FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Francois Truffaut - Fahrenheit 451 

Ray Bradbury was said to have written his short story The Fire Man (which he was to extend to the novel Fahrenheit 451 in 1953) with a typewriter that worked with a coin slot. His main concern was not to criticize a totalitarian state, but to warn against the medium of the future: television. We are therefore in a repressive state of the future. The fire brigade no longer has the task of extinguishing fires, but of burning books. In a society in which everyone should be equal, writing or reading a novel means to rise above the others. Guy Montag (Oskar Werner) has been working for Fire Department 451 for five years and has just been offered promotion. While he is burning books, his wife Linda (Julie Christie) is at home watching state television and swallowing psychotropic drugs. Until this moment we could be in Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and the USA equally. One evening Linda swallowed too many tablets and collapses. But she can't remember anything the following day. In general she lives only in the here and now and doesn't even know how she got to know Guy. One day Guy is asked by his neighbour, the teacher Clarisse (Julie Christie), if he would read the books before the burning - a question that leaves him no peace anymore and Guy begins to read secretly at night... Truffaut leads us into a kind of commune in the forest, where the book people live and learn the great classics by heart. One would pass them on orally. However, the occupation seems pointless, since everyone in this commune only reads and learns by heart. Conversations about what is read do not take place. People in society live happily, but spiritlessly. They, too, hardly speak to each other. Bradbury once described how he saw a couple walking a dog in California. She wore a radio as small as a pack of cigarettes and listened to music with headphones. Neither her husband nor the dog paid her any attention. How must that have happened to a couple during a TV night? Truffaut's dystopia has a conservative aftertaste, just like Bradbury's pattern. The statement; "Television is to blame" may seem a bit brittle, but we should see this homage to Western culture in the spirit of its time: The year 1966.

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Jean-Luc Godard - Maculin Feminin (engl. subt.)  

"We are the children of Marx and Coca-Cola"; from this famous line comes the German rental title. In Godard's film all characters are fascinated by America. They are young French people who are so fascinated by America. And in return, the young American audience was fascinated by Godard. But what exactly did they like about Godard? The world of chic cafes? Paul from Masculin Feminin (of course Jean-Pierre Leaud) moves casually in it. Or the bedrooms of young beautiful girls? Probably 70% of all young people in 1966 wanted to be Jean-Pierre Leauds Paul. Or at least Jean-Pierre Leaud. Or at least live in Paris. All the rest, demos, radical political ideas, endless conversations about sex, etc., can be considered accessories. Performance Art. By participating in all these activities, Paul meets the sexy singer Madeleine (Chantal Goya) and her equally sexy roommate. Of course we are aware that these are all girls and boys, like the Fridays For Future movement today. By the way, Godard played long before later movements with natural light, real time and original locations. The plot behind it is this: Paul is all about getting into bed with beautiful girls. He claims to be a communist and "worker", paints slogans on the walls and supports the student streets barricades. Above all, he tries to smoke like Jean-Paul-Belmondo. And he never succeeds. Paul is just one of the guys who go to the cinema and try to copy their role models. That's exactly how Masculin Feminin works.

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE THE BEST MOVIES IN OUR VIDEO STORE PT.19 Federico Fellini - Satyricon (engl. subt.) 

This is a bloody, disgusting, disgusting movie. It's a masterpiece that doesn't please everyone. It's like a ruthless gesture that shames our boring times, as everyone is just watching boring series. Free from 16th Satyricon reproduces the Greek and Roman myths in a degenerate way. The model depicts the fragment of the same name by Petronius - a hedonist who celebrated and mocked all decadence at the same time. Most importantly, Satyricon was created in 1969 at a time when unbridled sex still went unpunished. The characters in the film correspond to those in the legends. They know no "characterization" in the sense of psychology. They simply act according to their nature. Without self-observation or the possibility of development. Is there even a character that is important to us in the film? I don't think so. I didn't care about any of them. None is defined by their personality. They all simply correspond to their myth. But Fellini seems fully in his element! Never again did he film grotesquely! Everywhere dwarves and giants, fat people, hermaphrodites, transvestites, cannibals... In short, a visual excess! Satyricon plays in a world full of self-hatred and amorality. A cruel and passionate world! Like the poet Petronius, Fellini is fascinated by excess. From the abnormal. But is Satyricon really about ancient Rome? Or rather the summer of love 1968 - doomed to ruin?

