This round of films features one of the most controversial directors of all time, Italian Pier Paolo Pasolini. Pasolini’s works faced constant court battles in their day, but ultimately opened up censors for future films. First up is 1962’s Mamma Roma, probably the most straight-forward of the films I’m looking at today, though not without its own symbolism. Mamma Roma is an outspoken woman in a poor area in Italy, who reconnects with her 16 year old son Ettore. Ettore doesn’t know his mother is a former prostitute, he only knows she wants him to rise above their place and advance is position in society. She has opened a stand at the local market and wants to lead a respectable life. Roma hates Ettore’s friends, and doesn’t want him messing with the local hussy either. Things go south though when Roma’s former pimp shows up and threatens to expose her. Roma gets a prostitute to sleep with Ettore to get him to forget his little girlfriend Bruna, but it isn’t until Bruna outs his mother to him does Ettore drop her. He then rejects his mother’s wishes, and ends up in jail when he is caught stealing with his friends. An early look at Pasolini’s rejection of capitalism.

The Trilogy of Life is made up of 3 films celebrating humanity, or a pure idea of it (as thought by Pasolini) before it was corrupted by greed and religion, all based on old texts from the middle ages. The Decameron (1971) is based on the book of the same name by Giovanni Boccaccio. It takes a number of the stories and weaves them throughout the overall frame of a painter as he paints a fresco on a wall of a church, with Pasolini playing the role of the painter himself. Extremely sacrilegious and depicting graphic nudity and sex, it champions human nature as innocent and the human body as beautiful. Some stories are just a couple minutes long, some are longer, but they follow one another with no breaks in between. At the ending, Pasolini as the painter steps back from his finished masterpiece, and leaves us with the cryptic words, “Why produce a work of art when dreaming about it is so much sweeter?”

Pasolini moved from Italy to England to continue his trilogy with The Canterbury Tales in 1972, based on Geoffrey Chaucer’s work. Pasolini plays Chaucer himself, writing down his tales which get shown to us throughout the film. Pasolini’s views are readily apparent again. In one sketch where two men are caught separately in homosexual acts, only the poor one is sentenced to death, as the rich man can afford to pay the church’s bribe. This film has a little more flow, but still, the sketches are wholly separate stories. Like The Decameron, it is a celebration of life and humanity, with maybe even more humor than the first film. As Chaucer, Pasolini again ends with a thoughtful moment, penning, “Here ends the Canterbury Tales, told only for the pleasure of telling them. Amen.”

The final film in the trilogy is 1974’s Arabian Nights, based on the old Arabic story of The Book of One Thousand and One Nights. Filmed in Yemen and Nepal, this one has more of an over-arching story than the first two. Nur eh Din falls in love with his slave Zumurrud, and the film tells their adventures, with other stories interwoven throughout, sometimes involving them, sometimes in tales told as breaks in the main plot (and sometimes even stories within stories!). The best of the trilogy as far as I’m concerned, it is beautifully filmed and full of intriguing, enveloping tales that sweep you off to the middle east. The movie is at its best when the stories are being told, but in Pasolini fashion, there is still too much gratuitous nudity and sex thrown in. I don’t mind this when it is part of the story, but here it just seems to be in the movie to set off the censors. Having watched the trilogy now, I can say I like Pasolini for the stories he told, but it seems his rebellious nature couldn’t help but include material that didn’t necessarily advance his films, but more just to piss people off.

