Smashbomb

"I left Africa and childish things, and went to live in Paris, where Thérèse Raquin kept me on the straight and narrow. Read at an impressionable age, it’s a very important moral life lesson about guilt and consequences—without ever having to stick your finger into the pit of hell itself. At the time I was going to the American Library, and looking at the handsome boys who didn’t know I existed because I was a little chubby teenager. The descriptions of Therese sitting there with Laurent, playing dominoes in their house above the shop, and that burning desire for somebody rang very true for a little plump 14-year-old on the banks of the Seine."

Source

Kudos

Richard Hell recommended Shoah (1985) in Movies (curated)

Shoah (1985)

1985 | Documentary

9.7

(3 Ratings)

Movie Favorite

"Again, an extremely individualist author, if even, in his case, in leftist, selfless empathy; a reconceiver of his medium/genre, making a very dark documentary about human reality. I’ve seen it twice all the way through, I guess (it’s nine-and-a-half-hours long). This subject—the treatment of Jews in Nazi territories, primarily slave labor and extermination camps—is always controversial, but to me it’s compulsively gripping, and Lanzmann’s approach, whether or not you have some argument with it, is original, conscientious to the nth, and the film supremely thought-provoking. He is fascinating too—a thinker of the highest order whose moral and physical bravery equals his level of thought."

Source

Kudos

William Friedkin recommended Le samouraï (1967) in Movies (curated)

Le samouraï (1967)

1967 | Crime, Film-Noir

8.8

(8 Ratings)

Movie Favorite

"The ultimate existential gangster film. Hypnotic, detailed, ritualistic, it has influenced  films like John Woo’s The Killer and the more recent Drive. Alain Delon  gives his most memorable performance as an ice-cold assassin above such mundane  concerns as moral conscience. Though violent in its subject matter, Jean-Pierre  Melville’s film is also cool, meticulously lit, and classically framed. It  operates in a kind of dream state. It’s the opposite of the fevered emotional style of  most gangster films. The pauses and silences help make it the visual equivalent of Harold  Pinter’s dialogue. This is my favorite Melville film, and the extras are among  Criterion’s finest, including an interview with John Woo and one with Melville himself."

Source

Kudos