Reviews

Becky marries Rawdon for his family's wealth. His father , jealous of Beck's love , disinherits him. She moves on to Lord Steyne and his money. Rawdon is arrested for his gambling debts. She cries in front of him as she leaves with the guards but rides soon after. Freed by his brother, Rawdon returns to find Lord Steyne and he beats him. Becky is abbandoned by both and she cries alone. There is no editing in this film and moving images are like different pictures related to each other

Paride arrives at the court of Troy as an ambassador. With the help of Venus (superimposed), Parie kidnaps Elena, who is at first hesitant. To get revenge, the Greeks declare war on Troy. The Trojans fall into the trap of the Greeks of the wooden horse, which is introduced into the city by breaking down the gates. The Greeks hidden in the horse set fire to the city while the others burst through the knocked down door. Paris is killed while trying desperately to escape. The multiplicity of actors and dynamic scenes anticipate the kolossal "Cabiria" (1915) and become a feature of the Italian historical film that inspires directors like Griffith in movies like "Birth of nation" (1915) and "Intolerance" (1916). The musical accompaniment is by Antonio Coppola.

After two years of college, Frankenstein discoveres the secret of life. Instead of a perfect human being , the evil in Frankenstein' s mind createsa monster. Alternate editing highlits Frankenstein looking from a lock a monster coming out of a cauldron. He gets scared of his creation, which follows him and causes him to faint repeatedly and then it disappears. The movie by Edison company is the first adaptation of the novel"Frankenstein" by Mary Shelly and it is one of the first of the gothic movies

Barsoum looks for work to feed himself on a newspaper that costs him nothing. Barsoum collects newspapers thrown by a girl by the window. A boy enters the abandoned house where the protagonist sleeps in a straw den, but is beaten by a man who surprises him as he leaves. Barsoum makes the sign of the cross and prays in front of sacred Christian images and the photo of revolution leader Saad Zaghloul. Barsoum does not find bread and is in despair. Barsoum is invited to eat with another man by a wealthy gentleman and they eat with voraciousness and hunger, to the point of raising the food from the fork to the landlord and to a girl who is at the table. "Barsoum looking for a job" is the first Egyptian movie so the director,Mohamed Bayoumi is the father of Egyptian cinema.

A little child plays on the coils of a cobra and the audience is absorbed and meditative in prayer in alternate editing. Mystic music blows up the ascending head and then returns to its place. Shree Krishna is seen by villainous Kansa who sees a column, falls asleep and when he awakens there is no more. Then he sees Krishna as a child, then as a teen, then he sees the column again. It happens for a moment and Krishna appears in two different parts at the same time and then multiply, threaten him with a spear. The divine being is condemned by the king to being crushed by an elephant, but he tames it repeatedly. He is brought back to the king, who is told that he has supernatural powers and the sentence to be thrown into a boiling cauldron, but she goes out unscathed. The king condemns him to drink a mortal potion, which changes color to the prayer of God. Indian mysticism is evident in the divine power that allows us to face the dangers with prayer.

The king is with his wife while he teaches archery to his son. At the request of the citizens the King goes out on an hunting excursion. The sage Vishwamitra achieves the help of the three powers against their will. The king keeps pulling arrows and the sage is offended and the king calms himself and gives him a sword, receiving the blessing of the sage. The king and the queen leave for abroad and entrust their son to the wise man. Phalke, the father of Indian cinema, used some members of the family as actors. In the cast, male actors played female roles, as happened in Greek tragedy. The story comes from the Indian epic written in Sanskrit: "Mahabharata"

A man tries to defend his family from the attack of Chinese boxers in revolt. A row lines up and shoots towards the camera and then towards the viewer as in the episode of "The great train robbery" by Porter.The house is under siege

A man flies on a machine that looks like a submarine and a flying bullet in an overview over Paris.

