An impassive young man, Sadik (Sadik Incesu), bides his time smoking a cigarette before running up the street to greet the postman as he delivers the mail, then crosses the median to a neighborhood café to read the long-awaited results of his final examination over a cup of tea. A filmmaker named Muzzafer (Muzaffer Özdemir) […]
A dashing, successful writer of lurid romance novels named Robert Harmon (John Cassavetes) arrives home in the middle of the day – still stylishly dressed in formal evening attire – to find an odd assortment of vivacious, attractive young women engaged in frivolous activities as they bide time awaiting his return. Attempting to engage one […]
When does neurotic behavior lapse into madness? In A Woman Under the Influence, we are introduced to an inscrutable, emotionally vulnerable woman named Mabel (Gena Rowlands) as she goes through the rituals of everyday life: preparing for an evening alone with her husband Nick (Peter Falk), flirting with a receptive bar patron, meeting her children […]
Richard (John Marley) goes into the screening room of his office where female assistants attend to him – coffee, cigarettes, whatever he needs. He is the CEO of a powerful financial institution, and his latest investment is a movie. The film title momentarily flashes Faces, and that is all the introduction the venerable improvisational director, […]
One of the clear highlights of the Norwegian cinema series for me was Liv Ullmann’s personal appearance for the introduction of her film debut as lead actress in what would prove to be the final film by Norway’s first female director, Edith Carlmar, The Wayward Girl. Admitting that she initially found it odd that program […]
A thematic structure that continues to surface in several of the post 1989 Revolution films during the Shining Through a Long, Dark Night: Romanian Cinema, Then and Now series is the use of an intertwining, circular narrative as a metaphor for national self-reflection – and re-evaluation – in the aftermath of the Nicolae Ceauşescu regime […]