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE THE BEST MOVIES IN OUR VIDEO STORE PT.18 Asghar Farhadi - A Seperation (engl. subt.)

 In A Seperation, each of the characters tries to live their lives within the boundaries of state and religion. It's a Persian film and we learn a lot about a system where the state represents religion. Eventually, all involved parties end up in court, which tries to settle human feelings through a catalogue of rules. We, the viewers, are involved in these negotiations as directly as I have ever experienced in hardly any film! We understand the logic of each position and even our own feelings contradict each other. Let us try to imagine a life in Iran, a modern society that has imposed the laws of the Koran on itself. A Seperation, by the way, has no problems with Islam; the film shows how theory and practice of law are incompatible. A problem in all states of the world. The law tries to judge hypothetically and there is a danger that the law will be replaced by principles. And this is how the basic constellation works: Nader and Simin (Peyman Moadi and Leila Hatami) are a happily married couple from Tehran with a sweet eleven-year-old daughter named Termeh (Sarina Farhadi). Nader's sinile father also lives with them. To give their daughter a better life, Nader and Simin want to emigrate. Nader only wants to stay for a while to care for the father. A conflict: His father would no longer know him, Simin says. But Nader contradicts that he would know his father very well. For the father, Nader has hired a nurse, Razieh (Sareh Bayat). She works in secret because her husband, Hodjat (Shahab Hosseini), would never allow her to work in a household where she is alone with a man. A strict Muslim obviously. One day Nader returns home and finds his father tied to the bed. Razieh did this for a good reason, but at that moment neither Nader nor we know that. Nader fires Razieh and she accuses him of pushing her down the stairs. In the process, she has suffered a miscarriage. Nader is accused of manslaughter. I think that's all you need to know about the initial situation. The judge, by the way, is fair in this trial, and the jury will try to be as objective as possible. But nobody in the courtroom knows all the facts and the verdict must be in accordance with the Koran. Nader and Simin are of moderate faith, Razieh at least considers whether she should be allowed to change a man's underwear, even though he is old and ill. The driving force behind her is her family. I think we're dealing here less with a courtroom film that aims to find the truth. A Seperation rather tries to understand all sides and to build empathy. It focuses on lovers whose actions distance her. In the end it is difficult for us to condemn anyone at all. I had the biggest problems sharing Nader's position. Yes, I understand him. No, I think he is acting wrong because he still operates in the categories right vs. wrong - but at the expense of his family. I think in the days of Pergida and Trump, when the most stupid people assume that Iran is a nation full of crazy "camel drivers", A Seperation is a sensible medicine. We get the portrait of a society in all its nuances. The people in the film act moderately with the will to do the right thing. To decide right and wrong, this turns into a moral finding about the nature of judgment itself.

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE THE BEST MOVIES IN OUR VIDEO STORE PT.17

 I came across the puppet film Marquis because we wanted to show it in the open air cinema of Bar 25. I was surprised to find out that the Marquis had a lot of bizarreness to offer, but above all he tells a funny story with a friendly main character. It's this kind of film that you can also see on a Sunday afternoon. Paris 1788, the dreaded Libertin Marquis de Sade is imprisoned in the Bastille for fornication (and the desecration of a crucifix). Alone, he has only his oversized tail with which he has stimulating conversations about art, literature and the human instincts. It is up to his genitals to present their own designs to the Marquis. Outside, the revolution develops, inside the Marquis becomes the victim of a conspiracy... The Marquis de Sade has left his mark like hardly any other radical thinker. A noble philosopher who propagates the right of the strongest (and by this means his class): the right to unrestrained pleasure. The Marquis, a ninilist, a despiser of the human, is portrayed by Henri Xhonneux and Roland Topor as the only figure of integrity. In 1989, the 200th anniversary of the Revolution, both had the idea of turning the writings of the Marquis into a cheerful puppet show. We experience actors in animal masks who perform dialogues for a mature educated bourgeoisie. Author Topor strives to be faithful to the original, so that the dialogues of the Marquis with his tail are always below the belt line. The Marquis has the faithful face of a cocker spaniel, while his tail rises steeply. Pathological sexuality, exploitation and intrigues - the Marquis' themes seem all the more bizarre as they are presented in a warm tone. Intellectually, the puppetry of Roland Topor and Henri Xhonneux is waterproof; surprisingly, the film also looks really good. Thanks to a generous budget you can see the loving masks and costumes, which were realized as a heart project. The audience in the open-air cinema stage was really intoxicated by the costumes and masks. We listened in amazement to the dialogue between dog and tail. Not only that there was enough to laugh about: With his sincere, funny manner the tail had simply moved us! 

