Brechner's MAL DIA PARA PESCAR by Onetti

In Erice's Spirit of the Beehive the 'monster' is a Republican on the run found by a Frankenstein-fascinated  little girl in Franco's labrinth. In Mal Dia the 'monster' is an East German wrestler down-on-his-luck in Uruguay. His promoter is an evil genius but the town they roll into is wise to them and has a fighter of their own.
This unlucky hulk happens to have knocked up a Lady Macbeth type.

"Jacob and the Other" is Onetti's title for the story upon which the film is based. This title foreshadows what we watch unfold in the second half of the film, just as the East German 'monster' is coming to some consiousness. We see the making of another monster; the town's fighter is destroyed and literally rebuilt by the town card-sharp doctor. But he will be his fiancee's bull. Someone must steer.

There is no hint of Nazis hinding out in this film. Jacob is in self-exile, like his Biblican name-sake.
   

Paley's SITA SINGS THE BLUES by Valmiki

With Annette Hanshaw's soulful warbling blues from the 1920s, this film has the requisite musical component we have come to expect from Indian film. But at under an hour-and-a-half it is no epic feat to watch. It manages nonethless to convey both the scope and the jist of the Ramayana, the world's most recounted story. We will each miss our certain pet parts, for me Hanuman's history, but this film stands alone. The second part poses a problem today.

After Ram rescues Sita, should they not live happily ever after? Instead Ram imposes trial by fire and exile on his loyal wife. One of the shadow puppet narrators finds her a push-over. The narrators comment, confuse, forget, invent, update, and wonder throughout the story. This glimpse behind the curtain at the versions and disputes still inspired by the epic proves the genius of both the original epic and the film.

Although the film enhances Sita's perspective, it may rely a bit too much on song to carry the central message of the second half. The first half of the Ramayana is Ram's trumph. The second half is Sita's. If we suspend judgment on a code that demands the highest womanly virtue be purity, we see Sita perfect and resplendant in the flames. It is a whole other kind of hero/ine's journey.

Welles' TRIAL by Kafka

In a world that imagines myth past or untrue, I well understand why Welles said this his favorite film contained no symbols. Can you imagine a better architect to represent alienating structures in society than Welles? My favorite is K standing before the giant door to the court coming up only to the door knob. But there's an existential level too where K roams while under 'arrest' and yet still he goes to work, work in a clerical warehouse.

Patients are oddly reassured when their illness is named. K demands to know with what he is charged. Original sin? The computer reveals his most likely crime as suicide. The American release cut this scene as well as a framing parable. Said the god, "you are insatiable. What is it now?"

Carne's THERESE RAQUIN by Zola

Therese knows shame immediately upon meeting the philosophical trucker carrying her drunk husband in with the argument that people meet as best they can and the important thing is that they meet. The husband weighs little; he will weigh more dead than alive. Mother Raquin took in the niece Therese for her son and for the shop. "Movies are bad for you," she says. "You dream too much. There's nothing romantic in love." L'amour n'a rien de romanesque.

Therese is more novelistic than romantic, sullen as a bovary eschewing equine whinying. Her long marriage is symbolized by the weekly dice game they play on a tiny racetrack with tiny hourse going round and round. The trucker represents escape, risk. Therese compares her composure in selling to people who never know what they want to the blackmailer soldier's sang froid facing forest of death and sunken ship. All he wants is to sell second-hand bicycles. But he has a habit of backing out. "One time in Shanghai..."

Parajanov's COLOR OF POMEGRANATES by Nova

"Without books the world would have witnessed nothing but ignorance." Future great ashik (troubador) of Armenia Sayat Nova is shown as a boy playing on the monestary roof where books have been put out to dry. One can almost smell the dyes on the wet wool in the next tableau vivant. "From the colors and aromas of this world, my childhood made a poet's lyre and offered it to me." This is the spirit in which to offer us biopics of poets. Whereas prosaic historical biopics like Hamsun erase the author and leave only a collaborator.

"How am I to protect my wax-built castles of love from the devouring heat of your fires?... Go then selfless heart and find your place of refuge." In truth the tableaux vivants with which we are presented, sheep-filled sanctuaries, tombs of study, are more akin to icons than to tapestries. "I saw everything clear and strangely blunt and I understood that life had abandonned me."

.. An a crowd of innocent victims we ceom from this world to you of Lord with offerings

Loncraine's RICHARD III by Shakespeare

This is not your father's Shakespeare. Enter Richard, in gas mask, his breathe sounding like Darth Vader's, and executes Ed of Wales. His "winter of our discontent" speech follows a waltzing "and we will all the pleasures prove" and concludes by the urinals. In another powerfully staged scene Richard begins his advance on the widow of Wales Anne in the morgue.

