Black Moon (Louis Malle, 1975)

Cathryn Harrison and Joe Dallesandro in Black Moon

Cast: Cathryn Harrison, Therese Giehse, Alexandra Stewart, Joe Dallesandro. Screenplay: Louis Malle, Joyce Buñuel. Cinematography: Sven Nykvist. Art direction: Ghislain Uhry. Film editing: Suzanne Baron. 

"Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas -- only I don't exactly know what they are!" exclaimed Alice after reading "Jabberwocky." The Alice of Malle's fever dream movie Black Moon is called Lily, and she's played by the teenage Cathryn Harrison, the granddaughter of Rex Harrison. When we first see her she's driving a car along a highway, wearing a man's hat, which we soon discover is a form of disguise. A war is taking place that appears to be waged between men and women. When she is stopped at a checkpoint where a group of male soldiers is executing female prisoners, her identity is uncovered and she flees across country as her car is riddled with bullets. Eventually, she finds refuge at a remote farmhouse, but not before she sees a unicorn. Not the splendid white horse of tapestries and tales, mind you, but a fat old pony with the requisite horn thrusting from its forehead. The farmhouse, she will discover, is inhabited by a bedridden old woman (Therese Giehse) and a young man (Joe Dallesandro) and woman (Alexandra Stewart), as well as a pack of naked children who chase a large pig around the grounds. The man and woman, she will discover in a telepathic fashion, are both named Lily, too. More summary at this point is unnecessary as well as impossible. As Lewis Carroll observes, Alice "didn't like to confess, even to herself, that she couldn't make it out at all." If you're like that after seeing Black Moon, don't feel bad. It's probably not for you anyway.  

Captain Conan (Bertrand Tavernier, 1996)

Philippe Torreton in Captain Conan

Cast: Philippe Torreton, Samuel Le Bihan, Bernard Le Coq, Catherine Rich, François Berléand, Claude Rich, André Falcon, Claude Brosset, Crina Muresan, Cécile Vassort, François Levantal, Pierre Val. Screenplay: Jean Cosmos, Bertrand Tavernier, based on a novel by Roger Vercel. Cinematography: Alain Choquart. Production design: Guy-Claude François. Film editing: Luce Grunenwaldt. Music: Oswald d'Andrea. 

Wars don't end neatly, as we should know by now. In Bertrand Tavernier's Captain Conan the armistice ending World War I has been signed, but for the French soldiers in Eastern Europe, it hasn't made much difference. For one thing, the Russian civil war following the Bolshevik revolution is still raging, and for the French government and its allies that means the threat of incursions into the Balkans. So a group of French special forces trained in hand-to-hand guerrilla combat, led by Lt. Conan (Philippe Torreton), is sent to Romania. But the group is made up of a lot of rough types with criminal backgrounds, and Conan is hard-pressed to keep them in line. When the military starts trying to enforce discipline with courts martial, a young officer named Norbert (Samuel Le Bihan) is put in charge of trying the offenders even though his background isn't in law but in the academic study of literature. Conan and Norbert join in an odd couple relationship as they try to take a middle ground between by-the-book military justice and a humane view of the offenders. Tavernier's film mixes action and questions of wartime morality in a rich, thoughtful fashion. It's anchored by the charismatic performance of Torreton and the contrastingly quiet one of Le Bihan.   

Farewell My Love (Youssef Chahine, 1956)

Shadia and Farid Al-Atrash in Farewell My Love

Cast: Farid Al-Atrash, Shadia, Abdel Salam El-Nabulsi, Ahmed Ramzy, Tawfik El Deken, El Sayed Bedeir, Reyad El Kasabgy, Zeinat Elwy, Thoraya Helmy, Adly Kasseb. Screenplay: El Sayed Bedeir, Abul Suood El-Ibyari, Mahmoud Fahmy Ibrahim, Abdel Aziz Salam. Cinematography: Ahmed Khorshed. Film editing: Hussein Afifi. Music: Farid Al-Atrash. 

