Chikamatsu monogatari (The crucified lovers) 1954 - An essential tale of tragic romance

IMDB Link
IMDB Rating: 8,2

Director: Kenji Mizoguchi
Main Cast: Kazuo Hasegawa, Kyoko Kagawa, Eitaro Shindo, Eitaro Ozawa

"In the 1950s, Kenji Mizoguchi was on a roll. He won two successive Golden Lions at the Venice Film Festival - an unprecedented feat - and produced three unqualified masterpieces: Life of Oharu, Ugetsu, and Sansho Dayu. The Crucified Lovers, made the same year as Sansho, stands as Mizoguchi's last great film. For this film - about star-crossed lovers, based on a puppet play by Monzaemon Chikamatsu - he returns to familiar themes: avaricious, duplicitous men; pious, long-suffering women; and the cruel vagaries of fate. Unlike his previous postwar films, the lead male character, Mohei, does not seem consumed by greed, vengeance, or vanity. Yet compared to the purity and devotion of lead female - a near constant in Mizoguchi's oeuvre - Mohei still seems weak in comparison. The film unfolds with marvelous fluidity, gathering momentum until the lovers' gruesome end. The blissful smiles on the faces of Osan and Mohei as they are led to crucifixion is one of the most striking images in Mizoguchi's long catalogue. Technically, Mizoguchi fills this film with striking photography and elegant camera movement. Though perhaps lacking the lyricism of Ugetsu and the grandeur of Sansho Dayu, The Crucified Lovers is a breathtaking work." - www.allmovie.com

Download links:

La strada 1954 - Being among the most studied films of late Italian Neo-Realism and a classic of the first rank.

IMDB Link
IMDB Rating: 8,1

Director: Federico Fellini
Main Cast: Anthony Quinn, Giulietta Masina, Richard Basehart

"La Strada is often considered one of the masterpieces of 20th century filmmaking, a sad and poignant remembrance of innocence lost and of the roads that each of us must choose. As with much of the work of director Federico Fellini, man is viewed as suspended between the heavens and the earth, adroitly symbolized here by Il Matto/The Fool (Richard Baseheart), a high-wire circus performer. Fellini's motifs are among the most influential of all post-WWII filmmakers. Giulietta Masina's Chaplin-like Gelsomina is among the screen's most poignant and tragic performances, and she, like the entire film, is aided by Nino Rota's evocative score. The bubbly, waiflike Gelsomina is a simpleton sold to the gruff, bullying circus strongman Zampanò (Anthony Quinn) as a servant and assistant. Treated no better than an animal, Gelsomina nonetheless falls in love with the brute Zampano. When they join a small circus they meet Il Matto (Richard Basehart), a clown who enchants Gelsomina and relentlessly taunts Zampanograve;, whose inability to control his hatred of Il Matto (literally, "the Fool") leads to their expulsion from the circus and eventually to the film's fateful conclusion. Masina is heartbreaking as the wide-eyed innocent, whose generous spirit and love of life leads her to try to "save" Quinn's unfeeling, brutal Zampanò. Though the film resonates with mythic and biblical dimensions, Fellini never loses sight of his characters, lovingly painted in all their frailties and failings. Fellini's lyrical style reaches back to the simple beauty of his neorealist films and looks ahead to the impressionistic fantasies of later films, but at this unique period in Fellini's career, they combine to create a poetic, tragic masterpiece.
The movie was the winner of the first official Academy Award for Best Foreign-Language Film, awarded in 1956."

DVD links:

Sansho dayu (Sansho the bailiff) 1954 - An unforgettably sad story of social injustice, family love, and personal sacrifice

IMDB Link
IMDB Rating: 8,3

Director: Kenji Mizoguchi
Main Cast: Kinuyo Tanaka, Yoshiaki Hanayagi, Kyoko Kagawa, Eitaro Shindo

"On its French release in 1960, Sansho the Bailiff was ranked by Cahiers du cinéma as the best film of the year, topping such classics as Breathless, L'avventura, and Psycho. Critics were struck by the film's gorgeous photography, elegant camerawork, and exotic settings and by Kenji Mizoguchi's signature use of imagery that quietly evokes a spiritual transcendence above the suffering of the material world. Unlike Akira Kurosawa's frequent use of close-ups and fast-paced editing, Mizoguchi, here as elsewhere, keeps his camera distant and his takes long, resulting in a contemplative style in which the characters' suffering and pain seem vivid, yet small compared with the immutability of the landscape. The result is a film that is thoroughly engaging up to its devastating finale. Though it was initially more popular in the West than in Japan, this masterpiece has since been widely recognized as one of Mizoguchi's most beautiful works.
The subjugated plight of women in Japanese society was always a subject close to Mizoguchi's heart--never more so than in Sansho Dayu, one of the towering late masterpieces of his final years. Its intensity, compassion, dramatic sweep and breathtaking formal beauty place it among his greatest films. The story is set in the harsh feudal world of 11th-century Japan. A provincial governor is demoted and exiled for showing too much clemency to those he rules; travelling to join him, his wife is kidnapped and forced to become a courtesan and her children are sold into slavery. They grow up under the harsh regime of the bailiff Sansho while their mother (the great actress Kinuyo Tanaka, in a performance of heartbreaking desolation) yearns hopelessly for them. Working with his favourite cameraman, Kazuo Miyagawa, Mizoguchi films this tragic story in long, intricate takes, rarely resorting to close-ups. The visual elegance and formal restraint of his style make the film all the more emotionally harrowing, and the final scene, on a desolate and windswept island, must be one of the most unbearably moving endings in all cinema."

