Powerful Foreign Films that shatter previously held notions.

Two favorites revealing much about history and even more about human nature:

The Gardens of the Finzi-Continis
The story involves what happened to the Italian Jews, particularly those of wealth during WWII. It is poignant and chilling at the same time. Before seeing this film I had little notion of the fate of Italian Jews and what protection the Pope may have provided (practically none).

Europa, Europa
The protagonist is a young Jewish boy who is mistaken for German. He perpetuates the image through some pretty harrowing experiences. Not so much shattering any pre-conceived notions but it did come to bear on the plight of human character when a person is placed in such a precarious situation and one slip up could easily could mean death.

The Bicycle Thief
I don't believe there has ever been a motion picture which bared the essence of being poor and struggling for a living. I first saw it at the old Vogue theater when I was attending UCLA and it profoundly changed my view of society.

Quite true and partly because Mussolini had obtained power through some contributions from some powerful and wealthy Jews and pretty much was trying to take a hands off position until Hitler put the pressure on. Those who were smart enough left the country or, when it seemed too late to do that, took advantage of the kind hearts of the Italian citizenry. Another great film about an Italian city just about to be liberated is "The Night of the Shooting Stars." The opening scene is a bookend to the closing scene -- an open window starring out into a star filled night sky. What happens to the villagers when they get involved with the remnants of combat is heart wrenching and soul inspiring.

Interesting. I'll have to check out both of those films.

I don't watch foreign films because I can't stand dubbing, and I am none too keen on subtitles. However, there was a french film that I really enjoyed years ago and since I saw this thread I've been trying to think of it but can't It's driving me nuts, so I'm hoping you can help.

Here goes, It is set in a school at (I think) summer break, a man and his wife both work there, she kills him (she thinks) and she and her female chum try and cover the crime up. The twist is that he is not dead and he reappears.

Ring any Bells?

I think Virgin Spring had a very strong impact, quite a few years back. There was also a film I forgot the name of. In it, a woman takes in a man and begins a love affair with him. She has lost her husband to the Nazis. She blames one man in particular. Turns out the man she had the affair with killed her husband: she recognized him because of his tattoo (which she noticed while engaged in sex with him). The man got killed at the end. His dying words to the woman echoed what he told her at the beginning: "One animal kills another." May have been from Bergman, but I can't be sure.
Another film that seemd important to me was Buddha, from Japan. It was pretty good until the fourth quarter, when they went minutely over his actions with indivuals in a repetative, seeming never ending series. They chose the ending in which he is floating off on a cloud, basically.

Diabolique. Starring Simone Signoret and Vera Clouzot, directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot.

They've made (or maybe two) re-makes which were dreadful.

Along with Bicylcle Thief there was Open City, and one whose name I forget, set in the rice paddies starring Silvana Mangano. Powerful movies.

We get a TV channel called IFC, which gets som wonderful foreign movies (along with some dogs). Just recently saw a Chinese one called Not One Cent, about a thirteen year old substitute teacher in a small, poor village in China. Funny, and determined.

Speaking of holocaust material, I would still consider "The Pianist" a foreign film even though it is an English language picture. I just saw it again on DVD and was profoundly moved all over again.

The official country of this film are:

The picture being in English and Universal distributing it in the U.S. made it qualified for an Oscar in the Best Picture category. I agree that it is a foreign film and that no American production company or director could have made the film. The film put Polanski firmly in the catergory of the ten best directors of all time.

Thanks mamajuana,

Diabolique, thats the one.

Just re-watched Arttemisia. Woo-hoo!

"Paris, Texas"
a classic

"Good bye Lenin"
(as far as remember, the English version has been released already): a German (!) comedy (!!!)


"Rosenstrasse"
(came out in September last year, actress Katja Riemann just got the best actress award in Venice. Margarethe von Trotta's "Rosenstrasse" deals with a deportation of Jews in 1943 Berlin. )

One that springs to mind is "Frozen Stories", a German documentary.

After the death of his father, a documentary filmmaker found out more details about his life, and made this film.

He found out, through extensive interviews with all concerned, that his father was arrested in Berlin, by the East-German police, in 1946 or so. His crime: putting up posters for the Christian-Democrats. He was handed over to the Soviets, who sent him to an Arctic Gulag camp. He was transported there with other prisoners in cattle cars, where there was no room to sit, they slept leaning against each other and had to pee like that - the journey took several days, many died. And that was just the beginning.

He survived some 12 years or so in the camp, where most of his "year" died. He was "bought" into freedom by West-Germany, I believe - the West-German government did that for many prisoners.

He never told his son. He remained silent on the topic all the rest of his life (just like many Holocaust survivors did). He even remained silent when his son, the documentary filmer, grew up into a strident young Leftist with communist leanings.

