Fav Foreign Films.

THE GODS MUST BE CRAZY I and II. Dont know anything bout the directors. Hell, I didnt even know it was a foreign film till I looked it up.

Hello Bluxx.
Welcome to A2K!

I loved Bertolluci (sp? ) in his heyday: The Conformist (especially!), The Spider's Strategy, 1900 ...
Which foreign films do you admire?

Winter Sleepers
The Princess and The Warrior
Run Lola Run
Director: Tom Tykwer.

The Road Home
Happy Times
Not one Less
Shanghai Triad
Raise the Red Lantern
Director: Zhang Yimou

I could go on and on! I'd like to see what everybody else thinks.

Bluxx

I was mesmerised, enchanted, enthralled By Monsoon Wedding ... What a feast! It had everything!
But who was the director, I ask? I can't remember ..

Mira Nair is the director of Monsoon Wedding, I believe.

Wasn't that a wonderful film? I'd love to get the soundtrack.

The Apu Trilogy (Pather Panchali, etc.)
Wings of Desire
The Nasty Girl
Jean de Florette/Manon of the Spring
My Father's Glory/My Mother's Castle
Fanny and Alexander

There are many movies I love...
In the last years I've "discovered" more and more foreign films.

I adore Akira Kurosawa - "Ikiru" and "Rashomon" are among my all-time favourites. Of Mizuguchi I know only "Sansho The Bailiff", a great experience! And sadly I still have to find a movie of Ozu

I love French cinema. Jean Renoir ("Grand Illusion", "Rules Of The Game") and Jacques Tati ("Mr. Hulot's Holidays", "My Uncle") are my favourite classic directors, of the Nouvelle Vague I love Francois Truffaut - "The 400 Blows" and "Jules & Jim" are my favourites of him. Jean-Luc Godard never touched me, maybe I haven't seen his best movies yet...

I didn't like Fellini's "8 1/2" and "La Dolce Vita" very much, but "La Strada" became one of my favourite movies.

Of the Russians I know only Tarkovsky and Eisenstein well, Tarkovsky's "Andrej Rublev" was a great experience!

In the last few weeks I've seen my first movies of Ingmar Bergman, and "Smiles Of A Summer Night" and "The Seventh Seal" made me curious to see more. I also know severalsilent movies directed by Victor Sjöström, but only "The Outlaw And His Wife" was Swedish.

Since I am German I don't consider the German movies as foreign films, but the great silent movies like "The Golem", "The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari" or Murnau's "Faust" are among my favourite movies. But my favourite of all Germany movies is Fritz Lang's "M".

Thanks brunt, what a great selection. I think Tokyo Story might have been Ozu - thats a great movie. Kurosawa's High and Low is a great suspense thriller. You also reminded me of Bergman's Wild Strawberries, which might be in my top 10.

I really enjoy Eric Rohmer's Tales of the Four Seasons (four films) - not among the great movies, but a refreshing reminder of how different is French filmmaking from american.

All of Tarkovsky's greatest have been playing on the one great classics movie channel we have in the U.S. - they've shown Solaris, The Sacrifice, Nostalghia, and The Stalker more than once. I love them all.

And I can't forget Abel Gance's silent Napoleon, so innovative.

Some of my favorites and several already mentioned:


"Central Station"
"The 400 Blows"
"The Rules of the Game"
"Orphee"
"Beauty and the Beast"
"Night of the Shooting Stars"
"Europa, Europa"
"The Gardens of the Finzi Continis"
"Ran"
"Woman in the Dunes"
"1900"
"Wild Strawberries"
"Indochine" (a good double bill with "The Quiet American"

Grunt, I love Akira Kurosawa as well. "Seven Samurai" is a classic in my mind.

Bergmans "Faithless" is wonderful also.

I mean Brunt....right? Ooops. Sorry.

1. The Piano (Australian/NZ?)
2. Shine (Australian)
3. Crouching Tiger--Hidden Dragon(Chinese?)

The exceptional foreign film can make you think for days. The ones that have stayed with me the longest are:

"Les Parents terribles" (Jean Cocteau)
"Late Spring" (Yasujiro Ozu)
"Harp of Burma" (Kon Ichikawa)
"Children of Paradise" (Marcel Carne)

LarryBS: I share your admiration for director Ozu and enjoyed "Tokyo Story". When I saw his film "Late Spring" I thought I was the one who died and went to heaven. Those low camera angles and the figures moving about the rooms remain so fresh in my mind even though the last time I saw the film was over 15 years ago.

Lightwizard: I also think Cocteau's "Beauty and the Beast" is memorable but I give the edge to his film "Les Parents terribles" It is so difficult to even determine if one is better than the other. I guess "Parents" really spoke to me.

Relating to directors--most all of the most infuential were foreign born with some moving to the USA just before or during WWII. We are so fortunate to live in a country where just about every feature film made is available for viewing..you only have to search them out.

"Eye of the Poet" is a Cocteau film that has no story but it certainly is provocative and imaginative. "Orphee" is my favorite Cocteau but "Les Parents terribles" is also a great film. You've all mentioned others I love on this thread -- previous to "Crouching Tiger," catch that director's "The Wedding Banquet," a comedy with some extremely good characterizations.

Boy, and I thought that I had seen a lot of films, I'm going to have to write all these down!

Yes there are so many great ones, Bluxx.

Thanks couzz, I've never seen Late Spring. Have you ever seen Floating Weeds, aka Drifting Weeds (not sure who the director was)? Roger Ebert has touted this for years, I believe it is in his top ten greatest films ever, or used to be. I've never seen it on tv or in a video store.

Is it a french film?

Its Japanese, and it is an Ozu film.

Ebert's review:

Floating Weeds Ebert review

"Sooner or later, everyone who loves movies comes to Ozu. He is the quietest and gentlest of directors, the most humanistic, the most serene. But the emotions that flow through his films are strong and deep, because they reflect the things we care about the most: Parents and children, marriage or a life lived alone, illness and death, and taking care of one another.

Yasujiro Ozu was born in 1903 and died in 1963, but his films were not widely seen outside Japan until the early 1970s, because he was thought to be "too Japanese.'' He is universal; I have never heard more weeping in the audience during any movie than during his "Tokyo Story,'' which is about children who in a subtle way are too busy to pay proper attention during a visit from their parents.

It is impossible to select Ozu's best film because his work is so much of a piece, and almost always to the same high standard. His stories usually involve two generations. They are family dramas, without violence. There are few scenes where the characters vent their emotions, and some of the most important decisions are implied, not said. He is wise about the ways we balance our selfishness with the needs of others.

For me, "Floating Weeds'' (1979) is like a familiar piece of music that I can turn to for reassurance and consolation. It is so atmospheric--so evocative of a quiet fishing village during a hot and muggy summer--that it envelops me. Its characters are like neighbors. It isn't a sad story; the central character is an actor with a healthy ego, who has tried to arrange his life according to his own liking and finds to his amazement that other people have wills of their own. He is funny, wrong-headed and finally touching. . . "

Hmmm, I'll have to check that out.