Reviews

This is an excellent eerie movie made out of three sketches .

By and large,the first segment is considered the best : the characters are odd and slightly threatening ; without the special effects which mar so many fantasy and horror movies of today , the director creates a non-Euclidian geometry , plane and solid geometry ; a variation on Wilde's "picture of Dorian Gray", it thoroughly renews it ;when you enter a picture ,you do it at your own risk: let there be light because it's so dark inside!

The second sketch could have been a "Hitchcock presents " short for it is primarily a murder mystery with a twist,even though the final picture comes as an anti-climax after a very good suspense ; two guys ,one has all the lucks ,his mate begins to think he is a failure till he meets a woman who can make a difference ;but he'll have his would be friend to reckon with.

The third sketch which features the great Orson Welles may be looked upon as a spoof on politicians and their fine talks which won't make any difference ; it's also a variation on the guilty conscience ,like in Poe's "William Wilson ".

All in all , it's very good stuff for horror buffs of yore.

There's a huge gap between the village where the inhabitants gather around the mailman who calls them one by one when he's got a letter for them; it's a lucky day for Saffi and her son Moctar: her husband sends for them and the way to france is wide open ;after five years of sacrifices ,he now owns a garage and is part of the well-assimilated populations ;on the other hand the French couple ,Paulo (Richard Bohringer) and Deborah,(Clementine Célarié ) looks like dropouts ,particularly the man who makes friends with the young Moctar .

In spite of good intentions, the vision of the director may seem naive , nay idealistic : the problems of integration into a new world,a new climate and a new culture are represented by Moctar's hallucinations: a threatening hyena who prowls around him : this simplistic symbolism is not very convincing ;neither is the way Paulo "cures" him .The death of the granddaddy ,a wise man but also a chain smoker ,is predictable ,and is supposed to clinch the boy's fear of this new world .

Forget the social concers;on the plus side , Paulo and Moctar's friendship is endearing;it's arguably because she hasn't got a child on her own that his wife does not approve of her man's affection for this intruder.

A good psychological western,featuring one of Glenn Ford's best performances : if looks could kill,his certainly would ;and kill he does,and since the first sequence ,when the Civil War has just come to an end , he pretends he did not see the last confederates ' white flag and ordered to shoot them all ;and the viewer knows from the start he is mentally disturbed : he writes a diary in which he confesses he knows he 's insane and cannot control the beast in him. During the sequences of the great fire,he really looks like a devil out of Hell,with fiery eyes .

There's also an interesting look at the fate of the men who gave the best years of their lives in the Civil War and found themself despoiled of their lands by a wealthy man who did not fight but shrewdly used the power of law, supported (reluctantly ?) by commander-turned judge Ford .Holden plays one of his former officers ,who 's now the town marshall , and eventually rebels against him and becomes a righter of wrongs ;there also a love rivalry for a beautiful lady : this female character is the deus ex machina who discovers the secret diary.

Of Pole origin, Emile Reinert made only one movie worthy of looking for:"quai de Grenelle" ,a curious story of paranoia ,also dealing with the ill-fated power of the press,one of Henri Vidal's best parts.

"Tombé du ciel" is horse of a different color,for ,as Guy Bellinger's accurate summary reads ,it's an anodyne comedy revolving around a war widow's baby ; as two characters are a chanteuse and a musician in a "jazz" orchestra , musical acts are to be found all along the movue. The best moment happens when Dauphin soothes the baby by singing him a charming ditty "par le bout du nez" (=got him on a string).

Dauphin has plenty of pep and makes this harmless comedy watchable.

A feminist movie,which could have been the French "Thelma and Louise " long before that latter movie happened , but does not make it as a whole ; Annie Girardot was one of the best French actresses of all time and Maria Pacôme was second only to Jacqueline Maillan on stage ; this could have been a winning team,but for lack of good directing, which leaves the stars to their own devices ,they sometimes ham it up ,which excessive close ups do not help. Bernard Fresson , then Girardot's real- life partner , ironically plays Pacôme 's fickle husband , and makes his only scene counts -this excellent actor was too often relegated to supporting parts .

