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Birds, USA, 1963, 119 min. Starring Tippi
Hedren, Rod Taylor, Jessica Tandy, Suzanne Pleshette,
Veronica Cartwright. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
A young socialite visits a small town on a whim,
hoping to see a man she has met, but instead finds
herself in the middle of a bizarre and horrific
situation when the local birds begin inexplicably
attacking people. The closest thing The Master ever
made to a supernatural horror film still has tremendous
power today. The innovative use of synthesized noise
in lieu of a musical score helps emphasize the underlying
theme of the piece, one of social repression and
fears of abandonment. The sheer senselessness of
the violence stands as a symbol of the anxiety people
have that their whole frame of reference, the very
notion of reality as they perceive it, could come
crashing down in a moment's notice.
8½, Italy,
1963, 135 min. Starring Marcello Mastroianni,
Claudia Cardinale, Anouk Aimée. Directed
by Federico Fellini. Mastroianni often served
as the director's onscreen alter ego and never
more so than in this, Fellini's highly personal,
practically biographical fantasy about a filmmaker
attempting to make a film. Full of delightful
vignettes and set pieces.
The Silence,
Sweden, 1963, 95 min. Starring Ingrid Thulin,
Gunnel Lindblom. Directed by Ingmar Bergman. Two
sisters vacationing together check into a hotel
in a foreign land. The two women are as different
as night and day, and yet there is something that
ties them together for better or, more likely,
worse. The third film in Bergman's trilogy about
faith may appear to be short on plot, but it features
a depth of storytelling that only a true master
of the art form could possibly pull off.
The Gospel According
To St. Matthew, Italy-France, 1966, 135
min. Starring Enrique Irazoqui, Margherita Caruso,
Susanna Pasolini. Directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini.
Beautifully realized telling of the story of the
events leading up to Christ's crucifixion. Pasolini
may have been a Marxist – a strange choice
to make such a film to be sure – but he
was foremost a poet and it is his strengths as
such that he brings to this moving piece of work.
Persona, Sweden,
1966, 90 min. Starring Bibi Andersson, Liv Ullman.
Directed by Ingmar Bergman. A young woman is assigned
to care for an actress who has gone mysteriously
mute. She takes advantage of the silence to bare
her soul. But as the women spend more time together
it becomes less and less clear what is real and
what is not – or for that matter who is
who. Bergman uses another of his psychological
games to play with perceptions and the two actresses
give intense performances.
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