The Silence of the Sea — A Film of Noncooperation with Evil
The Silence of the Sea, a 1949 film by Jean Pierre Melville, may be one of the strangest war movies …
Tag Archives: WW II
Downfall: The Last 10 Days of Hitler’s Reich
I remember being interested in seeing Downfall, the 2004 movie by Oliver Hirschbiegel when it came to theaters, and somehow getting the idea …
Sunflower: Italians on the Russian Front — a Movie
Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni, in their prime would be enough to attract any warm-blooded movie goer, much less an Italo-cinephile. …
Let There Be Light: John Huston’s 1946 Documentary on PTSD
John Huston is one of the great directors of American movies. Who hasn’t seen “The Maltese Falcon” (1941), “The African …
The Arch of Triumph: Love in Paris, 1938 — A Short Take
Ingrid Bergman looks her fabled, youthful best and Charles Boyer dark and dashing as her handsome, older lover in The Arch of …
Army of Crime — Immigrants Who Fought for France, A Film
My dear Melinée, my beloved little orphan, In a few hours I will no longer be of this world. We …
Garbo: The Spy — A Documentary, WW II
Sort of by accident, on a rainy Sunday afternoon, we went to see Garbo: The Spy, a 2009 documentary and …
Hiroshima Joe – A Novel
Seeing the smoking wasteland of Hiroshima, particularly the blasted home and shredded family of a friend immediately after the Bomb …
Chabrol’s Eye on the Eye of Vichy
Claude Chabrol (and here and here,) one of the founders of French New Wave Cinema and director of some 50 …
Tongue of War: Some Poems
Beach Landing, Iwo Jima They didn’t shoot at us. A silent scene until we clogged the beach, and then–all hell, …
Katyn: A Film
I was just on the cusp of realizing that “foreign” films existed and were a real alternative to what 1950s …
Inglourious Basterds: A Film
You either love Quentin Tarantino’s movies or you think they are disgusting. I fall into the second camp. To lift …