A taxi driver ,whom dear hubby ditched with a laconic letter ,decides she would take only women in her taxi ;she meets a bourgeois lady who suffered the same fate :her wealthy husband left her for a younger blonde ("men will always prefer two twenty-year old girls to a wife in her forties " , says the taxi driver)

So the prole and the bourgeois join forces to fight the male selfishness ; they decide to follow the fickle husband , a businessman ,and it gives the movie its best scenes ,but they are few and far between : the hubby, suffering sciatica much to his wife 's delight ("you too are not new anymore") ; the phone call in German which Girardot thwarts ; the discovery that the husband's new flame is not a blonde bimbo but a piano virtuoso ("she ain't Rachmaninov "the scowling faithful wife grumbles ") and the moving Girardot/Fresson "love" scene.

On the other hand ,too much filler, a tendency to overact by both actresses, the radio contest which comes at the most awkward moment and the final which should have been nastier .

Serge Lama wrote the words and sang the eponymous song heard in the movie.

A woman thinks that her husband is not jealous enough and puts him to the test by diappearing with clueless Achilles who woos her; his best friend has an affair with a married woman .The victim and the sinner .

A pleasant harmless comedy , it's "just for a laugh" (the meaning of the title) ; can manly friendship survive the numerous problems with women? Well acted by Micheline Presles ,Fernand Gravey ,Pierre Renoir and Marie Déa,but a lot of filler (music hall scenes)

L'Herbier 's follow-ups ("la nuit fantastique" with the Gravey /Presles couple again and "l'honorable Catherine" )during the occupation ,were highly superior to this théâtre de boulevard .

A little western ,definitely off the beaten track ; a ranger/outlaw relationship you do not see every day;when one first meets the renegade ,he's taking with a brat,near the water ;theIr conversation deals with the sturgeons,that provide the European crowned heads with caviar .Later ,the prisoner and his escort does not really act as you expect ; "Seven Ways of Sundown " (youthful Murphy)has probably never got over his big brother 's loss and is looking for a replacement ;his prisoner is a bon vivant , who tries to strike up a friendship with the ranger :together,they would almost rule the world ,should one believe him .

Although we guess very soon who's responsible for the death of the brother, the ranger/prisoner relationship is not derivative ,it's really endearing.

Algier, October 1956: a communist and a member of the FLN (independence fighters), Fernand Iveton volunteers for carrying out sabotage using a bomb in the Hamma gas factory where he works .

November 14, 1956 at 2 p.m. , he placed the bomb in a cupboard in an abandoned room at factory . The objective is purely material sabotage which aims to cause a power outage in Algiers and Iveton takes precautions so that the explosion does not cause any casualties . He requested that the bomb be set to explode after the workers left.

Iveton is spotted by a factory foreman, who warns his boss. Iveton was arrested at 4:20 p.m. The bomb is defused by the military. There was no damage or casualties.

Iveton did not kill anybody and he did not intend to do so ; in spite of it all ,he was sentenced to death ;his plea for clemency was refused by the French government ,(president Coty and French garde des sceaux -French minister of justice- future socialist president Mitterrand ) , who at the time was keen to reconciliate with the USA (witch hunt in the fifties ) He was the only European (among 178 executions) to be guillotined after a travesty of a trial : he was tortured (no need to show the act, the accused's bruised body tells it all ) but it does not play any part in the final verdict,applaused by the populace .The doctor 's examination does not carry much weight for a political prisoner ,sentenced as an example.

The film is certainly courageous, showing a side of French history which is too often passed over in silence ,but it is sometimes marred by insignificant flashbacks ; some of them make sense : the wife,whose father is still behind the iron curtain and who does not approve of eastern communism; the stepson,admiring the husband and even trying step in his shoes .

But too many scenes deal with a pathetic love story ,not always convincing ,and too little time is given over to the questioning , to the trial and to the situation in France ; the scenes with his brothers -in- arm are few and far between ; his last lines (historically accurate)were prophetic: "A man's life, mine, counts for little. What matters is Algeria, its future".

In spite of some reservations ,a film which must be seen .

To shed the image of the most famous secret agent in the world was not such an easy task ; the actor had to undergo psychiatry (and other methods) to come to term with his true identity.