A boy wakes up with his wife and son and arrives the phone call of the mother of the ex-girlfriend, Elettra, whose tracks have been lost.A journey through erotic scenes with different angles of lights of different colors from different light sources and with different shades : excellent and innovative direction of photography of Benoit Debie that emphasizes the direction of Gaspar Noè with a psychedelic and delicate music. A jerky and jump cut editing takes the viewer into a magic lantern of love and sex, like the cinema dreamed of by the protagonist that reflects the fundamentals of the cinema of Gaspar Noè. In the first meeting, before unruliness, Murphy and Elettra speak of love as a vital and luminous essence that leads to madness. They promise to protect each other but fall into the abyss of drugs and betrayals. Murphy even when Elettra has disappeared, he imagines her with him and begs God to want to return to their first night. Unlike "Enter the void" it is a psychedelic journey not after death but in a vital past whose memory brings alive a dead present. This film is not a minor tragedy of Euripides' Elettra. It is not a minor tragedy to meet up with a woman who does not love and to live memories of love from the past.

A man cuts a girl's eye with a knife and leaves an egg yolk. This represents the opening of the vision of reality through surrealism. A boy falls from a bicycle in the street and a girl who sees him from the window comes down and kisses him. The girl brings the boy up to the house and ants come out of his hand. Outside the window a girl plays with a piece of the hand that is on the street and the policeman entrusts him with the hand that is closed in a chest. After the girl is hit. The boy in the house palpates the girl, who imagines naked and tries to repel him. The boy advances by towing two pianos with ropes with dead donkeys above and below bound priests.The girl enters another room and arrives with a counterpart of him who shoots and finds herself with a superimposed overlay near a naked woman seen from behind, who then disappears. A procession takes away his body that goes away in a very long field. The girl comes out of the room and sees a moth on the wall, then enlarged in detail, with a skull on the body. The moth, in fact, is a symbol of death just as death is not life. The soul is immortal but the body in life, in opposition to death, is characterized by a sexual drive. The girl is makeup and the makeup ends up on the sealed mouth of the other: in love, the one leaves the sign on the other, even with gestures and silences. By the sea, the girl meets the boy who kisses with passion. They walk on the beach holding hands. Time later, in spring they are half buried without showing signs of life: the erotic pulsation is a starting point for the love bond, but if one of these two elements is missing, the couple is half buried and immobilized. Bunuel realized this movie with the painter Salvador Dalì.

A woman is hiding with her lover in the bushes. The horse of the carriage of a promised husband, on the day of his marriage, eats her hat. The girl wants her hat to the point of fainting continually supported by the young man, to whom the lady's husband orders to find another identical Italian hat, threatening to break everything. The lover begins to break a statuette as a warning. At the wedding, the groom goes away to buy the hat followed by the bride's father, who takes away the young man who can find out where you can buy that type of hat. Among the wedding gifts there is a hat coming from Florence. The escapes and the pursuits, in addition to referring to the chase mechanisms of the first comic cinema of Sennett, Chaplin and Keaton, break the logic of the places in Dadaist style.

Two prisoners agree with the wink to escape from the prison. During the escape, one is stopped and the other manages to escape, becoming an affirmed businessman. When his friend goes out of prison, he finds him in the industry and, winking, they happily resume their friendship. The entrepreneur is recognized and threatened by other former prison mates, who want their share. The businessman tries to cancel a trial, but they have more than one, so he closes them in a room in his house. By mistake the friend opens the door and the bandits come out warning the police. After a general pantomime set in the industry, the two friends run away without anything embraced but happy with the value of friendship and freedom, which is at the center of the song: "For us, freedom".

René Clair and Erik Satie jump near a cannon which is aimed at the spectator and fires a cannon shot. Followed by images from all angles, of all framing cuts juxtaposed in Dadaist style, so with the rejection of a logic. The superimposition of eyes on the sea in an inverse image to reality stands out. Against all expectations, the participants in a funeral procession begin to jump behind a camel-driven hearse. The cart comes off and everyone tries to chase him until the coffin falls to the ground, the dead comes out and makes the coffin disappear with the magic wand and all vanish, taking up some tricks of Meliès. René Clair passes through the sign of the end, falls to the ground, receives a kick and returns back.

The detail of a mouth, rotating mechanical objects, a girl who goes on a swing in a reverse frame to reality. Human movement is camouflaged in mechanics and imitates cumbersome movements. The forms are alchemically mutated and broken by subversive geometries. The flow of the frames as in a "mechanical Ballet" is the leitmotiv (recurring motif of formal union). All these elements, considering in particular the figure decomposed in cubes with moving stick, create a filmic equivalent of the pictorial movement of Cubism and Cubofuturism.

