But in an impoverished city, the bike is stolen.
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#BEST FOREIGN FILMS MOVIE#
A man needs a job desperately - putting up movie posters of Rita Hayworth. Our verdict: It's fascinating that this classic of the Italian neo-realist movement holds its power more than 50 years after it was made. Its enduring hold on the Anglo-Saxon imagination is not something, I suspect, the French will be wild about. Issuing from Gérard Depardieu's glory years and adapted from Marcel Pagnol's novel L'Eau des Collines, it exudes a certain kind of rural Frenchness that has as become as exportable, in its way, as Richard Curtis's England. Our verdict: If any single event triggered the British exodus to Provence, the Dordogne and southern France, it was the release of the first part of this picturesque double-bill in 1986 - a good few years before Peter Mayle got going.
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But Godard in the 60s is still radical, funny and captivated by his medium in ways that make later modernists seem lazy.Ĭlaude Berri, France/Switzerland/Italy, 1986 It was the start of the first period of Godard's work, and if you are thrilled by it, I urge you to pursue richer and more emotional films (such as Vivre Sa Vie, Contempt and Pierrot le Fou). Our verdict: This is one of the turning points in film history, modernism made for peanuts, with a strange American starlet (Jean Seberg) talking away to a French Humphrey Bogart (Jean-Paul Belmondo) as Godard experimented with ways of interfering with his own story. Above all, this reminds us that "real" coverage of terrible events is itself a political weapon. But, in fact, the picture is artfully made in a black-and-white that apparently appeals to Guardian readers a lot. Pontecorvo used people who had known the real war in Algeria - from all sides - and you can tell yourself you are seeing the "true" face of outrage. For the tension in this dramatised documentary has been employed in the training and the inspiration of real-life terrorists opposed to occupying forces. Our verdict: You could argue that no modern movie has had more political influence. But Los Olvidados never woke the world up as City of God did. All the above could have been said about Luis Buñuel's Los Olvidados, made in 1950, and a better film. Our verdict: There are plenty of ways to read City of God's fourth place in this poll - first, that young people are voting and seeking a true vision of the world from the movies second, that that hope has extended to Latin America and the slums of Rio, where Fernando Mereilles' picture is set and third, that young moviegoers use the movies as a way of focusing their anger or despair about the unfairness of the world. Today, perhaps, the ending begs for a touch more irony (as villagers might turn on their heroes), but this set international standards for action cinema, the slow-mo grandeur of combat and the general infiltration of Japanese "stoicism" into the age of tight-lipped Clint Eastwood heroes.įernando Meirelles, Brazil/France/USA, 2002 Kurosawa orders the action in waves and the weather deteriorates (so you need to see the long version). Our verdict: This is still the best mixture of the western and an authentic samurai film, in which seven noble and skilled fighters (beautifully delineated) decide to defend a farming village against marauding bandits. As footballers are fond of saying, you can only beat what's put in front of you, and Amélie has done that for years. The fact that it's cleaned up in country after country (£4.32m at the UK box office at the last time of asking) shows that, approve of it or not, Amelie has got something. Its self-consciously cutie-pie tone has meant that, even before its release, it was thoroughly scorned by the People Who Count (ie, the Cannes film festival).
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Our verdict: Forget La Règle du Jeu forget L'Atalante forget Abel Gance's Napoleon if there's a single film that defines France in the eyes of the Guardian readership, it's this hyperactive magical-realist tale from the Gallic answer to Tim Burton, Jean-Pierre Jeunet. But can't you see that this is the kind of movie lousy presidents remember when they want to be kind to cinema and show their humanity? The film is clever and touching, and in its way it's an ad for cinema. Maybe I'm a snob, and I know we're playing a game, not voting for president. But Cinema Paradiso as the best foreign language film of all time? Better than M, The Rules of the Game, Ugetsu Monogatari or. Our verdict: O Guardian readers, I love you and perhaps sometimes (as a Guardian reader for 50 years) I come close to understanding you.