportive of war efforts, some not. But the more interesting war films really focus on the people; the internal struggles those men and women have about what they are doing. Whether made in America, Germany, the United Kingdom, or anywhere else, war is not just a battle between good and evil. It’s a life and death struggle between opposing sides that may not be that different. The movies at the top of this list may be subtle or straightforward, but each of them is a clear snapshot that lets audiences see what it means to fight, so they don’t have to.

10. Paths of Glory (1957)

Directed by: Stanley Kurbick

Conflict: World War I

Before Stanley Kubrick grabbed the rights, the source material for Paths of Glory had a long history. The novel,...

(Claude Sautet, 1960; BFI, 12)

Le roman policier and le film policier (now widely known by the reverse slang or verlan term "polar") have been staples of French popular culture for a century. Its soundtrack crackling with underworld argot, its air thick with smoke from Gauloises, its morality pulsating with romantic cynicism, the genre's golden age in the cinema was roughly between 1955 and the mid-70s. That's from the release of Rififi (the 1955 gangster movie directed by blacklisted American exile Jules Dassin, a movie much indebted to John Huston's 1950 The Asphalt Jungle) to the death in 1973 of Jean-Pierre Melville, the Americanophile cineaste and creator of definitive gangster flicks. These two decades encompass the classic polars of Jacques Becker, the best films of Lino Ventura (the French Bogart), the nouvelle vague (informally launched by a Louis Malle policier, Lift to the Scaffold, starring Ventura), and Godard's subversion of the genre in Breathless.

War is hell, for sure, but war can make for undeniably brilliant movie-making. Here, the Guardian and Observer's critics pick the ten best

• Top 10 action movies

• Top 10 comedy movies

• Top 10 horror movies

• Top 10 sci-fi movies

• Top 10 crime movies

• Top 10 arthouse movies

• Top 10 family movies

10. Where Eagles Dare

As the second world war thriller became bogged down during the mid-60s in plodding epics like Operation Crossbow and The Heroes of Telemark, someone was needed to reintroduce a little sang-froid, some post-Le Carré espionage, and for heaven's sake, some proper macho thrills into the genre. Alistair Maclean stepped up, writing the screenplay and the novel of Where Eagles Dare simultaneously, and Brian G Hutton summoned up a better than usual cast headed by Richard Burton (Major Jonathan Smith), a still fresh-faced Clint Eastwood (Lieutenant Morris Schaffer), and the late Mary Ure (Mary Elison).

Parachuted into the German Alps, they have one...

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: Aug. 13, 2013

Price: DVD $24.98, Blu-ray $34.98

Studio: Cohen

Henri Vidal is taken for an underwater ride in The Damned.

The 1947 noir-ish French drama The Damned by René Clément (Purple Noon) makes its first-ever appearance on Blu-ray and DVD in the U.S.

Set in the closing days of World War II, the movie focuses on a group of Nazis and sympathizers (a Wehrmacht general, an SS leader and his “assistant”, an Italian industrialist and his wife who is also the general’s lover, a French collaborator) on board a submarine that will take them to South America, where they hope to find shelter. While they sail off the shores of liberated Royan, they manage to kidnap a French doctor to have him look after a wounded passenger. And then things get even tenser…

The 1947 Cannes winner for Best Adventure and Crime Film, The Damned (or Les Maudits in...

Joan Fontaine movies: ‘This Above All,’ ‘Letter from an Unknown Woman’ (photo: Cary Grant, Joan Fontaine in ‘Suspicion’ publicity image) (See previous post: “Joan Fontaine Today.”) Also tonight on Turner Classic Movies, Joan Fontaine can be seen in today’s lone TCM premiere, the flag-waving 20th Century Fox release The Above All (1942), with Fontaine as an aristocratic (but socially conscious) English Rose named Prudence Cathaway (Fontaine was born to British parents in Japan) and Fox’s top male star, Tyrone Power, as her Awol romantic interest. This Above All was directed by Anatole Litvak, who would guide Olivia de Havilland in the major box-office hit The Snake Pit (1948), which earned her a Best Actress Oscar nod. In Max Ophüls’ darkly romantic Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948), Fontaine delivers not only what is probably the greatest performance of her career, but also one of the greatest movie performances ever. Letter from an Unknown Woman...