Sean Connery was a fascinating actor and this doc does him justice: he did not stand to be called James Bond,except if it were a child .He was conscious that it was an unheard of phenomenon -which still carries on today - ,and was furious when he realized he had signed a contract which was not so lucrative as people generally thought (Roger Moore made much more money than him afterwards ,and on a "you only live twice" poster ,his name was not even mentioned !)

But this clever man saw the danger :to be stuck up in a role ;many actors and actresses were not able to get over it ;he did, and he has all the credit. At the beginning ,what's bred in the bone comes out in the flesh : in 'the woman of straw " ,he wears the same suit as in "Goldfinger" .

His sheet anchor was director Sidney Lumet who gave him a role which would be his very favorite : "the hill" ,a settlement of scores with his time in the British Navy and his Bond-rock of Sysiphus ; later he would completely destroy his sexy macho image in the absorbing "the offense " ; Two hustonesque works -even though the latter was directed by Huston followed :"the lion and the wind" ,and mainly my personal favorite "the man who would be king " in which he and Caine blew your mind .If the late seventies were less successful , the eighties and nineties showed that he was not a spent force .

Like Robert Anderson , who urged him to become an actor,he became a mentor for the young actor of "finding Forrester" ;full circle indeed. The star had not forgotten his destitute childhood .

Includes interventions of Andy Garcia ("the untouchables") and John Boorman ("Zardoz" ,with a funny anecdote ).

Jean Herman was a director for about a director ;his most memorable works are thrillers ,both starrring Alain Delon :"Jeff" and mainly "adieu l'ami" where the French star met Charles Bronson .

"L'oeuf " is his final effort before he became a writer (Jean Vautrin) who was awarded the Goncourt prize and who notably wrote the "garde à vue" screenplay.

His decision to call it quits after "l'oeuf" was a good one ; in spite of talented stand up comic Guy Bedos and good actresses (the luminous Marie Dubois and Bernadette Laffont) , the movie does not avoid vulgarity and its heavy-handed treatment does not help.

The best scenes are to be found at the beginning : the hero,hearing about his friends' numerous conquests wonders how they try and pick up so many girls ;his akward attempts to imitate them are pathetic and really funny ;then the hints at mythomania are quite relevant : are these affairs really real?

Highsmith was always fascinated by Venice ; her novel "those who walk away" and her short story "the rat of Venice " would bear this out. It was only natural that the novel (and the miniseries) should end in the stately palaces of this magic city ;in spite of an occasional gaffe , this final episode ,the longest of them all, is an apotheosis.

To confront the superintendent and newly-born Ripley ,without arousing the cop's suspicion is a scene hard to swallow -Highsmith did not include such an implausibility - ;although he's got the gift of the gab and he was a born impersonator , Ripley is not Arsène Lupin ,all the same!

The rest is excellent : the old art amateur (special guest appearance by John Malkovich !), Marge revealing her true colors -actually a self-interested girl who uses her ex-lover's affair to launch her book , she's nothing but a fortune hunter , says Greenleaf Sr-, the relevant intervention of the black private eye we met in the first episode ,and the way Ripley imagines how his questioning could be ; in the same way ,he imagines the murder of Marge even when he has no motives but his contempt ,,and the trick of the signet ring with Ripley holding a heavy ashtray , echoing Freddy's slaying , is Hitchcockesque .

Stephen Zaillian is to be praised for his precise directing ,his aesthetic sense as he films on location the riches of Italian art and architecture .

Although he does not inherit Dickie's fortune, Tom possesses something of great value which may be a forerunner of season two ,as Tom makes his way through the world of forgeries in the second book "Ripley under ground"

I've already said I thought the former screenwriters missed the point as far as Madge is concerned: Paul Gégauff made her Tom 's lover in "plein soleil "; and Minghella turned her towards the ending in some kind of young detective who had discovered Tom 's ominous plan .

Although Tom 's hatred for that "silly goose " was somewhat sweetened , you may remember his disgust and his boredom when he corrected the so -called writer's gibberish ;that his book was finally published is entirely due to her short-lived rise to fame as an actor of the Greenleaf affair ;the letter in which Madge tells Dickie that she knows he prefers his boyfriend appears earlier in the novel,but you should hear Tom laugh out loud when he reads those "melodramatic" sentences .