Youssef Chahine's Farewell My Love takes place in a convalescent ward of a naval hospital in Egypt, where a boisterous group of sailors is recovering from a variety of illnesses under the watchful eye of a pretty nurse, Horreya (Shadia). One day, a new patient, Ahmad Yosry (Farid Al-Atrash), is brought to the ward to recover from kidney surgery. Ahmad doesn't know that he's dying, but Horreya does, and she tells the other patients, cautioning them not to reveal the truth. Ahmad at first is surly and just wants to be left alone, but eventually the others in the ward win him over, especially when they find out that he's a good singer -- just right for the musical show they're planning. Ahmad and Horreya fall in love, too, after a scene in which another patient tries to teach Ahmad how to flirt with her, with comic results. They sing a few love songs, and he makes a big hit in a musical number that's a patriotic salute to Egypt under the rule of Nasser. But then Ahmad finds out that he's dying, and he's furious that Shadia and his friends in the ward have known it all along. You've seen the movies in which the lead character thinks he's dying, but it turns out there was a mixup in the lab and he's healthy, or a medical breakthrough occurs at the last moment. But this time what started out to be a romantic comedy with some songs and antics thrown in takes another direction. One of the formative films in Chahine's career, Farewell My Love turns into a cinematic anomaly: a feel-bad musical. It's one of the oddest movies I've seen, and not just because of the usual cultural dissonance that sets in when you watch a film made in another language and country. It's because so much of it is familiar to me from Hollywood movies, and when it departs from their conventions and tropes it does so radically, even disastrously.

The Judge and the Assassin (Bertrand Tavernier, 1976)

Michel Galabru and Philippe Noiret in The Judge and the Assassin

Cast: Philippe Noiret, Michel Galabru, Isabelle Huppert, Jean-Claude Brialy, Renée Faure, Cécile Vassort, Jean-Roger Caussimon, Jean Bretonnière, François Dyrek, Monique Chaumette, Yves Robert. Screenplay: Jean Aurenche, Bertrand Tavernier, Pierre Bost. Cinematography: Pierre-William Glenn. Production design: Antoine Roman. Film editing: Armand Psenny. Music: Philippe Sarde. 

A serial killer has been prowling the French countryside, but when he is finally captured, the judge in charge of the case is less interested in justice than in milking the sensational crimes as a means to his own glory and advancement. That's the essence of Bertrand Tavernier's The Judge and the Assassin, a colorful historical drama based on events that actually took place in the last decade of the 19th century. The standout performer is Michel Galabru as Joseph Bouvier, an army veteran obsessed with a young woman named Louise (Cécile Vassort), whom he attempts to kill before turning the gun on himself. Both survive, but Bouvier is sent to a mental asylum -- and then deinstitutionalized, whereupon he begins his tour of the countryside, raping and killing young victims. Eventually he's brought before Émile Rousseau (Philippe Noiret), a judge who sees an opportunity to make a name for himself in a country already in a frenzy over the Dreyfus Affair. Rousseau lives with his mother, slyly played by Renée Faure, who has a wonderful scene in which the sweet old lady reads out the gruesome particulars of Bouier's violent sex crimes. He also has a mistress, Rose, played by the young Isabelle Huppert. Tavernier spends more time with these secondary characters than is absolutely necessary, but they give some depth to the characterization of the judge. The film doesn't quite make its mark as a commentary on the way justice is undermined by human greed and deviousness, and it ends a touch too didactically. But Tavernier succeeds at handsomely blending a brutal story, splendid performances, and ironically lovely views of the rural French landscape.

Lady of the Train (Youssef Chahine, 1952)

Laila Mourad and Yehia Chahine in Lady of the Train

Cast: Laila Mourad, Yehia Chahine, Emad Hamdy, Serag Mounir, Zeinab Sedky, Saïd Abu Bakr, Aziza Helmy, Sanaa Gamil, Ferdoos Mohamed, Thuraya Faknry, Abdel Aziz Hamad. Screenplay: Youssef Chahine, Nairuz Abdel Malek. Cinematography: Mahmoud Nasr. Film editing: Kamad Abul Ela. Music: Ibrahim Haggag. 

Youssef Chahine's fourth feature film, Lady of the Train, is a musical melodrama that starts out like a film noir. Laila Mourad plays a famous singer married to a compulsive gambler played by Yehia Chahine, the director's cousin. When he gambles away the family fortune, she boards a train for a concert date, and is thought to be dead when the train crashes. Learning that she survived the crash, he persuades her to go in hiding so he can collect her life insurance. When his scheme threatens to be revealed, he disappears, leaving her to fend for herself and taking their young daughter with him. Twenty years pass, as an awkwardly inserted voiceover tells us. The daughter grows up to look exactly like her mother (and is played by Mourad, of course). The usual reconciliation soap operatics ensue. Chahine uses some sophisticated filmmaking techniques to make this nonsense work, though they sometimes contrast almost comically with the film's naïve narrative and cost-cutting effects. The crucial train crash, for example, features an obvious model train, and the sets for the musical numbers, which include a tribute to the Egyptian textile industry, are sometimes cheesy. In one scene, set in an office, a picture on the wall has been crudely blotted out, leaving a jittery, fluttering patch in the background behind the characters. It was apparently a portrait of King Farouk, who fell from power in 1952 while the movie was being made. Lady of the Train is an entertaining mess, but it's full of the promise that Chahine would fulfill a few years later.   