It was a very powerful film. Just talking heads - nothing more. Any imaging would have been cheap.

What previously held notions did it shatter? I knew about the Stalinist terror, I knew about the Gulag. I knew about the show trials in Stalinist Hungary and Czechoslovakia. I knew the stories of Hungarians hiding their daughters from the Soviet soldiers in their basements, in 1945, because of the mass rapes and random violence that accompanied "liberation". And I knew the Ulbrecht regime in East-Germans had had its own political prisoners. So what was new?

I'd never fully realised, or felt, the extent to which the Eastern Bloc states had emulated Stalinist terror. You do have this feeling that the highpoint of Stalinist terror was in the thirties, and that it wasnt imposed as starkly in Central Europe. Which is probably true, in terms of sheer numbers, but overlooks the very real impact of the extreme terror of post-45. As goes for the post-56 terror in Hungary - something I'd known about but only felt when reading Esterhazy digress into a very vivid description of its prison cell- and prisoner camp-torture in one of his novels.

Many of the films and books from Central Europe that have become well-known portraits of what communism was like, focus on the post-1960 times of stagnation and petty police states. They feature boorish policemen, intellectuals who are not allowed to publish, petty intimidation, a writer who is forced to be a garbage man. That kind of thing. At worst (another eye-opener): the Lithuanian photographer Vitas Luckus, who was driven to suicide by random "burglars", men who beat him up in side-alleys, and, of course, perpetual isolation of his photographer's work. But still, Saddam material it is not.

This was. Here was an image of utter death and torture and violence, of no lesser extent than that of 1937 Moscow. And all because the guy had put up a poster for the wrong party ... at a time when the new authorities still purported to strive for a democratic arrangement.

Another thing it was an eye-opener on - though not the first one, for it sometimes takes a succession of eye-openers to drive a point home with you - was the place of the nameless small-time political prisoners in the Communist history of Central Europe.

When we think of persecution we think of Vaclav Havel, Arpad Goencz and other liberal, intellectual giants. People focus on the fate of Imre Nagy. But there were so many "small guys" - people who didnt have the literary fame that saved renowned dissidents from fates worse than not being published and not being allowed to live in the capital. They weren't Party defectors, they werent interviewed by visiting progressive journalists from the West. They were tailors, steelworkers or bookkeepers and had considered the communists a scourge from the start. And at some point in time they made the mistake of standing up to them, in whichever small way, whether in '46, '48, '53 or '56. And they were deported, tortured and killed, without as much as a New Statesman obituary. Becoming ever more aware of them also changed my perceptions greatly, and this film was part of that.

Well, certainly Rohmer and Almodovar and Kieslowski, my current favorites -- hard to choose among them.

In addition to Night of the Shooting Stars I'd recommend Tree of the Wooden Clogs.

Would agree wholeheartedly about Paris, Texas and Bicycle Thief, though I haven't seen the latter in years...

One which I watch over and over is the Dutch film, The Assault, in part because it takes place on familiar territory but mostly because it shows the ripple effects of war in a wonderful way. The only copy I have is dubbed -- which I really disike (though it's well-dubbed, not a hack job).

And Derzu Usala. Relationship of man and nature (to put it pretentiously). A knock-out. Made me realize who I am, what my loyalties are.

Along the same line of thought, another one that springs to mind is this Lithuanian documentary (I really dont know which one, there was a whole program of Lithuanian films on the Int'l Documentary Filmfestival Amsterdam, in '92 - and I could even be mistaken and be deriving this from "Frozen Stories" again):

it featured the story of the prisoners of a Gulag camp, and how, after Stalin's death in '53, they revolted, and actually succeeded in overpowering the guards. But then they got stuck - where could they go? Thousands of miles out into the world of ice, and with reinforcements on the way (who in the end would just hunger them out). In their desperation, they painted texts on the roofs. Because NATO jets were flying overhead, on reconnaisance flights. They painted "Help" on the roof, and more. No deliberations about wanting a "different" kind of socialism, no whining desire to be rehabilitated of the Walter Janka kind - nothing of the kind of dissidence that made it big in West-European publicity - just: you, NATO, anyone - just get us out of here. They knew.

I wish, with all the channels available, these films could be shown regularly on Tv.

Films like the ones I mentioned - you have to go to filmfestivals to catch em, even here in Europe ...

tho thats not true; they might not make it into the cinemas (not even the art house ones), but Netherlands 3, BBC 2 and the German stations show good docus sometimes, I remember. (Dont have a TV anymore, but I'm sure they still do).

A couple of our channels show film festival films but only from US film festivals.

Aha, Nimh, you and I are possibly the only people in A2K -- possibly the only people in "western civilization"! -- who have given up TV.