Thursday, September 10, 2020

Thursday Movie Picks #322: Movies not in English

This being Thursday, it's time for another edition of Thursday Movie Picks, the blogathon run by Wandering Through the Shelves. This week's theme is movies not in English, which is a fairly easy theme, with only needing to check whether or not I'd used the movies in a previous Thursday Movie Picks. With that in mind, here's my theme-within-a-theme picks:

Closely Watched Trains (1966). Directed by the recently deceased Jiří Menzel, the movie tells the story of Miloš, an apprentice dispatcher at a station in a middle of nowere part of Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia. He's worried about becoming a man due to his sexual inadequacy, but has the chance to show what he's made of when there's a plot to sabotage the Nazis involving his station.

The Confession (1970). Based on the true story of Arthur London, a Czech Communist who was purged, tortured, and subjected to a show trial in the early 1950s, Yves Montand plays the man being arrested for a political crime he didn't commit. The movie is long and brutal, but worth a watch.

The Ear (1970/1990). Equally brutal but in a different way, this one tells the story of a junior minister (Radoslav Brzobohatý) in the Foreign Ministry and his wife (Jiřina Bohdalová) who return home from a function to find the power off, which leads them to believe the house has been bugged in advance of another Party purge. The couple then descend into madness trying to find the bug. This was made after the Soviet invasion that ended the Prague Spring of 1968, so I'll never know how it even got made in that oppressive environment; unsurprisingly, it didn't see release until 1990, after the fall of Communism. Despite the difficult subject matter, this one is also extremely worth a watch if you can find it.

6 comments:

thevoid99 said...

With the exception of The Ear (which I haven't seen), both Closely Watched Trains and The Confession are awesome films.

Dell said...

You got me here. I haven't seen any of these.

Birgit said...

I haven't seen any of these but I do like your theme and would like to see these films.

joel65913 said...

I've seen the first two but not the last. Both are tremendous. I'm not usually a Montand fan except in Wages of Fear but this is another place where he excelled.

Mine are all older films as well but those are the ones I tend to track down.

Drunken Angel (1948)-Gangster Toshiro Mifune visits Dr. Takashi Shimura, after an unfortunate incident with a bullet. The doctor, who despises the Yakuza, discovers the young man is suffering from tuberculosis, a disease symbolic of what is happening to the doctor and the community he serves. Facing his own anger and fear, the doctor aligns himself with the gangster's world. This film noir was directed by Akira Kurosawa.

Le Silence de la Mer (1949)-An elderly Frenchman (Jean-Marie Robain) and his niece (Nicole Stéphane) are forced to give shelter to a Nazi soldier (Howard Vernon) who seemingly loves their country and culture. Though they refuse to speak to him over time they form a strange sort of bond.

La Notte (1961)-In Milan, Lidia (Jeanne Moreau) suddenly storms out of a fancy party held in honor of her husband, Giovanni (Marcello Mastroianni), to celebrate the publication of his new novel. Distressed at the news that her friend Tommaso (Bernhard Wicki) has a terminal illness, Lidia begins roaming the streets of the city, questioning her marriage to Giovanni. Meanwhile, Giovanni, seemingly oblivious to his crumbling relationship with Lidia, attempts to seduce beautiful young Valentina (Monica Vitti). Written and directed by Michelangelo Antonioni.

Brittani Burnham said...

I liked that you picked Czech movies, that's a country I don't believe I've seen a lot of films from. I need to rectify that.

Ted S. (Just a Cineast) said...

The Confession is actually French, but set in Czechoslovakia.

I'm not surprised if you haven't seen The Ear, since it seems not to have gotten a DVD release and only showed up a couple of years ago on TCM when I DVRed it and watched it. It really needs another airing.