Geometries of flammable spun threads where those who want to affirm justice get a crown of thorns and with a vision blurred by blood and sweat they look for the road to an identity towards good far from evil. The taste for evil of Costello resumes the fascination of the criminals of the films of Melville of the years' 50 of 1900. The infiltrators hold to an identity card in the good that is overwhelmed by the evil that they do to clear and protect own identity.

The young Allan Gray studies the devil worship and vampires. Preoccupied with superstition of the century past, he becomes a dreamer whom the line between the real and the supernatural become blurred. He wanders every night late without a destination to a reclude inn by the river in a village called Courtempierre. In detail, the light of a candle illuminates a macabre picture with skeletons. It is an eerie moonlight night. Light , shadow , voices and faces seem to take on hidden meaning. Allan Gray feels a sinister force descend upon him. The door opens and another gentleman enters, leaving a letter to him to be opened at his death . Allan thinks that a soul of mortal distress was crying for help and a voice told him to answer that call. He follows a shadow of a soldier until he meets the real soldier on an attic whose shadow dissociates and moves differently. On the attic the shadows dance and an orchestra plays. Another man arrives and asks if he has heard the sound although there is nobody. Allan comes out and enters a lady; upon her arrival, accompanied by the man, the skulls animate and move. He follows the fleeting shadows and came to a large estate where he lives the man who appeared at the inn to bring him the letter .The old mysterious man does not feel well and dies. In this gothic movie the acting highlights the expression of the feelings of the actors in a different way compared to the extreme gestural exasperation of the German Expressionism. At the death of the mysterious man, Allan opens the letter that is a book called: " The strange history of vampires". A sick girl goes out and is found unconscious on the ground outside the estate. In a close-up the girl is in a suffering between onirism and physicality and grinds teeth for bloodlust. The doctor arrives and finds the vampire girl in serious condition because she needs blood. The boy offers her his blood and soon faint. In the dream he has a nightmare where a skeleton offers him a small bottle of blood. Camera movements, carts and alternate editing show the rooms and objects of the mysterious house. From the outside of the estate the shadow of Allan awakes and enters the house and finds his body in a coffin. Allan 's head is visible through a glass of the coffin and an alternate editing correlates the image of the estate from all angles. Allan is dead because the "glass" of his metaphysical distorted vision of reality. The servant reading the book discovers the truth and sticks a stake in the heart of the old vampire, so that Allan recovers and moves away on a boat with the girl who is no longer a vampire. This is one of Dreyer's first sound films.

Giovanna is taken to the Inquisition court. Her close-up is worried and pious at the same time. Giovanna in the close-up begins to cry. Then while she claims to be sent by God and the English will be driven out of France, the close-up takes a lateral angle, more painful and sharp as a knife that hits the viewer's heart. The editing alternates impassive close-ups of the inquisitors and the juxtaposition of Giovanna's close-up with the close-up close-up of a guard, which appears zoomed in his terrible look in the car: this is particularly disruptive. The process continues and Giovanna's eyes are estranged as if she were looking at angels and saints for whose vision she is also accused. After the accusation of blasphemy continues to pray in ecstasy as "The ecstasy of Santa Cecilia" by Bernini. A friar thinks that Giovanna is a saint, but is taken away by the soldiers. Giovanna sees a cross in the shadow and feels comforted. She is not considered a daughter of God but a daughter of the devil and is sentenced to torture. Giovanna D 'Arco says that even if she dies she will not deny anything. The eyes are twisted by terror in front of the torture wheel and faint. Giovanna is taken to a bed where they are bleeding. Giovanna feels that she is about to die and asks to be buried in a consecrated area. Giovanna says it is not true that she was sent by the devil but that they were sent to make her suffer. In a close-up, Giovanna turns her head in this ascetic and suffering moment and a quick, alternate editing correlates her with close-ups and details of the inquisitors, like their mouth whose words depend Giovanna's life. Giovanna suffers the final sentence while an image of a worm coming out of a skull in the common grave contrasts with the intensity of her close-up. Giovanna embraces death and on the gallows says she accepts death with a good heart. Giovanna burns at the stake while devoted ladies cry in a series of close-ups. The crowd rebels against burning a saint and the soldiers attack the people, who flee in an alternation of close-ups, filming from the top of the crowd that escapes attacked by soldiers and the silhouette of Giovanna burning on the stake.