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE THE BEST MOVIES IN OUR VIDEO STORE PT.16 Claire Denis - U. S. Go Home

Claire Denis has ventured into the genre of teenagers trying to lose their virginity. But with so much more tenderness and toughness than we are used to from this genre! U. S. Go Home was originally produced for television, but it really belongs on the big screen. And of course in our programme film video library! For those who find the subject a little touchy, Claire Denis has made a very warm-hearted film - not least because Denis obviously remembers her own teenage years. For a long time, the director was considered an insider tip, partly because her films were so hard to get hold of. Well, fortunately that changed over the years and today I can proudly link one of the best films of the 90s even on youtube! All boys and girls their age, approximately, is the translation of the original title from French. That was the name of a French TV series that asked various directors to reminisce about their own youth. They asked the most popular French authors of the time and got real stars like the great Élodie Bouchez! A very important requirement if you want to get to know the TV series better: Every episode must contain a party scene. Denis took this requirement very seriously. One third of the film is a party! There are 60s mod bands playing, right up to the heartbreaking cut to the end credits. This one event, the party, dominates the whole film. The opening scenes are about the personal struggles along the way. The following sequences relate to the party episodes for the siblings (Alice Houri and Grégoire Colin). P.S. For the Claire Denis geeks; they also both star together in "Nénette et Boni". Very few contain so much power and so much everyday wisdom! And hardly any film finds such a pleasant tone! Denis photographs the bodies of her protagonists, plumbing the psychological depths of their characters. Each time you discover new facets and so you catch yourself enjoying U. S. Go Home over and over again! (As do I).

 

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Robert Bresson - Une Femme Douce (engl. subt.) 

Bresson's sparse and off-putting adaptation of Dostoevsky's short story Krotkaya doesn't look like a film that was released in 1969. It could just as easily have been made in the 1940s or 1950s. In short, Bresson didn't look like the others in the late 60s either. He remained true to himself. A Gentle Woman was his first colour film, but the colours seem muted and darkened. Dominique Sanda plays Elle; the wife of a pawnbroker. Unexpectedly, she takes her own life. She jumps from the balcony of her Paris flat, leaving no suicide note. Luc (Guy Frangin), the widower, shows no emotion. His face resembles that of a mask. It probably expresses what characterised the entire time of their marriage: suppressed emotions. While he sits with the maid in front of the laid-out corpse, he explains his marital relationship to her. A narrative that is almost eerily interlaced with the present through flashbacks. Sometimes Elle is dead, then alive again. "Douce" = gentle I don't find Elle. She never smiles, With a cold stare, Unreconciled. She is the victim of Luc's controlling jealousy. Elle meets Luc as one of his clients. Ironically, she pawns him a crucifix, the value of which he assesses with a glance in his usual routine. Luc makes no comment on the value of this crucifix. He removes the plastic image of Jesus Christ before weighing the golden cross. Elle's suicide is no great mystery. In a way, she pawned herself to Luc. Elle pawned her soul in order to have a marriage of material comfort. Maybe that's why she spends so much time at the zoo, watching the captive animals? Sometimes Elle tries to consume culture at Luc's side. Unsuccessfully, despite the fact that Hamlet certainly arouses her interest. (We may transfer Hamlet's advice not to exaggerate to Bresson's actors, who never convey emotion). But while Luc remains reduced entirely to the tied-up bourgeois type, we glimpse something wild, unbridled in Elle - which, of course, never gets out. Elle is in turmoil against her marriage, marriage itself and her entire existence. Anyone who now asks me, as a video store owner, which film comes closest to this? "Belle De Jour." In A Gentle Woman, however, we don't experience an erotic turmoil, but a spiritual one. Elle's spiritual crisis discharges in suicide, the transcendent moment of the film. That is why it is difficult to establish a motivation for this act, because that would be all too worldly. When Luc and the maid sit before Elle's dead body, it is a dark, unforgiving outcome. It corresponds to Elle's life.