Paul Henreid in ‘Casablanca’: Freedom Fighter on screen, Blacklisted ‘Subversive’ off screen Turner Classic Movies’ Star of the Month of July 2013, Paul Henreid, bids you farewell this evening. TCM left the most popular, if not exactly the best, for last: Casablanca, Michael Curtiz’s 1943 Best Picture Oscar-winning drama, is showing at 7 p.m. Pt tonight. (Photo: Paul Henreid sings "La Marseillaise" in Casablanca.) One of the best-remembered movies of the studio era, Casablanca — not set in a Spanish or Mexican White House — features Paul Henreid as Czechoslovakian underground leader Victor Laszlo, Ingrid Bergman’s husband but not her True Love. That’s Humphrey Bogart, owner of a cafe in the titular Moroccan city. Henreid’s anti-Nazi hero is generally considered one of least interesting elements in Casablanca, but Alt Film Guide contributor Dan Schneider thinks otherwise. In any case, Victor Laszlo feels like a character made to order for Paul Henreid,...

Eleanor Parker: Palm Springs resident turns 91 today Eleanor Parker turns 91 today. The three-time Oscar nominee (Caged, 1950; Detective Story, 1951; Interrupted Melody, 1955) and Palm Springs resident is Turner Classic Movies’ Star of the Month of June 2013. Earlier this month, TCM showed a few dozen Eleanor Parker movies, from her days at Warner Bros. in the ’40s to her later career as a top Hollywood supporting player. (Photo: Publicity shot of Eleanor Parker in An American Dream.) Missing from TCM’s movie series, however, was not only Eleanor Parker’s biggest box-office it — The Sound of Music, in which she steals the show from both Julie Andrews and the Alps — but also what according to several sources is her very first movie role: a bit part in Raoul Walsh’s They Died with Their Boots On, a 1941 Western starring Errol Flynn as a dashingly handsome and all-around-good-guy-ish General George Armstrong Custer. Olivia de Havilland...

The Rules of the Game

Directed by Jean Renoir

Written by Jean Renoir

France, 1939

F. Scott Fitzgerald once famously wrote in his 1925 short story, Rich Boy, that “the rich are different from you and me”, to which Ernest Hemingway trenchantly retorted, “yes, they have more money”.

Under the simplicity of this quote and counter-quote parley hides a grain of truth inherent to both. Yes, the rich have more money, and for that very reason, they live differently from the rest of society. With their abundant riches and excess wealth, they can afford to do things most others cannot. For one, they can afford to play games.

Fitzgerald himself masterfully portrayed the hedonistic lifestyles of the rich and famous in The Great Gatsby, and in the realm of literature, it lacks a suitable rival in that regard. But in cinema, the very same notions and ideas were also well accomplished by the storied French filmmaker,...

Jean Renoir's great anti-war develops the fallacy of its title with tragic and ironic grandeur

The "grand illusion" of Jean Renoir's great film referred originally to the British author Norman Angell's belief that the supposed financial advantage of war is a falsehood. For Renoir this illusion evolves into something more complex and various, and so does its tragic and ironic grandeur. The idea that wars can be fought according to gentlemanly rules is an illusion – like the belief that the 1914-1918 conflict was the war to end all wars. Eric Von Stroheim is Captain Von Rauffenstein, a German PoW camp commander in the first world war, ramrod-straight in a uniform with white gloves that conceal horrendous burns from when he was shot down in combat. He pursues an elaborately civilised policy of martial respect for his distinguished prisoner Captain de Boeldieu (Pierre Fresnay). But he's disdainful of Boeldieu's...

Asked by Sight & Sound to name the ten greatest films of all time, Robert Bresson submitted the following, somewhat notorious list:

1. City Lights

2. City Lights

3. The Gold Rush

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

There are two ways in which Robert Bresson is rarely spoken about: as a comic filmmaker (though, as the above demonstrates, he could be pretty damn funny) and as someone whose work displays the influence of other directors.

Let's begin with that second point. Going back to some of the earliest defenses—as well as the earliest dismissals—of his work, Bresson has largely been described as a filmmaker "without precedent;" his detractors from the 1940s to the 1960s complained that his films didn't work the way movies were supposed to, and his supporters were more than happy to praise his films for the exact same reasons (Jacques Becker, for one, took the pages of L'Écran français to defend the poorly-received Les dames du Bois de Boulogne...

