People's Hero (Derek Tung-Sing Yee, 1987)

Ronald Wong, Tony Leung Chiu-wai, and Ti Lung in People's Hero

Cast: Ti Lung, Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Tony Leung Ka-fai, Elaine Jin, Paul Chun, Bowie Lam, Ronald Wong, Sabrina Ho, Benz Kong, Jessie Lee, Wing-Cho Yip, Mansook Ahmed. Screenplay: Derek Tung-Sing Yee, Keith Lee, Kwan Yiu-Wing. Cinematography: Wilson Chan. Art direction: Yank Wong. Film editing: John Ma. Music: Lowell Lo. 

The bank heist hostage movie is a thriller subgenre that reached its glory in Dog Day Afternoon (Sidney Lumet, 1975), and Derek Tung-Sing Yee's People's Hero begins almost like a remake of that classic. Two inept would-be robbers, Sai (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) and Boney (Ronald Wong), take the customers and staff of a bank hostage, immediately attracting the attention of the police. Like Lumet, Yee is as interested in the hostages and the cops as he is in the robbers. The hostages are a fractious, quarrelsome lot; the cops are hamstrung by bureaucracy. But People's Hero takes a twist almost as soon as the standoff of cops and robbers occurs: One of the hostages turns out to be a gangster, Sunny Koo (Ti Lung), who immediately takes charge, turning Sai and Boney into both hostages and accomplices. Koo is so well known to the police that he has the clout to summon an old adversary on the force, Capt. Chan (Tony Leung Ka-fai), to negotiate with. The result is an entertaining suspense thriller, more focused on characters than your usual Hong Kong action movie. The performances are stellar, particularly Lung as the masterly, cunning gangster and Elaine Jin as his girlfriend, Lotus, called on by Koo to help him make his getaway, only to show she has a mind of her own. People's Hero ends with a little more graphic bloodshed than necessary, but it's a movie with a perhaps unexpected wit and irony. 

Variety Lights (Alberto Lattuada, Federico Fellini, 1950)

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Giulietta Masina and Peppino De Filippo in Variety Lights 

Cast: Peppino De Filippo, Carla Del Poggio, Giulietta Masina, John Kitzmiller, Dante Maggio, Checco Durante, Gina Mascetti, Giulio Calì, Silvio Bagolini, Giacomo Furia, Mario De Angelis. Screenplay: Federico Fellini, Alberto Lattuada, Tullio Pinelli. Cinematography: Otello Martelli. Art direction: Aldo Buzzi. Film editing: Mario Bonotti. Music: Felice Lattuada. 

For Federico Fellini, there was no business like show business. More than almost any other major filmmaker, his movies centered on the lives of performers or directors or just would-be stars and starfuckers, people in search of a way to be larger than life. He launched his career as director with a pure example of this preoccupation, Variety Lights, co-directed with Albert Lattuada but distinctively Felliniesque. It's the story of Checco Dal Monte (Peppino De Filippo), the hapless manager of a rag-tag company of vaudevillians, who thinks he's found the way to the big time when an ambitious would-be star, Liliana (Cara Del Poggio), latches on to him after seeing the troupe perform. Initially skeptical, Checco comes round when the young woman, whose beauty exceeds her talents, wins over a raucous audience and attracts the attention of a wealthy man whose obvious aim is to seduce her. Checco's mistress, Melina (Giulietta Masina), is furious when he falls for Liliana and begins trying to promote her career. The film goes a long way on the energy of its performers, including the members of the marginally talented company, but it lacks enough story to give it coherence.  

Diamonds of the Night (Jan Nemec, 1964)

Ladislav Jánsky and Antonin Kumbera in Diamonds of the Night

Cast: Antonin Kumbera, Ladislav Jánsky, Ilse Bischofská. Screenplay: Arnost Lustig, Jan Nemec, based on a novel by Lustig. Cinematography: Jaroslav Kuchera, Miroslav Ondrícek. Production design: Oldrich Bosák. Film editing: Miroslav Hájek. Music: Vlastimil Hala, Jan Rychlik. 

