1961-1970

THE GOLDEN FERN (ZLATÉ KAPRADÍ) – 1963, NFA, 115 min. Czech director Jiří Weiss’s breathtaking B&W fairy tale is one of the most unjustly neglected treasures of 1960s fantasy filmmaking, a hauntingly lyrical work with overtones of Wojciech Has’s THE SARAGOSSA MANUSCRIPT, František Vláčil’s MARKETA LAZAROVÁ and Cocteau’s BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. A handsome young shepherd (Jean Marais lookalike Vít Olmer) stumbles across a magical golden fern in the forest. A stunning, enigmatic forest fairy named Lesanka (Karla Chadimová) is sent to retrieve it but instead falls hopelessly in love with him. When he’s forced to join the army and heads off to war, she sews a seed from the fern into his shirt to protect him.Read More »

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Toshiro Mifune swaggers and snarls to brilliant comic effect in Kurosawa’s tightly paced, beautifully composed “Sanjuro.” In this companion piece and sequel to “Yojimbo,” jaded samurai Sanjuro helps an idealistic group of young warriors weed out their clan’s evil influences, and in the process turns their image of a proper samurai on its ear.Read More »

Along with The Baby Carriage and A Slope in the Sun, That Guy and I is one of a long list of youth films to be based on the novels of ISHISAKA Yojiro. A portrait of youth grappling with new forms of love and sexual ethics at the height of the ANPO struggle of 1960, the film was marketed as ISHIHARA Yujiro’s comeback picture after he injured himself in a skiing accident, and went on to break box office records in 1961.Read More »

William Klein moved into more blatantly political territory with this hilarious, vicious Vietnam-era lampoon of imperialist American foreign policy. Mr. Freedom (John Abbey), a bellowing good-ol’-boy superhero decked out in copious football padding, jets to France to cut off a Commie invasion from Switzerland. A destructive, arrogant patriot in tight pants, Freedom joins forces with Marie Madeleine (a satirically sexy Delphine Seyrig) to combat lefty freethinkers, as well as the insidious evildoers Moujik Man and inflatable Red China Man, culminating in a star-spangled showdown of kitschy excess. Delightfully crass, Mr. Freedom is a trenchant, rib-tickling takedown of gaudy modern Americana.Read More »

A Man approaches a Women in a field.Read More »

Two families of Verona, the Montagues and the Capulets, have been feuding with each other for years. Young Romeo Montague goes out with his friends to make trouble at a party the Capulets are hosting, but while there he spies the Capulet’s daughter Juliet…Read More »

This is one of Ivan Cardoso’s first films – shot totally in Super 8mm! It’s a parody of the old-age vampire story, but this time Nosferato (Torquato Neto) decides to feed on the bikiniclad beauties lying on the beaches of Rio de Janeiro (land of the string bikini, mind you!) Lots of laughs, skin and an ingenius use of locations!Read More »

A commercial for Anacin.Read More »

In order to overturn the government of some exotic country, the rebels decide to hire an experienced American diver (George Hilton). His risky mission: recover from the botton of the sea a treasure, which would provide financial support to their endeavor.Read More »