The Rules of the Game Directed by: Jean Renoir Written by: Jean Renoir Starring: Marcel Dalio, Nora Gregor, Roland Toutain, Jean Renoir This week I finally caught up with a movie that many consider to be one of the greatest films in the history of cinema; Jean Renoir's The Rules of the Game. While I'm not sure it would top my own personal list of all-time favourites, it's certainly a fantastic piece of cinema that's full of humour, drama, and some wonderful characters. The film begins with a radio broadcaster interviewing aviator André Jurieux, who'd just landed after accomplishing a record setting flight around the world. His friend Octave (played by Jean Renoir) informs André that the woman for which he dedicated his flight didn't show up to greet him. We eventually learn that Christine, the woman over which André is obsessing, is actually the wife of an aristocrat named Robert de la Cheyniest.

Hitting movie theaters this weekend:

Happy Feet Two - Elijah Wood, Robin Williams, Pink

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 - Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner

Movie of the Week

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1

The Stars: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner

The Plot: The Quileute and the Volturi close in on expecting parents Edward and Bella, whose unborn child poses different threats to the wolf pack and vampire coven.

The Buzz: The only drawback to having to choose a movie of the week becomes apparent on weeks such as this one, wherein I have absolutely zero interest in any of the new releases. First of all, I hated what I saw of the first Happy Feet, and the trailer for Happy Feet Two advertises a film which looks to be about as bearable as swallowing a glass full of shards of glass. And so, the...

Edmund Goulding's The Constant Nymph, a 1943 romantic drama starring Oscar nominee Joan Fontaine, Charles Boyer, and Alexis Smith, will be shown tonight on Turner Classic Movies at 5 p.m. Pt as part of TCM's tribute to the Library of Congress Film Archive. Tied up in legal complications for decades, The Constant Nymph will have its TCM premiere tonight. [In August 2010, The Constant Nymph had a rare screening at the Library of Congress' Packard Campus.] According to Matthew Kennedy's Edmund Goulding biography Edmund Goulding's Dark Victory, Jack Warner initially considered Errol Flynn for the role of the British music teacher. Goulding wanted either Robert Donat or Leslie Howard for the part, but eventually gave up on the British-ness of the music teacher and settled on by then two-time Best Actor Oscar nominee Charles Boyer. Joan Fontaine's role was initially supposed to have gone to Joan Leslie, but Goulding wasn't happy with that choice. Through then-husband Brian Aherne, who had played the music teacher in the 1934 version,...

Howard Keel on TCM Pt.2: Rose Marie, Pagan Love Song, Callaway Went Thataway Schedule (Et) and synopses from the TCM website: 6:00 Am Desperate Search (1953) A man fights to find his children after their plane crashes in the Canadian wilderness. Dir: Joseph Lewis. Cast: Howard Keel, Jane Greer, Patricia Medina. Bw-71 mins. 7:15 Am Fast Company (1953) The heiress to a racing stable uncovers underhanded dealings. Dir: John Sturges. Cast: Howard Keel, Polly Bergen, Marjorie Main. Bw-68 mins. 8:30 Am Kismet (1955) In this Arabian Nights musical "king of the beggars" infiltrates high society when his daughter is wooed by a handsome prince. Dir: Vincente Minnelli. Cast: Howard Keel, Ann Blyth, Dolores Gray. C-113 mins, Letterbox Format. 10:30 Am Rose Marie (1954) A trapper's daughter is torn between the Mountie who wants to civilize her and a dashing prospector. Dir: Mervyn LeRoy. Cast: Ann Blyth, Howard Keel, Fernando Lamas, Bert Lahr, Marjorie Main.

Jean Gabin, Simone Simon, La Bête Humaine Jean Gabin on TCM: Grand Illusion, Pepe Le Moko, Touchez Pas Au Grisbi Schedule (Et) and synopses from the TCM website: 6:00 Am Gueule D'Amour (1937) A retired cavalry officer discovers the woman who won his heart was in love with the uniform. Dir: Jean Grémillon. Cast: Jean Gabin, Mireille Balin. Bw-88 mins. 8:00 Am Remorques (1941) A married tugboat captain falls for a woman he rescues from a sinking ship. Dir: Jean Grémillon. Cast: Jean Gabin, Alain Cuny, Bw-83 mins. 9:30 Am Le Jour Se Leve (1939) A young factory worker loses the woman he loves to a vicious schemer. Dir: Marcel Carne. Cast: Jean Gabin, Jacqueline Laurent, Arletty. Bw-90 mins. 11:00 Am L'air De Paris (1954) An over-the-hill boxer stakes his fortune on training a young railroad-worker. Dir: Marcel Carne. Cast: Arletty, Jean Gabin, Roland Lesaffre. Bw-100 mins. 1:00 Pm Leur Derniere Nuit (1953) A schoolteacher...