Two young men escape from a Nazi transport at the start of Jan Nemec's Diamonds of the Night, and the camera follows them in a breathless run through the fields toward an uncertain destination. And in a sense that destination remains uncertain, even though they manage to cadge a hunk of bread from a woman in a farmhouse and are eventually captured by a group of old men with hunting rifles. Nemec gives us two visions of the young men's fate at the hands of their captors. His first feature film, a little over an hour, is laced with memories and ambiguous images and touches of the surreal. At its best, it's almost hyperreal. In the scene in which the old men celebrate their capture, for example, the soundtrack is filled with the slightly disgusting noises of eating as the victors scarf down their lunch. It's possible to interpret Diamonds of the Night as allegory, as a fable about escaping from Nazi terror only to end up under Soviet repression, but it stands on its own as an example of the innovative use of cinematic technique that marked the brief period of liberation experienced by Czech filmmakers in the 1960s.  

A Tale of Springtime (Éric Rohmer, 1990)

Anne Teyssèdre, Florence Darel, Hugues Quester, and Eloïse Bennett in A Tale of Springtime

Cast: Anne Teyssèdre, Florence Darel, Hugues Quester, Eloïse Bennett, Sophie Robin, Marc Lelou, François Lamore. Screenplay: Éric Rohner. Cinematography: Luc Pagès. Film editing: María Luisa García. 

Jeanne (Anne Teyssèdre) and Natacha (Florence Darel) meet at a party neither of them wants to be at, sparking a friendship that will be tested when their separate worlds collide. That's the essential dynamic of Éric Rohmer's A Tale of Springtime, the first in his quartet of Tales of the Four Seasons. Jeanne, who teaches philosophy, is several years older than Natacha, an aspiring pianist just emerging from her teens, so their relationship is something like older and younger sister. Soon, Jeanne will meet Natacha's divorced father, Igor (Hugues Quester), who is dating Ève (Eloïse Bennett), a woman Jeanne's age, who is also well-educated in philosophy. Jeanne soon realizes that she's being set up by Natacha as a rival for Ève, whom Natacha dislikes, in her father's affections. It's the kind of situation that Jane Austen would have enjoyed playing with, and Rohmer's delight in it is apparent. He has a talented cast, a lovely springtime setting, and well-chosen music -- ranging from the melancholy of Schumann's Études Symphoniques to the freshness of Beethoven's "Spring" Sonata  -- to work with, and he makes the most of it.   

Fruit of Paradise (Vera Chytilová, 1970)

Jitka Novátková and Karel Novák in Fruit of Paradise

Cast: Jitka Novátková, Karel Novák, Jan Schmid. Screenplay: Vera Chytilová, Ester Krumbachová. Cinematography: Jaroslav Kucera. Art direction: Vladimir Labsky. Film editing: Miroslav Hájek. Music: Zdenek Liska. 

Vera Chytilová's Fruit of Paradise opens with an acid-trip account of the story of Adam and Eve and the serpent, set against an oratorio-like chorus singing the biblical text set to music by Zdenek Liska. We have scarcely recovered from this prologue when we are thrust into a different kind of paradise that seems to be a health retreat, with another Eve (Jitka Novátková) offering her husband, Josef (Karel Novák), fruit plucked for the tree they're sitting under. He refuses it, but when he says he's hungry, so goes off to forage some herbs for his snack. While she's cutting them, she's almost pissed on by Robert (Jan Schmid), another guest at the spa. And so begins a loopy series of encounters in which, among other things, Eve discovers that Robert may be a serial killer. Make of it what you will, but Fruit of Paradise was Chytilová's farewell to the kind of avant-garde filmmaking that led to her being unemployed in the Czech film industry after the Soviet crackdown on art that it didn't understand but sort of felt was subversive. From our point of view, the only thing it subverts is traditional narrative and cinematic technique. No, it's not as deliciously accessible as Daisies, Chytilová's 1966 breakthrough film. It's a ragged, itchy film that tests the audience's patience while also demonstrating the potential of the motion picture as art. 

