The last of Wajda's famous trilogy, the one that signifies despair, has Cybulski, the 'Polish James Dean', as a young fighter no longer killing Germans but instructed to assassinate a recently appointed communist official. His deepening love affair with a hotel barmaid has him starting to question the value of his struggle. Superb.
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DOCTOR ZHIVAGO (1965)
Certification15 Our Rating
David Lean's epic romance set against the turbulant backdrop of the Russian revolution. One man's struggle for moral political and personal survival amidst the complex web of intrigue and tangled loyalties that accompanied the fall of the Tsar.
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FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS (1943)
CertificationPG Our Rating
Robert Jordan is an idealist and with his skills as a demolition expert he finds himself with the opportunity to marry both by helping the anti-fascists during the Spanish Civil War. Amongst the band of freedom fighters Robert joins is Maria, an innocent but impassioned and beautiful young woman. As the group draw towards their ultimate mission so Robert and Maria's friendship develops into something far deeper, intensified by their uncertain fate. For The Whom the Bell Tolls was showered with O
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MEMORIES OF UNDERDEVELOPMENT (1968)
Certification15 Our Rating
A mournful elegy by a 38-year-old bourgeois playboy, writer and liberal who remained in Cuba after Castro's successful revolution while his family, friends and wife all fled for greener pastures in the US. In fragmented narration we learn of his love life, his failure to cling on to what he had, his inability to identify with the revolution's achievements and his quick appreciation of its downsides; 'You are not a counter-revolutionary, you are not a revolutionary, you are nada'.
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ON THE WATERFRONT (1954)
CertificationPG Our Rating
Winner of 8 Oscars, this is the story of a misfit who challenges the power of the tough New York Longshoremen's Union. Steiger plays his brother, caught between divided loyalties, and Eve Marie Saint plays the woman he falls in love with. Highly recommended viewing despite its political premises. NB the special pleading on behalf of informers, deriving presumably from the fact that Kazan and Schulberg named names during the McCarthy witch-hunts.
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THE CRANES ARE FLYING (1957)
CertificationPG Our Rating
Set during WW2; Veronica is madly in love with her fiancé, Boris, who departs for the front to do his patriotic duty. The story unravels to depict a poignant portrayal of blameless individuals doing their best to survive the travails of tragedy and hardship in the face of such an all consuming conflict. The compelling narrative is complemented by stunning black and white cinematography and the film deservedly won the Cannes Palme d'Or in 1958, reintroducing Soviet cinema to the Western world.
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THE PRIVATE LIVES OF ELIZABETH AND ESSEX (1939)
CertificationU Our Rating
Nominated for five Academy Awards; Michael Curtiz's expansive period drama sets the tumultuous on-again, off-again affair between Queen Elizabeth I and the second Earl of Essex against Essex's powerful ambition to assume power in England. Having won several important battles, Essex's popularity among the masses is soaring, but despite his own substantial cunning he is ultimately no match for his Queen, a woman Essex greatly admires but has sworn to usurp. An epic, rip-roaring reinterpretation of
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