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The tough guys in Yves Boisset’s crime drama answer revenge with revenge, and Michel Bouquet’s rogue cop commits outrageous acts of lawlessness to nail his partner’s killer. The French censors were up at arms over Boisset’s slight to police honor, yet the subject isn’t corruption — everything is ‘honor and decency.’ A fine gallery of Gallic thugs fills out the cast; both they and the attitude toward law and order are a step beyond Jean-Pierre Melville, but not an improvement. With standout work from Michel Constantin, Théo Sarapo, Henri Garcin and Bernard Fresson.

The Cop aka Un condé

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1970 / B&w / 1:66 widescreen / 98 min. / Street Date September 6, 2022 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95

Starring: Michel Bouquet, Françoise Fabian, Gianni Garko, Michel Constantin, Théo Sarapo, Henri Garcin, Anne Carrère, Bernard Fresson, Pierre Massimi, Roger Lumont.

Cinematography: Jean-Marc Ripert

Film Editor: Albert Jurgenson, Vincenzo Tomassi

Original Music:...

I Need a Lover with a Farmhand: Leopold’s Understated Portrait of Desire Deferred

Loneliness and resentment are the dueling, omnipresent emotions on screen in virtually every frame in Nanouk Leopold’s It’s All So Quiet. Premiering back at the 2013 Berlin Film Festival, Leopold adapts from the novel The Twin by Gerbrand Bakker (who makes a small appearance in the film), and it seems to be aligned with a subject matter the Dutch filmmaker prizes—notions of secret desires. Those first being introduced to either Leopold’s work or that of the rather moving performance of its lead actor, Jeroen Williams, will be saddened to learn that he died suddenly at the end of 2012 at the age of 50, with this film’s dedication honoring his memory. It’s a reality that adds another layer to the film’s already sobering representation of lives caught in stilted familial histories.

With...

Not much happens in "It's All So Quiet," a tender portrait of middle-aged frustrations set on a desolate farm, but nearly every moment is steeped in deep sadness. Dutch filmmaker Nanouk Leopold's adaptation of Gerbrand Bakker's bestselling novel moves with such extreme patience that it's borderline experimental, but the atmosphere ultimately provides a vessel for the tragic backstory only revealed once the feelings takes shape. By then, it's nearly an afterthought; "It's All So Quiet" foregrounds mood ahead of its context, universalizing the emotion therein. For long stretches of time, Leopold merely sets the scene, then dwells in it. Middle-aged farmer Helmer (the late Jeroen Willems in one of his final credited projects) spends his long, somber days caring his ailing father Vader (Henri Garcin), a bedridden man frustrated by his extreme reliance on his son for the most basic of needs. In a seeming act of defiance to his demanding.

The Berlin International Film Festival -- which kicks off February 7th -- has added a slew of new titles to its Panorama and Berlinale Special programs, including new work form Ken Loach, James Franco, Michael Winterbottom, Shane Carruth, Giuseppe Tornatore and Jane Campion. Many of them having their international premieres after debuting at Sundance (a notable exception being Ken Loach's doc about post-war Britain and tracks the birth of a new socialism, a world premiere), the newly announced films helped complete the Panorama's narrative film program, which previously was announced to include new work from Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Noah Baumbach and Felix van Groeningen. Here is the list of newly announced titles. The Berlinale runs February 7-17, 2012. Panorama fictional films   Boven is het stil (It's all so Quiet) - Netherlands/Germany By Nanouk Leopold With Jeroen Willems, Henri Garcin, Wim Opbrouck, Martijn Lakemeier World...

Directed by: Riccardo Freda

Written by: Antonio Cesare Corti, Riccardo Freda, Simon Mizrahi, Fabio Piccioni

Cast: Stefano Patrizi, Martine Brochard, Henri Garcin, Laura Gemser, Anita Strindberg, John Richardson, Silvia Dionisio

While shooting a violent murder scene on a horror movie set, actor Michael (Stefano Patrizi) nearly chokes his co-star Beryl (Black Emanuelle Laura Gemser) to death in an uncontrollable rage.

Fortunately for Michael, it's his last scene before taking a break to visit his estranged mother, Glenda (genre vet Anita Strindberg), for a long weekend. The troubled thespian brings along his girlfriend, Deborah (Silvia Dionisio), to the old family mansion, a place he hasn't seen in years. They are greeted by creepy butler Oliver (John Richardson), who divulges to Michael that his mother is very ill but doesn't want him to know.

Once the pair have been shown to their separate rooms, Michael is reunited with sickly Glenda, who seems...

Sirocco Prods.

PARK CITY -- Only someone who grew up on an Israeli kibbutz could have made "Sweet Mud". Screenwriter-director Dror Shaul infuses this almost-memoir with a sweet melancholy. A viewer gains a real appreciation for the spirit and romantic idealism of a commune -- and how things can go so wrong. This is a film from the heart, from a firsthand familiarity that yields conflicted emotions over the gap between an ideal and its realization.

"Sweet Mud", the Israeli entry for the foreign-language Oscar, has limited though solid art house potential in North America because it touches on such coming-of-age issues as identity and first love along with the central issue of communal vs. individual needs.

Shaul said the film "is not an entirely true story" but admits he plumbed childhood memories as a Boy Born and raised on a kibbutz. The story he tells is of 12-year-old Dvir (a resourceful Tomer Steinhof), who enters his bar mitzvah year in 1974 in an isolated kibbutz. Like all children, he is raised collectively by the community, sleeping in the "children's house" and assigned farm chores. His solitude is more extreme than most, however, since his father has died -- in circumstances pointedly kept from him -- and his mother Miri (an extraordinary Ronit Yudkevitch) has only recently returned from a mental hospital. An older brother gets distracted by young women and military service, while most of the community is uncomfortable around the mentally fragile Miri, who no longer fits the kibbutz ideal.

A visit by Miri's boyfriend, a much older Swiss gentleman (Henri Garcin), brings things to a head. Just when Miri is happiest, her dreams get dashed and with them her spirit. Dvir must grow up fast to take care of his beloved mother and to understand his growing affection for a young French girl, who suffers from a similar alienation from her parents and community.

Shaul has cinematographer Sebastian Edschmid shoot the kibbutz and surrounding countryside in warm, earthen tones that make the rural community hugely inviting. The utopian spirit is certainly inviting at first, but the discord and small tyrannies become clear over time. Shaul steps through this delicate minefield adroitly, seeing things for what they are yet understanding the ideals that makes utopian communities seem so viable. What the film makes clear is that such collectives have no real way to deal with truly vulnerable individuals.