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It’s a big international action epic, filmed in Mexico with a French director. Anthony Quinn is an 18th-century bandit who liberates a Mexican hamlet from marauding Yaqui Indians and a villainous Charles Bronson. Quinn is good, and all the necessary elements are present: fights, handsome scenery and a big battle… but it’s fairly tepid stuff, simplified and prettified. Leave it to Ennio Morricone’s epic music score to bind it all together. With Anjanette Comer, Sam Jaffe, Silvia Pinal and the same fifteen or so well-connected actors that cornered roles in all big Mexican films made with foreign money.

Guns for San Sebastian

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1968 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 111 min. / La bataille de San Sebastian / Available at Amazon.com / Street Date June 15, 2021 / 21.99

Starring: Anthony Quinn, Anjanette Comer, Charles Bronson, Sam Jaffe, Silvia Pinal, Jorge Martínez de Hoyos, Jaime Fernández, Rosa Furman, Leon Askin, Ivan Desny, Pedro Armendáriz Jr.,...

Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s national epic tells the story of Germany’s ‘economic miracle’ recovery through the experiences of three strong women, each resilient in a different way. The Marriage of Maria Braun takes us from the bombings to a postwar struggle for survival. Veronika Voss hangs on to her illusions of a glorious stardom that died with the Reich; she’s now the victim of opportunists. And Lola isn’t the only person corrupting an idealist come to bring fairness to the rebuilding of Coburg: even without a conspiracy, the legitimate town leaders are up to their necks in double-dealing. These are the top titles of the prolific writer-director Fassbinder, beautifully restored.

The Brd Trilogy

Blu-ray

The Marriage of Maria Braun, Veronika Voss, Lola

The Criterion Collection 203

1979-82 / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date July 9, 2019 / 79.95

Starring: Hanna Schygulla, Rosel Zech, Barbara Sukowa.

Written by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Pea Fröhlich,...

Yvonne Monlaur: Cult horror movie actress & Bond Girl contender was featured in the 1960 British classics 'Circus of Horrors' & 'The Brides of Dracula.' Actress Yvonne Monlaur dead at 77: Best remembered for cult horror classics 'Circus of Horrors' & 'The Brides of Dracula' Actress Yvonne Monlaur, best known for her roles in the 1960 British cult horror classics Circus of Horrors and The Brides of Dracula, died of cardiac arrest on April 18 in the Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine. Monlaur was 77. According to various online sources, she was born Yvonne Thérèse Marie Camille Bédat de Monlaur in the southwestern town of Pau, in France's Pyrénées-Atlantiques department, on Dec. 15, 1939. Her father was poet and librettist Pierre Bédat de Monlaur; her mother was a Russian ballet dancer. The young Yvonne was trained in ballet and while still a teenager became a model for Elle magazine. She was “discovered” by newspaper publisher-turned-director André Hunebelle,...

A major talent of the New German Cinema finds his footing out on the open highway, in a trio of intensely creative pictures that capture the pace and feel of living off the beaten path. All three star Rüdiger Vogler, an actor who could be director Wim Wenders' alter ego. Wim Wenders' The Road Trilogy Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 813 1974-1976 / B&W and Color / 1:66 widescreen / 113, 104, 176 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date May 30, 2016 / 99.95 Starring Rüdiger Vogler, Lisa Kreuzer, Yetta Rottländer; Hannah Schygulla, Nasstasja Kinski, Hans Christian Blech, Ivan Desny; Robert Zischler. Cinematography Robby Müller, Martin Schäfer Film Editor Peter Przygodda, Barbara von Weltershausen Original Music Can, Jürgen Knieper, Axel Linstädt. Directed by Wim Wenders

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

This morning I 'fessed up to never having seen David Lynch's Lost Highway. Now I get to say that until now I've never seen Wim Wenders'...

That scarlet woman Ingrid is back from exile, and hypocritical Hollywood is not complaining -- Anatole Litvak and Arthur Laurents make an intriguing romantic-psychological mystery of a bogus Romanoff Duchess who surfaces in 1928 Paris to claim the crown fortune. Good roles for Yul Brynner and Helen Hayes as well. It's a strange intersection of scandal, history and swindlers that may have found the real item... and maybe not. Anastasia Blu-ray Twilight Time Limited Edition 1956 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 105 min. / Ship Date March 15, 2016 / available through Twilight Time Movies / 29.95 Starring Ingrid Bergman, Yul Brynner, Helen Hayes, Akim Tamiroff, Martita Hunt, Felix Aylmer, Sacha Pitoeff, Ivan Desny, Natalie Schafer, Karel Stepanek Cinematography Jack Hildyard Art Direction Andrej Andrejew, Bill Andrews Film Editor Bert Bates Original Music Alfred Newman Written by Arthur Laurents from a play by Marcelle Maurette Produced by Buddy Adler Directed by Anatole Litvak

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

The cleverly written and...

Benoît Jacquot's Farewell, My Queen (Les Adieux à la Reine) starring his leading ladies Léa Seydoux, Diane Kruger and Virginie Ledoyen

CinéSalon's Benoît Jacquot: Leading Ladies (March 3 - 24), curated by Delphine Selles-Alvarez at the French Institute Alliance Française in celebration of the 20th Anniversary of Rendez-Vous with French Cinema in New York included screenings of The Disenchanted (La Désenchantée) starring Judith Godrèche, Marcel Bozonnet and Ivan Desny, introduced by Jacquot; A Single Girl (La Fille Seule) - Virginie Ledoyen, Benoît Magimel, Dominique Valadié introduced by choreographer Blanca Li, who has worked with Pedro Almodovar and Michel Gondry; Villa Amalia - Isabelle Huppert, Jean-Hugues Anglade, Xavier Beauvois and À Tout De Suite - Isild Le Besco, Ouassini Embarek, Nicolas Duvauchelle, Laurence Cordier.

Léa Seydoux is lovely and tough as the reader and our heroine in Farewell, My Queen Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

On Tuesday, March 24 at 7:30pm, Eye For...

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...

Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1953 film, La Signora Senza Camelie (The Woman Without Camelias), tells the tale of a young actress who struggles against the overbearing men in her life and the confusion that arises from the direction her career takes.

Clara Manni (Lucia Bosè) is a young Milanese shop worker plucked from obscurity to work in pictures by an impulsive producer who also asks her to marry him when she’s at her most vulnerable. Gianni Franchi (Andrea Checchi), her svengali-husband, suddenly turns into a control freak and only wants his wife to make classy movies. At the Venice Film Festival, where her latest film is screened, she meets a diplomat (Ivan Desny) and embarks on an affair believing she has sacrificed everything for “true love”.

Along with Antonioni’s 1955 Le Amiche (read the review here) La Signora Senza Camilie gets a digital polish and transfer on Blu-ray and DVD (both...