Death Watch (Bertrand Tavernier, 1980)

Harvey Keitel and Romy Schneider in Death Watch

Cast: Romy Schneider, Harvey Keitel, Harry Dean Stanton, Thérèse Liotard, Max von Sydow, Caroline Langrishe, William Russell, Vadim Glowna, Eva Maria Meineke, Bernhard Wicki. Screenplay: David Rayfiel, Bertrand Tavernier, based on a novel by David Compton. Cinematography: Pierre-William Glenn. Production design: Anthony Pratt. Film editing: Michael Ellis, Armand Psenny. Music: Antoine Duhamel. 

Bertrand Tavernier's Death Watch takes place in a future in which death from disease has become so rare that it's not just newsworthy, it's a commercial opportunity. That is, it attracts those who would cash in on the voyeurism of reality television. Watching people die has become as popular as watching wealthy housewives squabble is today. This leads TV producer Vincent Ferriman (Harry Dean Stanton) to try to persuade Katherine Mortenhoe (Romy Schneider), who has been told that she's dying from an incurable disease, to let him document her last days. Ferriman has a secret gimmick: He has persuaded Roddy (Harvey Keitel), a cameraman, to undergo an experimental procedure that turns his own eyes into cameras that broadcast whatever he sees to Ferriman's studio. Roddy is supposed to follow Katherine wherever she goes as she's dying. Katherine wants no part of Ferriman's plan at first, but eventually she pretends to go along with it, planning to escape. You guessed it: She doesn't know about Roddy's augmentation, and when she thinks she has given Ferriman the slip, hiding out in a slummy part of the city and disguising herself, Roddy seeks her out and befriends her, secretly transmitting her experiences back to the studio. It's an ingenious setup for a story that takes some predictable courses -- yes, Katherine and Roddy fall into something like love -- but also has a few surprising and even poignant twists. Tavernier's film gets its texture from the tension between its futuristic story and its setting, a mundane urban environment that could be almost any era in the past hundred or so years. Even its international cast provides a sense of universality to the film. Like most good science fiction, it's really about the present more than the future,

My One and Only Love (Youssef Chahine, 1957)

Farid El-Atrash and Hind Rostom in My One and Only Love

Cast: Shadia, Farid El-Atrash, Hind Rostom, Abdel Salam El-Nabulsi, Mimi Shakib, Seraj Munir, Abdel Aziz Ahmad, Zinat Sidqi. Screenplay: Abul-Suood El-Ibyari. Cinematography: Ahmed Khrshed. Music: Farid El-Atrash. 

Youssef Chahine's musical romantic farce My One and Only Love (aka Inta Habibi) is an Egyptian equivalent of the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers movies like The Gay Divorcee (Mark Sandrich, 1934), screwball comedies that burst into song. Two initially mismatched people, in this case Yasmine (Shadia) and Farid (Farid El-Atrash), go through a series of misadventures before they finally realize they love each other. Farid has a belly dancing girlfriend, Nana (the comically voluptuous Hind Rostom), and Yasmine has her heart set on a would-be oil millionaire, Semsem (Abdel Salam El-Nabulsi). But they're forced by their families to wed each other because they've been left a substantial legacy on the condition that they do so. After much ado, they decide to marry, collect the fortune, and go their separate ways after a divorce. Much more ado and quite a few songs follow before the inevitable happens. The movie was probably inspired and shaped by Chahine's stay in Hollywood. The character of Semsem has the earmarks of the role Ralph Bellamy used to play: the fiancé who gets dumped. And Farid has a comic sidekick, Shalabi (Abdel Aziz Ahmad), in the manner of Edward Everett Horton. In short, good noisy fun.  