Governmental rhythms dilated in comparison with tight rhythms of action that become more and more dynamic. Anti-narcotics shoot on the home of drug traffickers who are not inside; women and children also die. Jack Ryan investigates the type of weapons that lead back to US weapons and the traffickers discover through other people that the US has been attacking the home of traffickers in Colombia. Representatives connected to the narcos ask an American representative to annihilate the anti-narcos. "Everything is right or wrong," says Jack Ryan when he tries to find out who authorized the shooting. He finds out that it was the US president who authorized the CIA. Anti-narcos are isolated in communications and are massacred. Jack Ryan finds out and orders everything to be recorded. One of the infiltrators warns the captain that Ryan has discovered everything and ordered to close the satellite. The captain captures Ryan and when he understands he wants to help him he asks for a helicopter. They find a single survivor. Ryan proposes in return Felis Cortez, who wanted to do business with the US government. Another narcos bursts and kills the chief narcos and a sniper rescues Ryan from the distance and Captain Clark enters the room. They go to free the two prisoners who are in bad condition. With many difficulties they manage to escape with the helicopter. Ryan accuses the president, demonstrating for justice that he wants to attack even the highest plans of the government. A reflection on justice that is extremism to the two poles: "right or wrong" as Jack Ryan says and in this thriller there are no middle ways because any compromise is a corruption that leads to the death of other people.

On the death of his father, head of a tribe, the family secret is passed on to his two children: the smuggling of archaeological finds from the lost tombs of a dynasty of pharaohs. The brother is the first to rebel and is killed. An expedition arrives from Cairo that wants to trace the tombs. Also the other brother, Wasin, tries to rebel: he refuses to sell a precious object to a merchant, who makes him beat. Wasin reveals to the members of the expedition the location of the tombs, which are stolen. Wassin grew up in contact with the archaeological ruins and keeps them in storage. Full-field shots, a very long field, close up and in detail show the monumentality of these architectures in relation to man. Wassin thinks he can change the fate of the lost tombs, revealing the secret to the Cairo expedition, while an alternate editing shows Wasin coming down repented and upset by the ship while all the graves are carried away. "Al- mummia" is the masterpiece of Egyptian cinema.

A strong wind blows in the wheat field and Fruit details alternate with close-ups and half-lengths. One farmer says to another: " Go ahead, Simon, and after you' re dead, let me know where you are over there- in heaven or hell." For 75 years he plowed the earth with oxen. The wind blows continuously in the grain as the seasons occur on the earth. Thus one is born and dies and then becomes immortal with the spirit. The elderly farmer eats something, greets everyone, stretches himself and dies. The family mourns the dead. The film highlights the machinization of the peasants in the collectivization against the landowners(kulaks). The farmers think that when they have the cars they will take away the land. The arrival of a tractor attracts, intrigues and upsets the farmers whistling as if they were to move the oxen. The tractor stops and everyone is disappointed .After the tractor starts again and a waiting crowd is added to the group of farmers. The sun's rays filter through the clouds and the direction of the photograph highlights the shadows on people's close-ups. Vasil, a farmer, happy with the progress made with the tractor, only dances on the street until he is shot. An alternate montage highlights the close-up of dead Vasil with a long field of large clouds and close-ups of relatives shaken by his death. Numerous young sing new song for the new life of Vasil. There are no priests at the funeral and the kulak, Choma, in a very long field frame, moves with agitation in the fields, confessing that he was the one who murdered Vasil. Vasil's blood is commemorated at his funeral and he is glorified while nobody thinks of the kulak in delirium. The film takes back the initial images of the wind blowing in the field of alternating wheat in the editing to the dictates of fruits. A tight editing shows the details of the fruits wet from the rain, flowing as fast as editing. In a dream Vasil's girlfriend still finds herself in his arms. Seasons and time flow eternally and limiting space time but spirit and love transcend these limits and become eternal.