A Tale of Winter (Éric Rohmer, 1992)

Charlotte Véry and Frédéric von den Driessche in A Tale of Winter

Cast: Charlotte Véry, Frédéric von den Driessche, Michel Voletti, Hervé Furic, Ava Lorasci, Christiane Desbois. Screenplay: Éric Rohmer. Cinematography: Luc Pagès. Film editing: Mary Stephen. Music: Éric Rohmer. 

"It's not plausible," says Loīc (Hervé Furic) about Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, which he and Félicie (Charlotte Véry) have just seen. She has been brought to tears by the scene in which Hermione, thought to be dead, has returned to life after posing as a statue. Éric Rohmer is doing two things here: He's signaling to us that Loīc and Félicie are not meant for each other: He's too intellectual, she's too romantic. But he's also slyly signaling that his own A Tale of Winter is about to do something almost as implausible as Shakespeare's late romance. Five years ago, as we see in a montage, Félicie, perhaps the flightiest of Rohmer's heroines, had a summer affair with Charles (Frédéric von den Driessche), but at their parting she absent-mindedly gave him the wrong address, didn't get his own, and even neglected to find out his last name. This caused a problem when she discovered she was pregnant and gave birth to their child, Elise (Ava Loraschi). Always convinced that Charles was the true love of her life, she has never really connected with the men she met afterward, even though Loīc and Maxence (Michel Voletti), the hairdresser she works for, have fallen for her. She persists in her dream that she will find Charles again, keeping his photograph by Elise's bedside and telling the little girl that he's her father. Rohmer's Conte d'Hiver, the second in his series of Tales of the Four Seasons, is a late romance itself, made in the waning years of a career, and designed more as a fable than as a story to be taken literally. There's much talk (of course, since talk is the essence of any Rohmer film) about faith, both religious and secular. There are those who find A Tale of Winter contrived and saccharine, just as there are those who find The Winter's Tale implausible. But those who take each work on its own terms may discover their rewards.  

Prefab Story (Vera Chytilová, 1980)

Cast: Lukás Bech, Antonín Vanha, Eva Kacírková, Oldrich Navrátil, Jirí Kodet, Bronislav Poloczek, Daniela Srajerová, Milan Klásek, Ladislav Potmesil, Hana Hejduková, Petr Kratochvíl. Screenplay: Vera Chytilová, Eva Kacírová. Cinematography: Jaromir Sofr. Production design: Ales Voleman. Film editing: Jirí Brozek. Music: Jirí Sust. 

Vera Chytilová's Prefab Story (aka Panelstory or Birth of a Community) is so brilliantly made that I'm saddened that it isn't better known. The setting is a huge modern housing complex in Prague, where the apartments are being filled with eager new tenants even while construction is going on. Construction equipment plows and scrapes through the muddy site as the residents try to go about their daily business, with great crane-hoisted slabs of walls sailing high above them. Life goes on in often intersecting narratives, which Chytilová links into continuity with two characters who perambulate through the complex: a small boy (Lukás Bech) and an old man (Antonin Vanha). The boy thinks it's all a grand adventure, while the old man is the only one who seems to care about his fellow inhabitants. It's a superb mix of documentary-style footage and multiple, a humanistic satire edited with wit and given bite by a spiky, often atonal score.  

A Tale of Summer (Éric Rohmer, 1996)

Amanda Langlet and Melvil Poupaud in A Tale of Summer

Cast: Melvil Poupaud, Amanda Langlet, Gwenaëlle Simon, Aurelia Nolin, Aimé Lefèvre, Alain Guelaff, Evelyne Lahana, Yves Guérin, Franck Cabot-David. Screenplay: Éric Rohmer. Cinematography: Diane Baratier. Film editing: Mary Stephen. Music: Philippe Eidel, Éric Rohmer, Mary Stephen. 

Had we but world enough and time,

This coyness, lady, were no crime. 