This episode is slow-moving and prepares the future Tom 's comeback to his true identity ; all the actors, from the concierge to tycoon Greenleaf must be aware that Dickie is suicidal and eaten with remorse ....Macabre entertainment indeed .

Tom's nightmares and spooky visions did appear in this episode ,which includes two of them ,dealing with his victims raising from the dead (a wet Dickie) or still sleeping in his hotel ( Freddy); anyway ,even though he's totally immoral ,the death of Dickie will haunt him in the whole saga ;even though he would commit more murders,this one was the one he was never really able to get over ( in the fifth and last volume -perhaps the weakest though- he hears his so called voice on the phone) .Another obsession : the fear of the police ; the end of the first volume, in spite of the denouement, deals with that.

The presence of Freddy's lover (?) ,Max ,amounts to nothing here; the viewer will like best the Colombo-like superintendent who plays cat and mouse with Tom (and the other way about is truer) .Playing two characters at once is not an easy task ,and the screenwriters ,faithful to the novel ,do not need two extra-characters like Minghella (Meredith and Peter ) to perform his conjuring trick.

Some users complain that Andrew Scott was too old for the part (Alain Delon was 23 when he starred in "plein soleil") but the cast and credits read :"based on Highsmith 's novelS" ; they probably intend a season 2 and maybe more; in the 1959 movie,the ending was "moral" and did not ask for a sequel ;such is not the case here: the five Ripley volumes span at least a decade ,so the choice of an older actor made sense .

On the other hand ,the choice of Eliot Sumner as Freddy Miles is weird beyond comment : Miles was a womanizer bon vivant, a stout man (René Clément forced his star Delon to drag his victim's body from the apartment to the car in real time in 1959);That he may be Dickie's friend is all the more unlikely , since he has only contempt for the inverts -see episode 3-. The choice of an androgynous actor will later be "justified " (by Tom) during the investigation .

The title of the episode ,"Lucio "is the name of the cat of the concierge ; its part is minimal ,even the traces of blood can't arouse her suspicion ;in fact ,it's a nod to Highsmith ,whose great fondness for cats was well known. She would live with plenty of them in her house.

It should be pointed out ,that ,from that moment on, the novel often uses an epistolary style:for instance Tom only meets Marge in the flesh once before Venice ; Minghella opted for another character created from start to finish by him,Meredith (Cate Blanchett )whereas Clément introduced a love affair between Tom and Marge .

As far as Marge is concerned ,both missed the point ;Dakota Fanning ,with her zeitgeist-like ponytail ,is Marge as Highsmith depicted her ; people who read the book know that Tom HATED this girl who took away Dickie from him,and the writer,herself a lesbian, deeply despised her character ;the conversation they have when Tom tells him that Dickie is to settle in Rome for the whole of winter , though inspired by the girl's letters which call Tom "your little boyfriend " , is downright embarrassing ;talented Fanning leaves no doubt about her feelings : though she does not spell it out, she does think that both men have a gay affair .

Tom ,an impostor of genius,little by little , becomes Dickie (he's always known he would be him some day ,for ,since the second episode, he has trained himself in the art of imitation ); he is not so self-assured though ,the policemen,on the station platform ,give him the jitters ....

The ending with a fake letter in which Tom praises himself in the Mr Greenleaf Sr 's eyes, while a choir is singing "silent night" and horrible pictures of San Remo's tragedy appear on the screen, is masterful.

Confusing ,not derivative ,but not always satisfying psychological drama; the wide screen is sometimes reduced to a small rectangle, probably to indicate that the mirror of the title reflects some events of the pass .Except for the moment when the hero smashes it, a la Who's "Tommy ", the mirror trick is not really convincing.

The characters are interesting but their attitude does not always make much sense ; a mother who marries a younger man , it has become common nowadays ;but the husband remains at the beck and call of his over possessive mother ;to crown it all , the wife committed suicide because,after embracing Buddhism without a moment's hesitation , she reached nirvana ; funny wisdom, isn't it?

The husband and the son (with his girlie on tug) claim the legacy ,but the latter,who has not seen his mom for five years , has a dark side to him: a terrible secret buried in his past ....