The sea is rough : the natural image is a prelude to revolt. On the battleship Potemkin the multitude of men on deck finds worms in the rotten meat. The sailors refuse to shoot who did not want to eat the rotten meat. In a long field on the deck of the ship there is a revolt against the officers. In the assembly there are subversive shots like the detail of the lower limbs that rise and fall on the stairs. A sailor,Vakulinchuk, that he was the first to invoke the revolt, is shot by an officer, remains hanging on a rope and a group of officers goes to rescue him. A group of sailors approaches Odessa, bringing even the dying sailor with the inscription "killed for a plate of soup". The inhabitants of Odessa run down the stairs to see the dead sailor. A very long field with a frame from the top connects the flow of people on the stairs with the waves of the sea. A young man in a middle field reads a letter that incites the revolt to avenge the sailor and alternates in the assembling moved close-ups. With the motto "All for one and one for all" collective despair becomes union. In a very long field the crowd of people goes under and over a bridge. Cossacks arrive and shoot men, women and children on the crowd. An alternate montage puts the whole figure of a dead child and the painful first floor of the mother into suffering and tremendous eye contact while the child is trampled. The mother goes to meet the Cossacks with her dead son in her arms, recalling the image of the piety of the Madonna with Christ but she is also shot. Another mother is killed and the caravan with the little child goes down the stairs. The city of Odessa is bombed by Potemkin, which tries to stop the massacre. In the darkness the armored Potemkin advances towards a ship sent by the tsar and get ready for the fight. The fleet sent by the tsar does not open fire and all shout to the brotherhood. Editing is often subversive and tightened by higher rates and becomes an artistic instrument also close to the functioning of the brain, relating different inserts of images.

Bianca Bellincioni Stagno is an expert dancer. Of Slavic origin is the countess Vera Preobajenska, eccentric writer with the pseudonym of Thais.She likes to give crazy looks, but she does not love anyone with sincerity and she enjoys collecting lovers. Thais invites Count San Remo to seduce him too. The house is decorated in a futuristic style, with hypnotizing geometric patterns, repetitive elements on the walls like the eyes of a peacock's tail. Bianca falls from the horse, because disappointed by the Count who loved inside her, she launches into a wild ride on horseback. Thais feels guilty for this. Thais wants to die in the poisonous gases in his room, but his survival instinct lights up even though Thais dies in despair and madness. The possessiveness towards people changes when a loved one dies because of her sort of collecting of lovers as if they were puppets. It 's like though a puppet difficult to add to the collection, for the other is a crazy love and indirectly the puppet triggers a deadly chain reaction

In Kronberg, capital of an old State of Central Europe ,a mad queen dominates a feudal kingdom of a violent dynasty. Queen V is vain, intolerant, cruel; she knows no laws but only her wishes. She has a morbid passion for her boyfriend, Prince Wolfram, who has made one of his rare escapades with a woman he does not love. The queen wants to surprise her boyfriend and orders him to move away to train the army. On the way known among the orphans who walk Patricia Kelly. The queen wants to surprise her boyfriend and orders him to move away to train the army. On the way known among the orphans walking Patricia Kelly, who lost her underwear. The prince points this out to everyone who laughs at it .Afterwards, in the convent, Patricia Kelly is subjected to a sort of trial, where she defends herself by saying that her underwear has fallen out of emotion and asks the reverend mother that she would have done it if that happened, making everyone laugh. A strong provocation against moral and religious bigotry that have no basis and that, as in the movie, make you laugh in relation to the truth of experiencing pleasure without rancor because physical pleasure completes the spirit. For punishment Patricia Kelly can not go out for a month and that night she goes to bed without eating to stay on your knees before the cross to pray to be far from earthly thoughts. When she is alone in front of the sacred images, Patricia prays to see the prince again. The surprise of Queen V is the announcement that the wedding will be the following day. The prince wants to see Kelly again and with an accomplice enters the convent and causes a fire, causing all the nuns and the orphans to wake up. In the general chaotic movement, the prince sees her and takes her in her arms. The prince takes her to the palace of the queen and tells her that she tried to set the convent on fire to see her again. He is convinced that this was a great idea and that he was clever. Patricia laughs at all this and thinks what the reverend mother could say. After they eat together and in front of a mirror, which doubles the image, the prince kisses Kelly, who is in a nightgown with the Prince 's coat on. They continue to flirt in a flowered veranda in the moonlight. The queen finds them in bed and with a club tries to hit them but the prince defends him and Kelly. The queen talks about marriage and Kelly walks away crying followed by the queen who repeatedly beats her up to the exit while a guard mocks her. Kelly sees the guard who mocks her and then the prince in superimposition on the water. Kelly throws herself into the water and arrives the prince who follows her. The queen tells the prince that if he does not accept the marriage with her, he will be sent to prison.The prince goes to see Kelly in the convent and finds her dead. He draws the sword to kill himself. Thus the prince emerges from narcissism and self-centeredness to open himself to his beloved. As in Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" the lovers die but the dramaturgical engine is not revenge like in Shakespeare but it is the search for true love.