We would sit down, and think which way

To walk, and pass our long love's day. 

Andrew Marvell's great carpe diem lyric "To His Coy Mistress" was probably written when Marvell was in his 30s. Éric Rohmer's carpe diem movie, A Tale of Summer (Conte d'Été, aka A Summer's Tale) was made when Rohmer was 75. Marvell heard "Time's wingéd chariot hurrying near." Rohmer was all but riding in it. This film, the third in his series of "Tale of the Four Seasons," though set in the present, is a kind of memory piece, based on Rohmer's youthful experience. It centers on Gaspard (Melvil Poupaud), a twentysomething taking a summer break before starting his career teaching mathematics, idling in a beach resort in northwestern France. He attracts the attention of Margot (Amanda Langlet), on a summer job as a waitress before continuing her work as a researcher in ethnology. They start a flirtatious friendship, taking long walks and talking about each other's love life. Gaspard is in a tenuous relationship with Léna (Aurelia Nolin), whose arrival he expects any day -- she has been traveling in Spain with her sister and some cousins. At a disco with Margot one evening, Gaspard also attracts the attention of Solène (Gwenaëlle Simon), an acquaintance of Margot's. When Léna finally arrives, he finds himself juggling the attentions of all three women. In summary it sounds like an adolescent male fantasy, but Rohmer slyly exposes the awkwardness and discomfort in Gaspard's commitment phobia and his missteps with each woman. A lovely setting and a particularly skillful performance by Langlet as the most sensible figure in this romantic quadrangle give this slight film its great charm.  

Calamity (Vera Chytilová, 1982)

Bolek Polívka in Calamity

Cast: Bolek Polívka. Dagmar Bláhovká, Jana Synková, Marie Pavliková, Jaroslava Kretschmarová, Zdenek Sverák. Screenplay: Vera Chytilová, Josef Silhavy. Cinematography: Ivan Slapeta. Production design: Bohumil Pokorny. Film editing: Jirí Brozek. Music: Laco Deczi. 

Vera Chytilová's Calamity is a loosey-goosey comedy about the misadventures of Honza Dostál (Bolek Polívka), a college dropout who has decided he wants to drive a train. And so he does eventually, while dealing with the advances of several young women. The lanky but agreeable Honza is nobody's idea of a hunk, but perhaps there was a shortage of available young men in 1980s Czechoslovakia. Eventually, the film stops being a collection of occasionally funny incidents and focuses on the titular calamity: The train Honza is driving gets buried in snow, and the movie centers on the reactions of the passengers, including several of his girlfriends, to their predicament. Chytilová, whose career had suffered after the Soviets cracked down on sassy Czech filmmakers, manages to insert some sly digs at the government bureaucracy but they lack the bite of her earlier films. It's a benign, amusing movie with one or two laugh-out-loud moments. 

Intervista (Federico Fellini, 1987)

Cast: Federico Fellini, Sergio Rubini, Antonella Ponziani, Maurizio Mein, Paola Liguori, Lara Wendel, Antonio Cantafora, Nadia Ottaviani, Marcello Mastroianni, Anita Ekberg, Mario Miyakawa. Screenplay: Federico Fellini, Gianfranco Angelucci. Cinematography: Tonino Delli Colli. Production design: Danilo Donati. Film editing: Nino Baragli. Music: Nicola Pionvani. 

Federico Fellini is a colorful hodgepodge of Fellinian themes, a kind of nesting doll movie in which several stories reside within one another. There's the interview itself, by a Japanese television crew, which frames a story about Fellini and his career, which frames stories about Fellini's early days at Cinecittà, the process of casting for his movies, his aborted plans to film Franz Kafka's Amerika, and the highlights of his career. The last culminates in the reunion of Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg along with clips from the Trevi Fountain scene in La Dolce Vita (1960). Like many of Fellini's films, it's a memory piece, part humorous, part regretful. It succeeds as a movie about movies, but never emerges from its self-reflectiveness into anything more substantial, the way his great movie about movies, 8 1/2 (1963) does.