Pillion (Harry Lighton, 2025)

Alexander Skarsgård and Harry Melling in Pillion

Cast: Harry Melling, Alexander Skarsgård, Douglas Hodge, Lesley Sharpe, Jake Shears, Mat Hill, Nick Figgis, Zoe Engerer, Jake Sharp, Jacob Carter. Screenplay: Harry Lighton, based on a novel by Adam Mars-Jones. Cinematography: Nick Morris. Production design: Francesca Massariol. Film editing: Gareth C. Scales. Music: Oliver Coates. 

A god beckons. A lowly mortal obeys and is rewarded. But what happens if the mortal wants more from the god than he is willing to give? What happens when he rebels against the god? That's usually called hubris. When Marsyas, for example, challenged Apollo, he wound up being flayed alive. The fate of Colin (Harry Melling), the lowly mortal who challenges the godlike Ray (Alexander Skarsgård) in Harry Lighton's Pillion is painful but not so dire. Ray and Colin meet in a bar, have sex in an alley, and begin a sadomasochistic relationship. Colin remains a very human figure, a homely man who lives with his parents, sings in a barbershop quartet, and works as a parking garage attendant. Ray retains his godlike character: We never learn where he comes from or what he does for a living when he isn't cruising with his pack of gay biker buddies, each of whom has his own sub who rides pillion and does their bidding. The one person who dares to question who Ray really is, Colin's mother, dies. Lighton finds a wonderfully satisfying middle ground between mythic tale and gay porn in telling this story.  It's a provocative film that transcends sensationalism, reminding me of some of D.H. Lawrence's explorations of the mysteries of sex.

A Week's Vacation (Bertrand Tavernier, 1980)

Michel Galabru and Nathalie Baye in A Week's Vacation

Cast: Nathalie Baye, Gérard Lanvin, Flore Fitzgerald, Michel Galabru, Jean Dasté, Marie-Louise Ebeli, Philippe Delague, Geneviève Vauzeilles, Philippe Léotard, Philippe Noiret, Jean-Claude Durand. Screenplay: Bertrand Tavernier, Colo Tavernier, Marie-François Hans. Cinematography: Pierre-William Glenn. Production design: Jean-Baptiste Poirot. Film editing: Armand Psenny. Music: Pierre Papadiamandis. 

Laurence (Nathalie Baye) is 31, just the right age for burnout and a mid-life crisis to set in. It happens as her boyfriend, Pierre (Gérard Lanvin), is driving her to her job as a schoolteacher. Something about the routine, and perhaps Pierre's rough, quippy manner, suddenly hits her the wrong way, and she bolts from the car. She winds up at the doctor, who tells her to take a break. So for the next week, Laurence takes some time off, in a kind of staycation, to reflect on her job, her relationship with Pierre, and her aging parents. But it's not that easy to take a vacation from any of them. She still lives with Pierre, she has homework to grade before her scheduled return, and encounters with her students and their parents intrude. She becomes more involved with one parent in particular, Mancheron (Michel Galabru), the proprietor of a small cafe who is concerned about his son. Bertrand Tavernier's lovely, low-key film follows Laurence through the week, sometimes with flashbacks, and while it ends with her acceptance of life as it is, we feel that she has become stronger. Baye is marvelous in the role, and Tavernier maintains a delicate balance of sadness and comedy throughout. 

Return of the Prodigal Son (Youssef Chahine, 1978)

Cast: Shoukry Sarhan, Ahmad Mehrez, Hasham Selim, Majida El Roumi, Souheir El Moshdy, Huda Sultan, Mahmoud el-Meliguy. Screenplay: Salah Jahine, Farouk Beloufa, Youssef Chahine. Cinematography: Abdel Aziz Fahmy. Film editing: Rashida Abdel Salam. Music: Hassan Abouzeid, songs: Salah Jahine. 

A family serves as a microcosm of Egypt's political and social crises in Youssef Chahine's Return of the Prodigal Son. The prodigal son of the title is Ali (Ahmad Mehrez), who returns to his family after a 12-year absence, his experience in the larger world much sought after by the dysfunctional community he left behind under the leadership of his ruthless older brother, Tolba (Shoukry Sarhan). It's a melodrama with striking shifts in tone, some of them created by interpolated musical numbers. These give the film a hopeful lift when the social and personal problems overwhelm its characters, particularly the two young people, Ibrahim (Hesham Selim) and Tafida (Majida El Roumi), caught in the maelstrom of family antagonisms. The film is a mixture of the actual and the symbolic that sometimes doesn't work but leaves a strong impression anyway.