The Honeymoon Killers (Leonard Kastle, 1970)

Shirley Stoler and Tony Lo Bianco in The Honeymoon Killers

Cast: Shirley Stoler, Tony Lo Bianco, Mary Jane Higby, Doris Roberts, Kip McArdle, Marilyn Chris, Dortha Duckworth, Barbara Cason, Ann Harris, Mary Breen. Screenplay: Leonard Kastle. Cinematography: Oliver Wood. Film editing: Richard Brophy, Stanley Warnow. Music: excerpts from Symphonies No. 5, 6, and 9 by Gustav Mahler. 

The Honeymoon Killers was Leonard Kastle's only outing as a director and it shows. Some scenes are framed badly, lopping off characters' heads or bodies, and many of the performers, actors never to be seen again, are awkward and wooden. The set decor is thrift-store cheap, the sound is often tinny, and the music cues hacked out of Mahler symphonies are jarring. It's easy to laugh at the opening title, which hammers home the message that what you're about to see is shocking. But at some point I stopped laughing. It's an undeniably effective movie perhaps because its low-budget cheesiness feels appropriate to the subject matter: a mismatched pair of con artists who prowl American suburbia in search of lonely women whom they can fleece for their sometimes paltry savings. Martha (Shirley Stoler) and Ray (Tony Lo Bianco) squabble and reconcile as they go about their spree of originally unintended murders. The director first hired for the movie was the young Martin Scorsese, who was fired for being too slow. Scorsese, who at that point had made only one feature, Who's That Knocking at My Door (1967), later admitted that the firing was probably justified. You have to wonder what the movie would be like if Scorsese decided to remake it today and if it would be nearly so sleazily effective. The Honeymoon Killers will never be what François Truffaut called it, "my favorite American film," but it's in some way an essential one.     

Two Prosecutors (Sergei Loznitsa, 2025)

Aleksandr Kuznetsov in Two Prosecutors

Cast: Aleksandr Kuznetsov, Aleksandr Filippenko, Anatoliy Beliy, Andris Keiss, Vytautus Kaniusonus, Nerijus Gadliauska, Valentin Novopolskij, Demitrijus Denisiukas. Screenplay: Sergei Loznitsa, based on a novel by Georgy Demidov. Cinematography: Oleg Mutu. Production design: Yuriy Grigorovich, Aldis Meinerts. Film editing: Danielius Kokanauskis. Music: Christiaan Verbeek. 

Sergei Loznitsa's Two Prosecutors is a movie that makes you wait, an ordinarily boring experience that gets its mounting suspense from the awareness of its setting: the Soviet Union in 1937, the era of murder and torture and imprisonment as Stalin consolidated his power. The man who waits is Kornyev (Alexsandr Kuznetsov), a young lawyer who is sent to interview a prisoner. Kornyev is led through a labyrinthine series of doors that are unlocked and locked behind him, just to see a prison official who makes him wait until he can see the prison governor, who also makes him wait as he provides a number of reasons why Kornyev shouldn't see the prisoner. Finally, he is led through another labyrinth of unlocked and locked doors to Stepniak (Aleksandr Filippenko), a hunched and haunted man who shows Kornyev his scars and tells his harrowing tale. It's hard not to breathe a sigh of relief once Kornyev is out of this awful place. But then he goes to another awful place, another kind of labyrinth, a Moscow government office building swarming with people on the business of bureaucracy. There he waits and waits again to put Stepniak's case before the Soviet procurator general, Andrey Vyshinsky, now known to history as the man who made Stalin's purge trials work, encouraging any means necessary to extract confessions from the accused. Vishinsky is played with a chilling narrow-eyed stare by Anatoliy Beliy, and though he assures Kornyev that justice will be done in Stepniak's case, we know what that means. We also know that Kornyev is doomed for even suggesting that Stepniak's charges against the NKVD, the Soviet secret police, might be valid. From there on, it's just a matter of watching Kornyev's fate play out. Two Prosecutors is not a subtle film, but it gathers great power from the performers, especially Filippenko, who plays not only Stepniak but also an aging war veteran with one arm and a wooden leg, whom Kornyev meets on the train in a scene that serves as a kind of black comedy interlude. It's also superbly filmed by Oleg Mutu, using the Academy aspect ratio to add to the claustrophobic feeling that Kornyev is caught in a trap not of his own making. As for any application to current political trends toward authoritarianism, that's up to the viewer. 

May Fools (Louis Malle, 1990)

Cast: Michel Piccoli, Miou-Miou, Michel Duchassoy, Bruno Carette, François Berléand, Dominique Blanc, Valérie Lemercier, Paulette Dubost, Martine Gautier, Rozenne Le Tallec, Jeanne Herry, Renaud Danner, Marcel Bories. Screenplay: Louis Malle, Jean-Claude Carrière. Cinematography: Renato Berta. Production design: Willy Holt, Philippe Turlure. Film editing: Emmanuelle Castro. Music: Stephane Grappelli. 

The matriarch of a large French family dies at an inconvenient time: It's May 1968 and France is in turmoil caused by student riots in Paris and sympathy strikes throughout the country. Gradually the Vieuzac family gathers at the estate, ostensibly to mourn but largely to figure out how to divide things up among themselves. Milou (Michel Piccoli), who has lived there with his mother in a life of pleasant idleness, is adamant about not leaving, while the rest of the family is eager to sell the place and take the profits. The resultant squabbling occurs against the background of a country at odds with itself. Louis Malle co-scripted May Fools with Jean-Claude Carrière, who took an earlier satiric look at the middle class in crisis with his screenplay for Luis Buñuel's The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972). Malle's richly characterized and deftly performed film has some of the satiric edge of Buñuel's without its surreal touches, edging toward the farcical, with its darker moments lightened by the buoyant jazz score of Stephane Grappelli. 

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.