Drama

  • Kumar Shahani – Khayal Gatha AKA The Saga of Khayal (1989)

    1981-1990ArthouseDramaIndiaKumar Shahani

    Synopsis
    Khayal Gatha (English: The Saga of Khayal) is a 1989 Indian experimental film written and directed by Kumar Shahani. The film is about the history of the Khayal genre of Indian classical singing. The film also traces the relationship of Khayal genre with Indian classical dance.

    Examining the genesis and development of the khayal, a form of northern Indian classical vocal music, which developed in the 18th century from earlier musical and poetic traditions.Read More »

  • Robert Hamer – Pink String and Sealing Wax (1945)

    1941-1950DramaRobert HamerThrillerUnited Kingdom

    Synopsis:
    Absorbing period melodrama set in 1890s Brighton about an autocratic chemist and public analyst who rules his wife, daughters and son David with iron discipline. David, whose attempts at romance are thwarted by his father, seeks solace in a pub where he becomes dangerously infatuated with landlord’s wife.Read More »

  • Stuart Rosenberg – Brubaker (1980)

    1971-1980CrimeDramaStuart RosenbergUSA

    Quote:
    When Brubaker (Robert Redford) comes to a small state prison to be its new warden, he’s horrified by what he sees. Prisoners are sold as slaves, and even decent food can’t be obtained without cold, hard cash. So the enraged warden tries to set matters right…but the more he reforms, the more enemies he makes with the townspeople who have benefitted from the corruption. Soon Brubaker’s in big trouble–and it looks as if no one is powerful enough to help. This powerful drama received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay.Read More »

  • Nathan Juran – Highway Dragnet (1954)

    1951-1960CrimeDramaNathan JuranUSA

    Synopsis:
    Mrs. Cummings, a free-lance magazine photographer and a recent widow after her husband committed suicide, and her model, Susan, are on an assignment to cover resorts California and Nevada. Driving west from Las Vegas they pick up Jim Henry, a recently-discharged Marine, who is hitchhiking to the home of a friend near the Salton Sea. Meanwhile, back in Las Vegas, a blonde known casually by Jim, is found murdered. Jim becomes the object of a manhunt directed by Police-Lieut. White Eagle of the Las Vegas police.Read More »

  • Philippe Harel – Extension du domaine de la lutte AKA Whatever (1999)

    1991-2000DramaFrancePhilippe Harel

    Quote:
    Based on the fantastic book by Michel Houellebecq :

    OUR hero in this gloriously dark piece is a depressed, cynical, sexually obsessed systems engineer moping through life perked up only by the fun he has putting others into a similarly suicidal state. When he is sent on a work trip to train up clients to use his company’s software he is forced to travel with the slimy Raphael, an unreconstruted male bursting with such sheer desperation that he is destined never to have success with the women he chases…Read More »

  • Andrzej Munk & Witold Lesiewicz – Pasazerka AKA Passenger (1963)

    1961-1970Andrzej MunkArthouseDramaPolandWitold Lesiewicz

    From culture.pl:
    Lisa and Walter, a German couple, travel from America to Europe on a transatlantic liner. He is an employee of an international organization, and she hides – even from him – her past as a guard of the Auschwitz concentration camp. In London, a mysterious passenger who reminds Lisa (an outstanding performance by Aleksandra Śląska) of one of the camp prisoners, Marta (played by Anna Ciepielewska, whose performance was awarded at the International Film Festival in Los Alamos), boards the ship. Memories that had long been repressed slowly resurface.Read More »

  • Joel Coen & Ethan Coen – Miller’s Crossing (1990)

    1981-1990CrimeDramaJoel Coen and Ethan CoenUSA

    From IMDB:
    A highly styled ‘genre’ film which can perhaps be seen as a pastiche of all gangster movies. Tom Reagan is the laconic anti-hero of this amoral tale which is also, paradoxically, a look at morals within the criminal underworld of the 1930s. Two rival gangs vie for control of a city where the police are pawns, and the periodic busts of illicit drinking establishments are no more than a way for one gang to get back at the other. Black humour and shocking violence compete for screen time as we question whether or not Tom, right-hand man of the Irish mob leader, really has a heart.Read More »

  • Erich Engels & Fyodor Otsep – Der Mörder Dimitri Karamasoff (1931)

    1931-1940DramaErich EngelsFyodor OtsepGermanyWeimar Republic cinema

    Plot Synopsis
    This is a stripped down (but still excellent) version of “The Brothers Karamazov.” Young Dimitri Karamasoff, on leave from the army, returns home to ask his father for money to get married. When he arrives he finds that his father has become smitten with a young woman of extremely questionable character named Gruschenka. His father gruffly rebuffs Dimitri’s request for money. Dimitri immediately seeks out his fathers lover to demand that she break off the engagement. Things get a bit more complicated when his anger towards her turns to infatuation – and eventually obsession. Dimitri and his father are both mad for Gruschenka, but she doesn’t want anything from either of them – except their money. Things come to a head when the old man is found murdered. Did Dimitri really commit patricide? Or is there more to the story?Read More »

  • Carmine Gallone – Casa Ricordi (1954)

    1951-1960Carmine GalloneClassicsDramaItaly

    The film covers a hundred years in the lives of the Ricordi family, the Milan publishing house of the title, and the various composers and other historic personalities, whose careers intersected with the growth of the Ricordi house. It beautifully draws the parallel between the great music of the composers, the historic and social upheavals of their times, as well as the “smaller stories” of the successive generations of Ricordi.Read More »

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