Though many characters are combined, it is still a history lesson difficult to follow for Yanks bereft of mneumonics for remembering who held which titles in which order. The depicted fascism I do find distinctly British, though many have tried to deflect; there's many a slip twixt Adolph's loin and Richard's limp. McKellen's Richard's despised state, speech, and stature shames not the shadow even of Olivier.

Scott's BLADE RUNNER by Dick

"Do androids dream of electric sheep?" Philip L. Dick wondered in the original story. Like sleep researchers today, the film obsesses more with memory, and eyes. The blade runner becomes so reduced to his function, destruction, that there is little difference between him and the skinjobs he hunts, androids. The only problem is Harrison Ford's boyish charm exudes too much humanity in the role.

It matters a lot what version you see, for the ending and noirish voice-over. I will say that if I had to go violently, between Daryl Hannah's theighs would be my choice every time. For a really interesting P.I. film more interested in the dream aspect of how we are androids already, see Wim Wender's Until the End of the World.

Anderson's AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS by Verne

While David Niven lends Phineas Fogg the proper stiffness, the casting of Cantinflas as Passpartout is inspired. While his Spanish humor is very verbal (see him as street-sweeper in D.F.) he is just as funny in this film doing Jackie Chan style acrobatics on penny farthings, hot air balloons, elephants, ostriches, and stage coaches. The treatment of the Sioux may not be strictly p.c. but All America seems savage to the Brits.

Is that old blue eyes on the saloon piano? Yep, and general stone face himself on the train too! Cameos abound in this fun film: besides Sinatra and Buster Keaton look for Noel Coward, Cesar Romero, Peter Lorre, Red Skelton and Marlene Dietrich.

Who cares if the geography is as inacurate as any Bob Hope road flick? Are there really usually dancers at a sutee? The flamenco rivals that in Saura's trilogy. See Cantinflas bullfight! Be sure you do not skip the prologue. In hommage to Jules Verne's moon shot, they show the famous short film Voyage de la lune by Melies. 

Pasolini's TRILOGY OF LIFE by Boccaccio 70

If you like tatooed wrestlers, Pasolini's Canterbury Tales can get your goat. "Between a geste and a joke, many a truth..." It is pleasant indeed to see squire mirrorless, eyebrows akimbo, skip and sing before he is blinded by horns. He thinks himself keeper of the key to a garden so fair the Roman de la Rose must pale.

Less Cervantine tales than these are their kissing kin Arabian Nights, second offering in Pasolini's Trilogy of Life.  "Truth isn't found only in one dream, but in many." Disney lost the exalted and the sex, though Sir Burton touched on the worldly side of the Beloved.

Goods sold in a chest are much valued, unless adulterers. The dead bite in Pasolini's Decameron where Ovid meets Rabelais, and the wit hits the road. Cupid's arrow never looked quite like this! Italy's top cineastes   combine in Boccacio 70 to update the tales. First Baron Calvino offers a potential twist on a couple out of Il Posto.

The second act is all Fellini, beginning at Zazie-pace before settling into a steady story of prudery versus a billboard. The protagonist conjures temptations akin to Bunuel's Simon Stylist's but the cathedral, though Kafkaesque, cannot stop the massive billboardgirl disrobing in the street, inspiring Woody's massive breast run amok and Jeff Daniels off the screen in Purple Rose of Cairo. The knight errant of decency dons his straight-jacket in the end. This is a fun blanket to be tossed in!

To tell you that Fellini is followed by Visconti and de Sica, the whole signed Zavattini is to tell you that you must see this film. And drink more milk.

O'Horgan's RHINOCEROS by Ionesco

If both Becket's waiters were late, they would be Producers' Gene Wilder a little hung over and a light-as-a-feather Zero Mostel in this version of Ionesco's parody of Nazism. Gene drops the alarm clock in the toilet. "I just can't get used to life." Hide-bound Zero finds the sullying of a tie worse than being called a mule. "I never dream." Socrates is proven syllologically a cat.

Rhino had a menacing musk in the artwarehouse presentation I once saw. Ionesco's Lesson also had an air of Pinter at Theatre de la Huchette where the bald soprano has failed to appear since it opened in the 60s. This film, with its peekaboo CPAs as interchangeable as musical office chairs, plays it much more broadly.

Gene can no longer take his humanity for granted. "What's color got to do with it?" Zero transforms, screaming rubbish. "The human individual is all washed up." A newscaster transforms in the middle of the weather report. On TV are: boxing, a Western, war. My favorite detail is the Nixon photo on the wall. Zero is a little hoarse. One bump or two?