Pasolini’s last film, released in 1975 three weeks after his murder, is his most controversial. Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom, is based on the Marquis de Sade’s infamous 18th century book. If the preceding films are the Trilogy of Life, this film is of death, or at least, the death of humanity as Pasolini saw it. This film is not for the faint of heart. It takes place in the final years of fascist Italy in 1944-45. A quartet of perverse men set up a house of debauchery, employing aging prostitutes to tell their stories, a group of young men to act as guards, and 18 kidnapped people (9 boys and 9 girls) to use as their victims. For the rest of the film, we see people beaten, raped, forced to eat excrement, treated as dogs, and, for those that didn’t follow the rules set down in the beginning, tortured and brutally killed in the end. Pasolini holds nothing back, all is gruesomely depicted in a detached, voyeur-like way. Obviously Pasolini is saying a lot through his lens, for those with a strong enough stomach to watch and interpret. I’m all for film as art, but this one is hard to watch. Even in today’s society where the envelope has been pushed much further than it was in 1975 (when this film faced years of censorship all across the world), there are still moments where I had to cover my eyes or look away.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is all right I guess. It is more dinosaur hijinks. Unfortunately it relies more on showing the dinosaurs run amok than any cohesive story. What it does though, it does well. The backstory is the island from the first Jurassic World is in danger of its volcano going off, killing all the remaining dinosaurs. Animal rights activists are demanding action, and a rich entrepreneur uses the relocation as an excuse to sell dinosaurs to collectors and hunters. Of course it all goes wrong, and the dinosaurs get out and start wreaking havoc. Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard return to reprise their roles. The actions sequences are good as always, but the whole film is a little silly and unnecessary, and there are numerous plot elements that are introduced by never explored. Not as good as the original Jurassic Park or first Jurassic World, but on par with the other sequels.

Sicario was a surprise hit a couple years ago, and like all blockbuster smashes, it got a sequel. Sicario 2: Day of the Soldado isn’t quite as good as the original, but it is still a lot of fun. Josh Brolin and Benicio del Toro return as a couple CIA operatives doing the dirty work for our government. The Mexican cartel is still the target, but for a different reason this time. Terrorists have been working in the USA, terrorists smuggled across the border by members of various cartels. To disrupt their actions, a plot is hatched to start a war between the cartels, by kidnapping the daughter of one and blaming it on another. This sequel passes on some of the intrigue from the first film in favor of a more straight forward narrative, but it works. Still lots of action, and while maybe not as explosive as the first, I still really enjoyed it.

Like the Ghostbusters remake, Ocean’s 8 is a new take with an all female cast, and an unofficial sequel (Sandra Bullock plays Danny Ocean’s sister Debbie Ocean). Led by Bullock and Cate Blanchett, unfortunately it is neither as funny nor as intriguing as the first movie, though maybe better than Ocean’s Thirteen, the finale in the last trilogy. Ocean and her team are set to steal a priceless Cartier necklace during the annual Met Gala. What made the George Clooney version so brilliant was its combination of comical banter between the team, the fantastic twists and turns, and the edge-of-your-seat thrills during the heist. This films lacks nearly all of that. The jokes between the ladies fall flat, they outline the entire plan before it begins so we know exactly how it is going to go down, and the robbery itself isn’t as exciting. No offense to Bullock, who I like, but she doesn’t have Clooney’s charm or charisma. There is one good twist in the final 12 minutes that redeems itself slightly, but even that is ruined by a member “recap” that slows down the rush. Nearly a total bust.

The Rider is a tremendous film, made more so when you read that it is based on a true story (which I did not know going in). The movie opens focusing on Brady, a horse trainer and cowboy who has just sustained a devastating head injury during a rodeo. Told by the doctors that he shouldn’t ride anymore for fear of losing his quality of life, he struggles with what to do now, as the life of a cowboy is all he knows and all he has ever wanted. He is surrounded by his family (alcoholic father, autistic sister, and friends, one of which is also severely paralyzed from his own rodeo accident). We see Brady’s trials throughout the film and the director, young Chloé Zhao, does a masterful job of putting us in his shoes. As I learned afterwards, this film is very factual. Brady, his sister Lilly, and their father are playing themselves (their last name was changed, as were some elements of the film). Many in the film (no professional actors among them) are playing versions of themselves, including Brady’s paralyzed friend Lane. Zhao was on a ranch in South Dakota filming a different movie when she met Brady. She wanted to do some kind of movie featuring him, but didn’t know what kind of film to make, before Brady suffered his accident. After he was healed up, they made this film about love and perseverance. One of the most touching films I’ve seen this year.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from the newest Jumanji remake. If you can tell from my blog, my tastes don’t often stray to comedy. I enjoy a good one, but I tend to like dramas best. This one is ok though. It takes the classic Robin Williams film and modernizes it, with the players sucked into a video game now instead of a board game. A quartet of unlikely friends find themselves having to beat “the game” in order to make it back to their real lives, and must do so without dying in the game, which would lead to their very real deaths. I didn’t laugh at all in the first half of the film, the jokes felt contrived and bland, but whether I warmed up to, or they just got better, I enjoyed the second half better. As an action film, it isn’t half bad either. All in all a decently fun film.

Today’s batch is a quintet of films brought to us from Spain and two of her greatest directors. First up may be the most renowned, Victor Erice’s Spirit of the Beehive from 1973, released during the fascist period of dictator Francisco Franco. As such, it is full of symbolism so as to get through the censors. It centers around young Ana, a girl who, with her older sister Isabel, watches the film Frankenstein. Curious Ana wonders about the creature and why he killed a girl in the film, and Isabel feeds Ana’s fears, and says she knows Frankenstein, that he is a spirit who lives in an abandoned shack outside of town. Since Ana’s parents are absorbed in their own lives (father Fernando is a beekeeper and obsesses over them, and mother Teresa longs for a secret lover in another city), Isabel is Ana’s only real attachment to reality, so Ana believes everything she tells her. Ana visits the shack regularly, until a wounded soldier is actually found hiding there (we assume he is a fighter against the fascist regime). A very rich film told with the magic and mysticism that only a child’s eyes can see, but one that probably needs multiple viewings to really get all the nuance. I like a movie that makes me think, but this one was a bit much for me the first time through.

Ten years later, Erice followed up with El Sur (The South). Originally supposed to be a 3 hour film, the producer cut it short half way through, much to Erice’s chagrin. This one is also told through the eyes of a child. Estrella and her family (father Agustin and mother Julia) live in northern Spain during the early days of Franco’s regime, having fled the southern parts for different reasons. Estrella loves her father but he is preoccupied with a long lost love, a girl he left in the south. Agustin also left his family in the south, after a quarrel with his father, and the two never spoke again, though he still talks to his mother Casilda and Milagros, the nanny that raised him from a child. Estrella learns of her father’s emotional affair but keeps his secret to herself. Years later, now aged 15, Estrella confronts him about it. Whether from shame or just as a continuance of his selfish being, Agustin takes his life. Estrella then is sent south to live with her grandparents. Armed with a note her father left of a long distance call made the day before he died, she hopes to finally learn the past of the father she never understood. I knew this movie had been cut short, and while watching, I was hoping that it had been finished, because I was loving every minute of it and didn’t want it to stop. At the end though, when we see Estrella head off towards The South that we never end up seeing, I thought it was perfect as it sits. El Sur hangs over the family throughout the film, and learning its secrets may have killed some of the magic this movie produced. An amazing film, and I liked it more than Beehive, though it did not receive the acclaim of that first movie.

Next up is Carlos Saura’s “Flamenco Trilogy,” so named not for any thematic or story continuation, but because of the music tying them together. First was Bodas de Sangre (Blood Wedding) from 1981, starring real-life dancer and choreographer Antonio Gades. The film starts with a dance troupe arriving at a rehearsal space to do a final dress rehearsal before performing the famous Spanish play Blood Wedding, which has been adapted to a flamenco dance by the director. It starts with them getting dressed, doing their makeup and warming up, and you think that some interaction between the actors will be the basis for the movie, but instead, the rehearsal is the movie. If that sounds boring, it most definitely is not. I was unexpectedly moved by the beautifully choreographed dancing, accompanied by the sharp, staccato music. The final knife fight between a new husband and her wife’s lover is as suspenseful as anything you’ll see, even knowing it is just a “play within a play” so to speak. Brilliant.

With many of the same actors, Saura followed this up with Carmen in 1983. Director Antonio is putting together a flamenco style performance of the famous opera. He has a talented troupe of dancers, but none meet his idea of what Carmen should look like. He finally finds her in a school, someone who has the look (and even the name!). Unfortunately Carmen is used to getting her way based on her looks, and doesn’t apply herself to learning the dance technique, much to the angst of the Antonio’s female lead partner Cristina, who didn’t get the role despite her ability as a dancer because Antonio thought her too old. Before long Carmen has Antonio wrapped around her finger, which becomes a problem when he learns she is married, and their personal lives more and more begin to reflect the play they are preparing. As a movie, it is just so-so, but the performances during their rehearsals are just as mesmerizing as those of the first film.

The core cast returned again in 1986 for El amur brujo (Love, the Magician). This one is the biggest production so far, with a much larger cast and bigger sets. This film is pretty much a straight forward musical, with singing and dancing numbers entwined with the story. In a poor, rural Spanish town, Carmelo loves Candela, but she has been promised since childhood to Jose. Jose dies in a fight though, and Carmelo is blamed and sent to prison. When he returns years later, he finds that Candela has never moved on, in fact, she returns to the place of Jose’s death every night and dances with his spirit. Carmelo decides to fight for her, but first she must overcome her dead husband. A strong film, and a fitting conclusion to Saura’s flamenco films.

First up is A Woman is a Woman (Une femme est une femme) from 1961, starring Godard’s wife at the time, and frequent muse in his early films, Anna Karina. Angela is an exotic dancer at the local club, but has dreams of having a traditional family with her lover Emile. She badly wants a baby, but Emile does not, so Angela teases that she will just sleep around with other men until she gets what she wants. Despite being impetuous and seeming to keep Emile on a string, Angela does seem to really care for him, and when she does go and actually sleeps with their mutual friend Alfred, she is wracked with guilt. Angela returns to Emile, confesses, and the two have sex, so they can then believe that he is the father. The movie is made as sort of a tribute to American musicals, placing quick, quirky music blasts in throughout to go along with Angela’s constantly changing moods. A great example of early Godard (his third film).

Godard’s next film was My Life to Live (Vivre sa vie) in 1962. Anna Karina plays as Nana, a woman who has goals but doesn’t know how to properly pursue them. The opening of the film shows her leaving her husband and baby behind to go follow her dream of being an actress. Without any money though, she very quickly falls into prostitution, and is under the control of a pimp before long. This leads to her downfall, as she is killed when her pimp tries to sell her to another and the deal goes south. The French New Wave is in full effect here. Nana’s life is split up into twelve sequences, with title cards telling the audience what is coming up in the next scene. The opening of the film is a full eight minutes of dialogue, with the camera seeing nothing more than the back of the talkers’ heads. Hard to connect with people when you can’t see their faces, but it is done here to great effect. Those moments are not yet Nana’s life. This movie isn’t as accessible as the first, but overall a stronger masterpiece.

Contempt (1963, Le Mépris) is a cautionary tale about how a single moment can alter a relationship. Paul and his wife Camille are deeply in love. Paul is a screenwriter and takes a job from an American producer (Jeremy Prokosch, played by Jack Palance). Jeremy wants to make a film based on The Odyssey, but wants an “American style” film. He is at odds with his director (renowned German director Fritz Lang, playing himself) who wants to make a more obtuse, art film. Paul likes Lang’s ideas, but allows himself to be bought by Jeremy. After their meeting, when Jeremy suggests they go back to his house, and offers to drive Camille in his two seater, Paul agrees. Camille is hurt, thinking she is being sold off as well, and her and Paul’s love is suddenly lost forever. An emotionally charged film, and relatable to anyone who has seen a relationship fall apart.

Godard combines science fiction and film noir in Alphaville, from 1965. Alphaville is a city in a near-future dystopia where a computer, Alpha 60, has taken command and has outlawed emotion, free thinking, and sense of self. Lemmy Caution is a spy sent in to find the engineer who built Alpha 60, and bring him back to “the Outlands,” or kill him if he refuses. Most of the film is spent exploring this society where all emotion, even weeping at your spouse’s funeral, is outlawed and punishable by death. The simple question “why?” is also forbidden. Sometimes illogical actions are in place, like nodding to mean “no” and shaking your head to mean “yes.” This last item isn’t explained in the beginning, leading to some confusion by the viewer, until you catch on that many things that are said in the film are actually meant to be the opposite. A great exploration by Godard and very different from his earlier films. My love of dystopian films meant this was to be one of my favorites of Godard’s so far.

By the time Masculin féminin came out in 1966, Godard knew his craft and his direction, had it down to perfection. Filmed on the busy streets of Paris, it follows Paul and his conquest of women, led by blooming pop star Madeleine, who seems completely uninterested in Paul in any significant way, and just uses him for her own physical pleasure. By 1966 the French New Wave was no longer new, and the young 20-somethings on screen had grown up with this movement. We see a culture of young people who live in the moment, with all that it brings. Talking about James Dean and Bob Dylan, they idolize “being cool” and in doing so, ooze coolness themselves. Living for “right now” is all that matters. Masterfully written and executed, you can see the beginnings of a culture that continues to today, young people who don’t feel tied down to old traditions, who simply want to enjoy life and to live it to the fullest.

Next up on the list is The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. I’m not going to give any kind of synopsis on these, because you’ve either read them yourself, or seen the blockbuster films (from almost 20 years ago! Can you believe it has been that long?!), or you have absolutely no interest. So I’ll take this moment to talk about how these books changed my life.

I’ve always been a reader. My parents instilled the importance of reading into me at an early age. My brother and I watched a fair amount of TV growing up, probably as much as any normal kid of the 80’s, but I always read at night. I usually carried a book around with me in grade school and junior high, to read when I had a break, and didn’t care what the other kids thought about it. I “graduated” to adult books fairly early in life, mostly because the books at my “age appropriate level” (I don’t think it was called that back then) were below my actual reading level. In fact, I remember getting asked by my 4th grade teacher if I should really be reading Stephen King, and not having an answer because it seemed normal to be reading anything I could get my hands on. Admittedly looking back, I know I read things I wasn’t ready for, but as a fairly innocent young mind, most of the stuff was over my head anyway. I was reading for the stories.

Also in 4th grade, I read The Hobbit, and then in 5th, The Lord of the Rings. Before this time, I was reading mostly fiction, and especially epics and/or mystery/spy thriller novels. Things like the aforementioned King, Ken Follett, Tom Clancy, Agatha Christie, etc. Sort of all over the map. But The Lord of the Rings opened my eyes to a whole new genre. Whereas books I’d read previous to this were very much grounded in the world we live in (even outlandish ones like Carrie or Pet Sematary still took place on our Earth), now I saw a wholly created new world to explore. I was all in. I remember reading The Lord of the Rings twice through, back-to-back, and then jumping in to other sci-fi/fantasy worlds like the Wheel of Time, the Death Gate Cycle, Shannara, Dragonlance, and the list goes on. I read at a frenetic pace for years, devouring anything I could find. It really wasn’t until I was out of college that I started reading less science fiction and more “straight ahead” fiction again, but to this day, nothing excites me more than when an author creates a world from scratch, and opens the reader up to new, unthought of possibilities.

All this reading really shaped who I am as an adult. The drive to consume as many stories as I can has lead me to watch as many movies as I do, and still, of course, to read as much as possible. I still own the original set of The Lord of the Rings trilogy my parents bought for me in 5th grade (very much aged but lovingly cared for all these years), and while it has probably been surpassed by King’s Dark Tower series as my all-time favorite “epic,” it still holds a special place in my heart. I’m in the beginning of re-reading it now, my fifth or sixth time through. I last read them when the movies were coming out, so it has been quite awhile. I’m looking forward to going on Frodo’s epic journey again. As Tolkien says in the book, “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

Thomas Keneally’s Schindler’s List(original title Schindler’s Ark) is one of those rare instances where the movie is better than the book. Everyone knows the story. It is a fiction novel, put together from a multitude of interviews, about the real life Oscar Schindler, a German factory owner and Nazi party member, who housed and ultimately saved over a thousand Jews from near-certain death during the Holocaust. Steven Spielberg took this book and make a cohesive, narrative, linear movie which exceeds the novel. The book is good, and won prizes when it was released in 1982, but it has an almost documentary-like style and lacks a lot of the emotion that Liam Neeson brought to the character. It is almost too fact-like when documenting the tribulations of the Jewish people. For me, it was honestly a bit of a chore to read. Without the movie, maybe I would have enjoyed it more, but the film is a lot better.

Directed by Alexander Korda, That Hamilton Woman from 1941 starred one of the biggest Hollywood couples in its time, Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier. Both were established stars (Leigh was just 2 years removed from her breakthrough on Gone With the Wind) and this film was a big hit. It starts with Emma Hamilton as an aged, haggard thief in London, and after being apprehended, she shares her life tale with her fellow prisoners. Born a poor country girl but with a startling beauty, Emma attracted the attention of a noble diplomat in Naples. She marries the much older man, but is drawn towards a younger war hero (England was, as always, in a series of wars with France). However, Emma finds it is much easier to live with her very public affair in Naples than in England when they return there. Like a lot of movies featuring real-life couples, their acting together feels a little wooden at times (strange that real chemistry is so hard to capture on film), but it is a well done film, and Leigh shines in her soliloquies, as she so often did.

I seem to say this a lot, but 12 Angry Men, directed by Sidney Lument, is one of the best films I’ve seen in a while. For a movie with no action and no change of scenes (all but a couple minutes takes place in a jury deliberation room), it is supremely, nail-bitingly intriguing. The premise is a young man is on trial for murdering his father, and the case against him is seemingly ironclad. The jury’s preliminary vote is 11-1 for guilty, with the sole dissenter being juror # 8 (Henry Fonda). He sees minor problems in the prosecution that creates doubt in his eyes. He spends the hour and a half of the film pleading the case for the accused to his fellow jurors. The dialogue in this film is fantastic, the moments of clarity among the jurors is thrilling. A truly incredible movie.

I’m not going to say anything more about 1974’s Murder on the Orient Express (also directed by Sidney Lument) than go see it. Get it on Netflix, check TCM, whatever you need to do. Far superior to the recent remake, this one is a true gem. Whereas the new one has an all-star cast, this one has an all-legends cast, featuring Albert Finney, Sean Connery, Ingrid Bergman (who won an Oscar), Lauren Bacall, Jacqueline Bisset, Anthony Perkins, Vanessa Redgrave, and Martin Balsam, among others. The classic story of a group of passengers stuck on a train where a murder has happened, with Agatha Christie’s favorite detective, Hercule Poirot, there to solve it. The original “Clue” mystery of who-done-it, with-what, and how?

This Happy Breed, directed by David Lean, came out in 1944, but was based on a Noel Coward play from 1939, and follows a family in London in the 20 year period between the end and beginning of the two World Wars. The opening shot is of the family moving in to a new flat. Being lower-middle class, a large group shares the small space, including mother and father, their 3 near-adult children, the father’s sister, and the mother’s mom. A quiet film, it portrays the daily lives of this group, showing the big moments over their 20 years in the house. The children grow and get married and lead their own lives. The parents go with the flow through it all, as friends and family come and go, some permanently through death unfortunately. There is a poignant moment at the end, when all have moved out and mom and dad are left in the house alone and they too are moving out to a smaller place, where the father remarks that most rooms look bigger when they are emptied of furniture, but this one seems smaller. The movie ends as it began, and the front door of the house, though this time with people leaving. A very nice little film.

David Lean’s acknowledged masterpiece is Lawrence of Arabia. About the life of T.E. Lawrence, it is a long historical epic, coming in at nearly 4 hours in length, the kind of film that would have a hard time getting made today. I thought this very thing in fact early in the film when Lawrence and his desert guide, finding relief at a well, see a figure approaching from the distance. In suspenseful dead silence, the movie lets this unknown character slowly creep towards our protagonist. This quiet, long sequence isn’t fast paced enough for today’s movie goers, but it is brilliant in its simplicity. This film plays out like this scene; it lets the plot develop and come to the viewer, slowly but surely. Brash young Lawrence finds fame as an English officer in the Arab revolt, fighting alongside Arabs in their quest for independence from the Ottoman Empire. Without his knowledge, his quest is silently backed by the English powers, who hope to gain a foothold in the area after World War I. Later in the war, when Lawrence finds himself surrounded by people more interested in money than freedom, he finds that he too has changed, or perhaps, his love of war was always there with him. The film won 7 of the 10 Oscars it was nominated for in 1962.

David Lean was all ready an established film editor, but 1945’s Blithe Spirit was just his third film as director, and also the third in his collaboration with the esteemed playwright Noel Coward as producer. Based on Coward’s play, this is a charming film about a séance gone wrong. Charles (the brilliant Rex Harrison) and his wife Ruth invite a medium, the eccentric Madame Arcati, to their house for an evening of entertainment, with Charles hoping for a farce that can be used for inspiration for his writing. When Charles’ first, long-dead wife Elvira shows up, and only he can see or hear her, it causes obvious ire with Ruth. A very funny film and one that holds up well, even if Coward did not care for the adaptation much at the time. Lean’s ability is on display. Blithe Spirit was made just before he did Brief Encounter, one of my personal favorites, and just a year before he went on a run of Best Director nominations for his Charles Dickens’ adaptations.

The first such adaptation was Great Expectations in 1946. Young Pip lives in a poor family, but is brought to a rich estate by the Lady Havisham to be a friend to the lady’s daughter Estella. He is there for only a short time before he must return to his uncle to learn the family trade and become a blacksmith. A few years later though, he is approached with an offer to go to London to become a gentlemen. The rich benefactor is unknown, as is the reason. But Pip leaps at the opportunity to better his position in life. He reunites with Estella and falls in love with her, though she initially keeps him at arm’s length, and hints at more sinister motives when it comes to relationships. A very well done film, with strong acting by John Mills and Valerie Hobson in the leads, and also a young, 32 year old Alec Guinness in his first major film role. The movie won a few Oscars, and was also nominated for best picture and best director for Lean.

Oliver Twist followed two years later in 1948. I was familiar with the story but had never read the book, and found the film very enjoyable after a somewhat tedious beginning. An unnamed young, pregnant woman arrives to a church and orphanage, just in time to give birth before dying. The boy is harshly raised in the orphanage as Oliver Twist. Years later, Oliver runs away and falls in with a gang of homeless boys, directed to thieving by a despicable man, Fagin, played by Alec Guinness. Despite what you may think, the movie is less about Oliver than the secret his birth carries. His mother died with a locket around her neck which identified her and thus Oliver, but there seems to a big conspiracy to keep that fact hidden. The intrigue builds until the big reveal. If you can wait through the slow beginning, it does pick up and the denouement is wonderful.

The title of 1954’s Hobson’s Choice gives away a lot if you know the meaning of the old English phrase, basically meaning “take it or leave it.” Hobson owns a successful shoe store, but not because of anything he does. He spends his nights drinking and his days sleeping it off, while his trio of daughters run the shop, head by the eldest Maggie. They also employ the best shoemaker in the city, Willie, who, despite his talents, is content to earn a minimum wage working in the basement all day. Maggie decides she has had enough working for free for her unrelenting father and hatches a plot to trap Willie to marrying her, and then getting him to leave Hobson and start his own business. The two younger sisters quickly marry as well, and Hobson’s shop begins to fall apart, and his alcoholism grows worse. It does find a happy ending in the end though. This is much funnier film than I expected, and thoroughly enjoyable. Based on a play (this is actually the third film version made), the cast is made up of supremely talented actors from stage and screen, including Charles Laughton, Brenda de Banzie, and John Mills.

In 1955, David Lean finally went to Hollywood for financing to make Summertime, with all his previous films being made in Britain. Shot on location in Venice and starring Katharine Hepburn, it is about an American teacher, Jane, who has saved her whole life for the vacation of her dreams. She is wowed by the city around her, but becomes lonely when she sees all the couples enjoying the sites together. Jane soon meets Renato, a local shop owner, to whom she is at first apprehensive, but later attracted to. She doesn’t know if she can trust him, and we as viewers share that trepidation in the beginning, but it becomes a wonderful love story by the end. Hepburn is arresting in her typical strong-willed role. By now, Lean has honed his craft and knows how to build a film. He had already made a name for himself, though his most well-known works, such as The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, and Doctor Zhivago, were still a decade off.

Whereas Ethan Frome is a quick read, The Age of Innocence is a full novel, and it won Edith Wharton a Pulitzer when it came out in 1920. It details the dying of America’s aristocracy in late 19th century America.

Newland Archer is a young man, born to a high society family in New York. He lives at a time when the family’s reputation is more important than anything, maybe even more than life or death. Early on he becomes engaged to the beautiful May Welland, also from one of the best families in the area, so it is a perfect match by everyone concerned. Archer’s life is thrown up in turmoil though when a childhood friend returns to the area. Ellen Olenska is May’s cousin, but Ellen is fleeing scandal in Europe. Her husband had been running around on her, and rather than sticking to his side as a good wife should, she had the gall to come back to America and seek a divorce. Archer is drawn to Ellen, but knows that it would bring ruin to his family if he ended his engagement to May, or even worse, was caught canoodling with Ellen. In the end, Archer puts family first (it is really more Ellen’s choice) and stays with May. The last chapter fast forwards a few decades where we learn that Archer and May had a good life together. He now lives at a time when people are more free to marry who they want (in fact, Archer’s son is getting ready to marry a girl born out of wedlock, and no one bats an eye).

Wharton paints a beautiful portrait of a time when your name was everything, and you cared more for what people thought than what they actually did. Very well written, and unlike some books from its era, not a challenging read.