Andrew Scott's performance becomes more and more impressive as the story progresses ; he often blows Johnny Flynn off the screen whereas ,in Minghella's movie ,it was the other way about ,Dickie-Law outstripping Ripley -Damon .

The most violent episode of the story ; although as far as the murder is concerned, the 1959 Clément 's "plein soleil " has technically the upper hand ,Scott makes us feel the hatred, the rancor against a sellfish boy who dismisses him like his father did before in a humiliating letter :it makes him feel like a servant , even though Dickie tells him it was a true friendship ; the pivotal sequence on the beach with the boys practising gymnastics tells it all (Highsmith depicts it but she makes no comment on their sexual orientation ) : "they are inverts" Dickie says,in a contemptous voice,and one has the strange feeling he fears he may be one of these friends of Dorothy .The "final solution" makes sense .The dolce vita's up.

Now the action takes place in Italy ,not in Mongibello,but in another small sea resort ; the luminous landscapes of italy in black and white ? It works quite well for ,behind the dolce vita, a vague menace creeps ; see Tom's despising look upon Madge 's body ,lying over Dickie's.

The architexture of the places with its cavernous stairs which lead to Dickie's and Marge's dwellings ;the attitudes become apparent : Marge considers Tom an intruder whereas the boy born silver spoon in hand ,whose friends are few, is looking for a pure friendship ; there's a certain ambiguity ,even on his part, but such was the case in Highsmith 's words .

Tom pretends to appreciate Dickie's mediocre paintings though ,and it's even more obvious in other Ripley books , the self-taught crook will reveal himself a genuine art connoisseur .

This somber atmosphere sharply contrasts with the luminous lanscapes of the 1959 "plein soleil " ( which means "full sun") ; the youthful handsome Delon ,who was the writer's favorite Ripley (she said that Dennis Hopper in "der Amerikanische Freund "was not MY Ripley )was ideally cast in this context even though his joie de vivre was thwarted by a cruel joke of a nastier Philippe (Dickie) ; thus Scott's more mature and mysterious look is better applied on the black and white cinematography.

Late Italian fifties songs are included and contributes to the dolce vita atmosphere ; the singer whom Tom gazes into may reveal his bisexual nature ;once again Highsmith never reveals his sexual orientation :she only mentions ,in her other books that ,though married to a rich heiress, Tom only occasionally sleeps with her ;even in "the boy who followed Ripley ",she kept things vague)

All promises of the first episode fulfilled .

I feared that Netflix mIght butcher one of my favorite thrillers of all time; after all ,there had been two versions before : "René Clément' s 'plein soleil ' (purple noon),starring Alain Delon and Minghella's "the talented etc Mr Ripley" starring Matt Damon .It should be pointed out that these movies, though excellent on their own, took many liberties with the initial novel : Clément's 'main drawback was the Marge/Ripley 's love relationship ,whereas Minghella made Ripley do his coming out when Highsmith,herself a lesbian , always kept things vague ,and would even marry her hero (to a heiress named Héloise ) in the other books of the saga.

Much to my surprise,this is an excellent miniseries , and mainly the most faithful adaptation of Highsmith I have ever seen; filmed in stark black and white , it harks back to the films noirs of yore : Ripley's background and his two-bit swindles ,his crummy flat in NYC , his longing for a life of luxury ( Roy Orbison 's magnificent "in dreams " fits like a glove in the picture) all rings true .Besides ,and for the first time ,sweet auntie Dottie is shortly featured : an orphan ,Tom was brought up by a spineful spinster who humiliated her all along his childhood (see the episode of the car in the book ;here she's in the dentist's office and is given a bad time ), an important thing in the hero's personality .

In direct contrast with that,we have the Greenleaf's wealth ,which represents all that Tom desperately wants ; for him,opportunity knocks ,and he will take no chances.....

This first episode really did bode well for the ones to come ....

Some kind of update of René Allio 's "la vieille dame indigne" ,though Miou- Miou , only nearing sixty at the time, and who ages gracefully , does not look like an old woman at all .

Micheline has been living in her house (kitchen more like) for all her life;the perfect housewife , she gave birth to three children,now grown-ups ,and she has made an important decision :to take her driving test ; for the macho husband (Jean -Luc Bidault) ,it's a waste of money because a woman's place is her home .She will have to pay her lessons with her savings.