Download links:

Shichinin no samurai (Seven Samurai) 1954 - Unanimously hailed as one of cinema's greatest masterpieces

IMDB Link
IMDB Rating: 8,7

Director: Akira Kurosawa
Main Cast: Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura, Keiko Tsushima, Yukiko Shimazaki, Daisuke Kato

"Widely considered one of the greatest films ever made, Seven Samurai was both the apex of Akira Kurosawa's long career and the high-water mark of the Japanese period drama. The film's action rivets the viewer in spite of the three-hour-plus running time: the battle sequences, among the best ever filmed, are immediate and visceral; and the characters are complex and so well-rendered that the viewer grieves when one dies. Like few other historical films, it captures not only the physical look of the time but also its essence. Like Jean Renoir's masterpieces Grand Illusion (1937) and The Rules of the Game (1939), Seven Samurai illustrates the collapse of social distinctions and the growing irrelevance of old traditions in dangerous and chaotic times. Kurosawa questions the division between samurai and bandit, between good and evil. In one scene, peasant-born Kikuchiyo heatedly argues that the samurai have been abusing and exploiting the peasants for centuries. In this framework, the samurais' acts of bravery, selflessness, and honor seem absurd, if not pointless. The peasants' choice of the samurai over the bandits is merely one of a lesser evil. Once the bandits are gone, the samurai will no longer be needed. This is underscored in the film's poignant end, when the surviving three samurai leave the village, receiving neither acclaim nor reward, as the villagers plant rice. American audiences were so impressed with Kurosawa's epic masterpiece that it was remade into John Sturges' Magnificent Seven (1960)." - www.allmovie.com

DVD links:

Les vacances de Monsieur Hulot (Mr. Hulot's holiday) 1953 - The film that launched Tati's onscreen alter ego

IMDB Link
IMDB Rating: 7,6

Director: Jacques Tati
Main Cast: Jacques Tati, Louis Perrault, André Dubois, Nathalie Pascaud

"Already familiar to many, especially following his acclaimed directorial debut Jour De Fete, Jacques Tati came into his own and reached new levels of popularity with 1953's Les Vacances De Monsieur Hulot. The first film to introduce his much-loved alter ego Monsieur Hulot, it sets the pattern for future appearances of the character, throwing the bumbling hero unwittingly into the middle of the action and letting the ensuing mishaps provoke humor ranging from gentle observations to fairly biting satire. The setting this time is a stuffy resort community fond of the peace and quiet that Hulot interrupts without fail. Nearly dialogue-free and driven more by episode than plot (like all of the Hulot films), standout set pieces include a disrupted funeral, an interrupted game of cards, and - one of Tati's signature bits - a game of tennis played with rules that can politely be called unconventional.
Tati directs, and in a way what that really means is that he composes this movie with a perfect eye and ear for the comic possibilities in everything: composition, lighting, minimal marble-mouth dialogue, certain sounds (a duck call, a door repeatedly opening and shutting). This is a superior work that ranks among all-time classic comedies." - www.allmovie.com

DVD links:

Madame de... (The earrings of Madame de...) 1953 - A sad, elegant film from the French master

IMDB Link
IMDB Rating: 7,9

Director: Max Ophüls
Main Cast: Danielle Darrieux, Charles Boyer, Vittorio De Sica

"A wonderful companion piece to director Max Ophüls' La Ronde, Madame de... spins a similar tale of serial affairs among the rich and idle. But its darker tone has rightfully earned its status as the filmmaker's great triumph. A minority camp would give the nod to Lola Montès. The pair of earrings which pass from hand to hand come to symbolize deception and greed, pawns in silly games of love. Ophüls connects his characters with a camera (directed by his frequent collaborator Christian Matras) which glides in and out of well-appointed rooms, suggesting that there are no degrees of separation in this world. Few filmmakers could match Ophüls' talent for exposing the need among the wealthy and titled to keep up appearances." - www.allmovie.com

DVD links:

Ugetsu monogatari 1953 - A subtle blending of realistic period reconstruction and lyrical supernaturalism

IMDB Link
IMDB Rating: 8,1

Director: Kenji Mizoguchi
Main Cast: Masayuki Mori, Machiko Kyo, Kinuyo Tanaka, Mitsuko Mito

"Based on a pair of 18th century ghost stories by Ueda Akinari, the film's release continued Mizoguchi's introduction to the West, where it was nominated for an Oscar and won the the Venice Film Festival's Silver Lion award (for Best Direction). Displaying all of the hallmarks of Kenji Mizoguchi's quietly affecting style, this landmark film has been one of the most highly praised Japanese movies, garnering the admiration of such directors as Jean-Luc Godard and Jacques Rivette. Mizoguchi's fluid camerawork expands this otherworldly tragedy into a profound meditation on the transience of human life. In one of the film's most noted scenes, Genjuro relaxes in a hot spring as his beautiful spirit-lover disrobes. The camera coyly pans away, tilts downwards, and tracks along the ground. The barren ripples of ground dissolve to a Zen rock garden; then the camera tilts up to reveal the couple picnicking at a lakeside park. In this one elegant device, Mizoguchi evokes not only the passage of time but also emptiness and impermanence, as he passes the viewer through an unpeopled space. His signature lyricism frames unfolding human dramas as one small part of life's immutable ebb and flow. A brilliant summation of Mizoguchi's motifs and visual poetry, Ugetsu remains one of the masterpieces of world cinema." - www.allmovie.com

DVD links: