Renowned author, Christian apologist, and Oxford medieval scholar C.S. Lewis agrees to marry the divorced American poet Joy Davidman Gresham, to allow her and her two sons to stay in England. But what began as an act of charity by the confirmed bachelor becomes a deep and abiding love and Read More »
Starring Dame Helen Lydia Mirren
Elijah Moshinsky directed the BBC Television Shakespeare adaptation in 1982, ignoring the ancient British period setting in favour of a more timeless and snow-laden atmosphere inspired by Rembrandt and his contemporary Dutch painters. Richard Johnson, Claire Bloom, Helen Mirren, and Robert Lindsay play Cymbeline, his Queen, Imogen, and Iachimo, respectively, with Michael Pennington as Posthumus. Read More »
Synopsis:
‘Three years after its incendiary run on the London stage, director Tony Richardson’s film version of John Osborne’s play Look Back in Anger (1959) became one of the precursors to the British “kitchen sink” dramas of the 1960s. Enhancing the aim to show British life as it really was through the hopeless existence of enraged working class stiff Jimmy Porter and his put-upon, better-born wife Allison, Richardson unstintingly reveals the grunginess of their industrial city residential milieu with its drab row houses and unkempt children. Read More »
Synopsis:
British doctor Richard Johnson arrives in the city of Bath, where a smallpox epidemic has broken out. If he has any hope of stemming the disease, he must locate and isolate its source. As if he hasn’t got enough trouble on his hands, Johnson must contend with his failing marriage to Claire Bloom. Director Val Guest lifts 80,000 Suspects out of the ordinary with his inventive utilization of darkness and shadows.
— Hal Erickson. Read More »
Brooklyn Academy of Music writes:
Kurosawa’s Rashomon is transposed to the American Wild West as four participants in a rape and murder—including a Mexican bandit (Newman), the dead man (Harvey), and his wife (Bloom)—give differing accounts of what occurred. Featuring a dynamite supporting cast that includes Edward G. Robinson and William Shatner, The Outrage is lent a haunted, nightmarish atmosphere thanks to James Wong Howe’s psychologically charged camerawork. Read More »
Synopsis:
At the height of the Cold War, British spy Alec Leamas (Richard Burton) is nearly ready to retire, but first he has to take on one last dangerous assignment. Going deep undercover, he poses as a drunken, disgraced former MI5 agent in East Germany in order to gain information about colleagues who have been captured. When he himself is thrown in jail and interrogated, Leamas finds himself caught in a sinister labyrinth of plots and counter-plots unlike anything in his long career. Read More »
Nora Helmer has years earlier committed a forgery in order to save the life of her authoritarian husband Torvald. Now she is being blackmailed lives in fear of her husband’s finding out and of the shame such a revelation would bring to his career. But when the truth comes out, Nora is shocked to learn where she really stands in her husband’s esteem.
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