Mac Teague is a mine worker who has a violent attitude: he throws another man from a pier. Mac's mother lived with the thought that her son could start a business. So, Mac left with the dentist to learn the trade. he acts as assistant to the charlatan dentist and a few years later he opens his own laboratory. Here, a friend of his arrives presenting Tina, his girlfriend. In the weeks that followed, Trina came to him every day. Mac gives her the ether and after the crisis and hesitations he kisses her. Frightened by his weakness, Marc resumed his work. Time later, Marc and Marcus meet at the bar and Marcus reveals that he is enchanted by Tina, the first girl he met. Marcus gives Tina to Mac saying: "Friends forever or death". Mac invites the whole family of Tina and spends a pleasant day. In a shot in the American plane, Mac and Trina are sitting on the pier and he sings accompanying himself with the accordion. Mac, after accompanying Trina at home, kissing her and asking her to marry him, is under water and says to himself: "She's mine", banging a fist in the other hand. Trina and Mac are engaged and celebrate going to a premiere in the theater. Trina wins 5,000 dollars in the lottery. Mac and Tina get married and Trina's tendency to save becomes an obsession. Trina becomes unbearable for Marc. A law is made for which dentists need a certificate to work. Mac can not work anymore because reported by Marc and Trina tells him to collect as much money as possible until he can work. Suddenly no one goes to his study and Mac despairs consoled by Trina. Trina continues to be thirsty for money and does not leave a nickel to Marc for the carriage, despite having to face a long journey and it rains. Marc 's lack of interest in her increases every day like her avarice. to such an extent that Mac returns in the evening after he has eaten nothing the day and Trina tells him that he wants to see him before starving before giving him the money. A close up of a Mac with a dark direction of photography highlights the bursting thunder that is about to burst inside Mac. Trina escapes with money but exasperated Mac follows her in search more money than Trina to the point of venturing to the Valley of Death. The very long fields show the immensity of the desert and the smallness of man in comparison. The snake is the symbol of an obstinate nature. The Valley of Death is so wild that even the beasts are afraid to face it. The setting sun represents the sunset of reason and also of the survival instinct. The hatred and greed also move Marc, who reaches Mac with which he undertakes a furious quarrel with interludes of the mirages of the treasure. Mac and Marc bind themselves with handcuffs, just as their destinies are mortally bound. When greed turns into obsession that breaks the strength and bond of a couple. Mac after a difficult and heavy past in the mine, as soon as he comes out into the outside world, he finds an improvement in condition and finds peace in a girl, which however upsets his existence and his character. Mac is like a snake that changes mute, is at peace with the outside but its source of peace bites him to the point of making the mute again. A last mute where it leaves in the old skin also a good survival instinct to take virally from the source that once gave him happiness brutal obsessions.

Sexuality cursed by restlessness and blessed by pleasure. Sexuality is necessary for the complete well-being of body and spirit. Because it is precisely the spirit that seeks the accompaniment of physical pleasure: a search that starts first of all from a rhythmic drive of the mind and of the conscience. From the first shots of the erotic and provocative force of Stroheim cinema to Rocco Siffredi.