Release Date: Nov. 15, 2011

Price: Blu-ray $39.95

Studio: Criterion

The lights burn brightly for the rich and the poor in The Rules of the Game.

A staple on all the “Greatest Films Ever Made” lists, Jean Renoir’s 1939 The Rules of the Game (La règle du jeu) is a scathing critique of corrupt French society cloaked in a comedy of manners.

Starring Nora Gregor, Paulette Dubost, Marcel Dalio and Renoir himself, the comedy-drama movie is set during a weekend at a marquis’ countryside chateau filled with an assorted cast of characters — the rich and their poor servants — and lays bare some ugly truths about members of the haute bourgeois.

The Rules of the Game is a victim of tumultuous history. The movie was subjected to cuts after premiere audiences rejected it in 1939, and the original negative was destroyed during World War II. It wasn’t reconstructed until 1959 and it’s that version,...

Montgomery Clift, I Confess Alfred Hitchcock is the focus of tonight's programming on Turner Classic Movies, which will be showing five of the director's films: Stage Fright, I Confess, Dial M for Murder, The Wrong Man, and Strangers on a Train. None of them is a masterpiece; all of them are worth your time. My favorite of the five is I Confess, partly because of its intriguing plot about a murderer who confesses his crime to a priest who later becomes the chief suspect in the case; and partly because Montgomery Clift is quite good as the tormented priest. Anne Baxter is his leading lady. However flawed, I find both Stage Fright and Dial M for Murder enjoyable. The former is immensely helped by Alastair Sim's performance, though Jane Wyman does solid work as the heroine while Marlene Dietrich gets to sing a song or two. In Dial M for Murder,...

Some musicians have a distinct advantage when it comes to launching an acting career, bringing celebrity and a fan base to the bargaining table that can add crucial appeal to their early prospects. However, musicians (and we use the term loosely), rappers and singers must also struggle with the preconceived notion that comes with them, to the ruin of many who cannot break free of their tabloid typecasting. But this can also be their greatest asset -- there is nothing audiences love more than watching someone defy expectation, other than perhaps a star, defying expectation. Many have tried, most have failed. Everyone from Michael Jackson to Mos Def, Method Man to Mick Jagger, have dabbled in acting with varying degrees of success. Most recently, Justin Timberlake has come out strong in "The Social Network," but we decided to focus on the early role, the first real performance of some of...

Cinema Retro has just received the following press release

Queens Theatre in the Park (Qtp) announces its 2009/2010 season of film.  Qtp and the Museum of the Moving Image have partnered to present Moving Image Masterpieces, a series of six of the greatest films of all time at Qtp's home, a 464-seat auditorium at the former New York State Pavilion in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, which also has a 99-seat performing arts space.  The new series is programmed by David Schwartz, Chief Curator of the Museum of the Moving Image, who will introduce each screening:  Citizen Kane, Metropolis, Rules of the Game, Toyko Story, 8 ½, 2001: A Space Odyssey.  Tickets are $10 per film ($8 multi-show discount).

Queens Theatre in the Park's2009-2010 Film Series includes:

Citizen Kane - Thursday, October 1, 2009 at 7:30pm

Directed by Orson Welles

With Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Agnes Moorehead

Wunderkind director Orson Welles used Hollywood as his playground to make his astonishing film,...

“Innovation is the whim of an elite before it becomes a need of the public.” —Ludwig von Mises American elitism as we know it is dead. The rules of the game no longer apply. How and where power brokers operate today is more important than ever: true practice has finally trumped mere perception. In these early, uncertain days of economic triage, quirky isolation from the herd seems to be a component in the winning equation. And traditions be damned. While the city folk had just sat down to dine on fresh financial meltdown, the new elite had already grabbed a sack of trail mix and run for the hills. Take, as a prime example of this shift, Bridgewater Associates, which is headquartered on 22 wooded acres in Westport, Connecticut. Yesterday, it was announced that the hedge fund is the world’s largest this year, heading Alpha magazine’s 2009 top-100 ranking. Of these 100 firms,...