NinadeL

A Dutch detective drama about a diver's revenge that did well years ago is doing well again today with the same generation of viewers who gravitated to it then. This is another "phenomenon" that passed me by, but it was interesting to have another dose of hits following a different pattern. In the 1990s, the film was a trip to the future, which soon caught up with us, along with all the manifestations of Western consumerism.

A very interesting Indian version of Godfather with Bachchan and Bachchan. It features excellent filmmaking fetishizing all shades of beige.... The atmosphere is only dragged down by Swami's perpetual sneers and the overly frequent switching to English, which could have been more subdued in such an environment. The plot manages to draw audiences in despite various clichés, and I would credit the purposefulness of the OST to the whole narrative style. I was also looking forward to the sequel with Aishwarya Rai Bachchan for a long time and it paid off. I can honestly recommend both films, one being better than the other. In retrospect, I also consider the supporting roles for Katrina Kaif to be a breakout.

This is a film with value only for nostalgics and fans of thematic genre films. It’s nothing for me, and it stars a piddle-eyed little mop with a snake tattooed on her belly. Basically, this is a film frozen in time.

This is the long-missed second film with Romy Schneider and her first with the likable Lili Palmer, with whom she remarkably co-starred in the remake of Girls in Uniform four years later. It's a delightful story set against a circus backdrop. Romy acted for the first time without her mother, but at the same time, she adopted her name Schneider for the film for the first time and forever, thus suppressing the Albach-Retty branch of herself. She wrote in her diary that she got her first real kiss in this film. And as sincere as this still childlike experience is, so is her performance throughout the film. It was just her luck that she didn't want to go over the border back then. ;)

A fairy-tale story produced by Carlo Ponti with Sophia Loren and Omar Sharif. Sadly, the only thing that is not cliché is the interesting casting of aging Mexican legend Dolores Del Rio as the Queen Mother.

This is all about Italian smallness delivered with grace on the big screen by an established couple who have become Italy above all else.

From a historical point of view, Přemysl Pražský's only foray into sound film direction is one of the most interesting things that can be used to demonstrate the continuity of the two eras. From a formal point of view, Pražský merely mechanically replaced the dialogue between the credits and otherwise worked in the same way the was common three or four years prior to that. It is spicy to accept a film that normally uses framing of details and thus shows faces that have not come into contact with silent cinema (Baarová, Novotný, Eliáš...). At the same time, it gives the more experienced a chance to work in a double way (Gruss, Rogoz, and especially the great J. W. Speerger). The action story itself, set in the mountains, is interestingly associated with similarly situated storylines set in the mountains. Moreover, the theme of scouts and spies in the Czech environment is always fresh and unorthodox.

This is another piece of the puzzle in my private study of the eternally ungrateful Romy Schneider's film career. In this solo by Marcello Mastroianni, Romy did an interesting job with her own transformation in a double time frame, and so the credit for her performance actually goes to the make-up team. Indeed, Marcello's discovery of the truth and his internal commentaries on the simple plot are the main dominating feature and, together with Riz Ortolani's music, are the best parts of the film. What does it matter that Schneider played a ghost so close to her own death? That would be quite a different story.

There is nothing to disappoint or delight us in this film and you simply either like this kind of humor or you don't. I belong to the latter group. This crazy 1960s film, led by the non-actress Andress and Schneider, who is desperately trying to fit in, is a complete waste of time. The gags feel like they are from an animated cartoon glued together with the comedy of Allen and Sellers.

This is Romy Schneider's first black-and-white film, her only one with Hans Albers, and thirdly a very bad remake of the famous (and excellent) film by Murnau and Jannings. The film is popular in France under the title Mon Premier Amour.