Derek Malcolm's century of film
Lino Brocka: Manila - In the Claws of Darkness
The most impressive of Brocka's film noirs, made with bows to the American cinema, to Italian neorealism and his own country's tradition of star-driven melodrama, but with the force of a third-world director determined to say something about his own society
Fritz Lang: Beyond a Reasonable Doubt
It is a film of great economy and precision, with the terrifying inevitability of Greek tragedy and a pervading sense that man is his own worst enemy... The story is so tautly directed and skilful in its manipulation of our sympathies that, several times during the film, one changes sides
Preston Sturges: Sullivan's Travels
Is the film serious underneath its hilarity? Perhaps not entirely, since Sturges, like Sullivan, never quite knew how to do it. But the way his assemblage of characters so often seem to realise their own failings at least betokens a sophisticated, perhaps kindly cynic. People have tended to say that Sturges' films were as confused as he was. If that is so, long live abstracted directors, since they tend to see the world as it is rather than as we might wish it to be
Wim Wenders: Kings of the Road
There's not much moralising or philosophy behind Kings of the Road, and none of the portentous complications with which Wenders has afflicted us of late (Million Dollar Hotel, for instance). Instead he achieves a palpable sense of time, place and atmosphere, and of how everybody is affected by their tiny spot in history
Miklos Jancso: The Round-Up
The film is so precisely choreographed that the patterns play on the mind until they become clear and obvious in their meanings. The camera style is beautiful but almost merciless. If the film can be criticised for its lack of emotion, it can't be for its absence of power or for its cold appreciation of the situation it illustrates
Nagisa Oshima: Boy
Some of Oshima's films... seem to be influenced by either Godard or Bunuel, as well as by a deep suspicion of Japanese traditions. But Boy, if it is to be compared with any European work, is more like a Truffaut film. Its comparatively straightforward narrative is linked to a warmth of expression that Oshima has seldom emulated since
Jean Renoir: Boudu Saved from Drowning
Renoir was a master who seemed incapable of making a bad film but was modest enough to admit his own flaws. His total lack of cynicism or even pessimism is what attracts people to his films today. That and the kind of fluency of utterance that makes you totally unaware of his film-making technique, which always manages not only to show you what goes on within the frame but also to suggest the world beyond it
Hou Hsiao-hsien: The Time to Live and the Time to Die
There are several sequences of amazing emotional power, [whose] honesty and truth ...manage to summon up this little microcosm of the world perfectly. And that world succeeds in reflecting the larger universe outside, in the same way that Satyajit Ray's Apu stories did. Everything is right: the miraculous use of sound, the limpid cinematography, the natural acting create an atmosphere you can't forget
Marcel Varnel: Oh, Mr Porter!
One of the biggest successes at the Paris Cinémathèque in the late 80s was a retrospective of British comedy curated by Bertrand Tavernier. Among the discoveries for the French was Will Hay, who, with his henchmen Graham Moffatt (the fat boy) and Moore Marriott (the wizened old codger), perfectly represented a certain type of bumbling British humour. One of the best of their films was Oh, Mr Porter! - and the French were pleased to find that it was directed by Paris-born Marcel Varnel. One of the great directors of British comedy in the 30s, Varnel considered Oh, Mr Porter! his best work