The first part is primarily funny:the new student almost drove her driving instructor to distraction :she does not even know that the first thing you must do before starting is to fasten your security belt; going into first or reverse is not evident. Miou-Miou's stupefied looks are riotously comic .

The second part ,is more nostalgic , and sometimes leaves a bitter taste in the mouth ; the driving license is her liberation, the opportunity to go where she wants ,without her hubby's burdensome presence ; for her trip to Knokke-Le -Zout ,Belgium ,she takes with her the neighbours' teenager , an autistic : for him,too ,it's his first real travel ; this odd couple is really endearing ; all in all,in spite of some filler , a nice little film.

An excellent doc about one of the greatest French actresses of all time, the first one to be awarded an AA ("Room at the top")

Her film career began with "bad girls " parts ("Dédée D'Anvers " the extraordinary "casque d'or" and the terrifying film noir " manèges" ) or calculating characters ( "les diaboliques ",known all around the world, remade and imitated ) When she gets older ,she was not left in the cold and carried on with Melville 's "l'armée des ombres" and her final triumph "La vie devant soi"

Her political commitment was famous and sometimes went against her ; her career was waning between 1957 and her AA : she was a communist before accompanying her husband Montand in his USSR tour"where the faces told another story "; but she remained an activist ,notably against the Algeria war and all abuses and injustice, championing all the good causes (she tells she received lots of letters which asked her for help in their struggle.)

An excellent doc in which Romy Schneider tries to come to terms with her somber past : her mother who was Hitler's friend (and maybe more) ;many color archive films are included ; the shady relationship with Magda Schneider's second husband .The stranglehold both had on the young girl till she turned down an one million marks fee to shoot a fourth "Sissi" ; Alice Schwarzer reminds us of the prominent part the Sissi trilogy played for a defeated country , trying to make the world forget an awful past .

A long part of the movie is given to her affair with Alain Delon ,which ,after she turned her back from "Sissi" was her second act of rebellion ; Germany never really forgave her and in the seventies she was considered a French star !

Miss Schwarzer bases her film on a recorded interview with Romy in Kôln ,1976,now in French ,now in German ; sometimes her voice falters and she asks the journalist to switch off her recorder .

A must for the actress' fans.

Survival has become a trendy subject nowadays, particularly at sea ; RW Baker located his story in the desert,but it's a gripping suspense,nothing to do with the "who will be the lucky guy (more likely girl) who will escape death?

RW Baker had already tried his hand at thrillers ("the October man" " don't bother to knock" ) but this one is far superior , renewing the hackneyed love triangle in a film noir in color under the blistering sun of the desert.

The story is masterfully constructed :the first picture shows Lundigan and Fleming on the road ;the viewer thinks they are lost till they tell what has happened before ;the woman tries to persuade herself "it's not a crime" .

At a time mobile phones did not exist, with a broken leg , Ryan tries to crawl across the desert :The use of his voice over is here totally justified ;the editing is smart : a picture of him missing a rabbit is followed by Lundigan in front of a copious meal; when he digs the earth to find some water , the following picture is his rival fixing himself a drink ; his crawling across the sand echoes to Fleming and Lundigan enjoying the pool .

Excellent performance by Ryan and Fleming is eye candy.

Perhaps inspired by the love affair between glorious actress Arletty and a German officer in WW2,although the young girl is a Jew, which may remind some people of "the exception ". They even sing 'comme de bien entendu" ,which is an obvious nod to Arletty in "circonstances atténuantes "

Moving subject , but mediocre treatment : one expects a tragedy , one gets a Harlequin romance ; there is absolutely no chemistry between the two lovers (unless sex scenes count) , the characters are all rather flat and the only good actors , Anémone and Richard Bohringer are given so insignificant parts that the former lies bedridden all the while ,and the latter is smart enough to slip out after the very beginning before reappearing one hour later .

The young German love is bland ,and his superiors are rather nice -and even naive-, and we deal with the SS men,all the same! The picture is so dark that it's sometimes impossible to follow the plot. The evident lack of means cannot excuse the paucity of the dialog ,and a story which drags on, which a listless directing does not help.