সেলুলয়েড


ইদানিং কোলকাতায়, অবসর কিছুটা বেশি, তাই সময় হচ্ছে সিনেমা দেখার। জামশেদপুরে 'সেলুলয়েড চ্যাপ্টারের' সদস্য ছিলাম কিছুদিন। কিন্তু পেশাগত ব্যস্ততায় ওদের উৎসবগুলোয় যাওয়ার সময়ই হতো না। ভালো সিনেমা দেখতে দেখতে  একটা মেজাজ তৈরি হয়ে যায়। বিশেষত আন্তর্জাতিক পরিচালকদের ছবি। ত্রুফোর 400 Blows ছবিটা সত্যজিৎ রায় নাকি তাঁর এপ্রেন্টিসশিপ সময়টায় বাহান্ন বার দেখেছিলেন!  এখন বাংলাতেও আবার কিছুটা ভালো ছবি তৈরি হচ্ছে। আর আজকাল বাড়িতে বসেও দেখা যাচ্ছে পুরনো অনেক বিদেশী ছবি।

খবরের কাগজের রিভিউ পড়ে বহুবার ঠকেছি। নিজের ব্লগে তাই এবার থেকে ছবিগুলোর একটা নোট রাখছি, আর নম্বর দিচ্ছি ১০ পয়েন্ট স্কেলে।  এইভাবে একটা ব্যক্তিগত স্কোর কার্ড।  ১০-এর মধ্যে ৪ (চার) হচ্ছে পাশ মার্ক।

বাংলা সিনেমা

১। মনের মানুষ     /  গৌতম ঘোষ   ( 6.2 / 10 )

২। ইতি মৃণালিনী /   অপর্ণা সেন    (  4.8 / 10 )

৩। রঞ্জনা, আমি আর আসবো না  /  অঞ্জন দত্ত  ( 5.1 / 10 )

৪। আবহমান / ঋতু পর্ণ ঘোষ  ( 6.1 / 10 )

৫। অপরাজিতা তুমি / অনিরুদ্ধ রায় চৌধুরী,  ( 4.2 / 10 )
     (কাহিনীঃ সুনীল গঙ্গোপাধ্যায়, লোকেশানঃ সানফ্রান্সিসকো  )

আবার !  আবার সেই ক্লান্তিকর অবৈধ প্রেমের পুনরাবৃত্তি। বাংলা সিনেমায় এই নিয়ে কতবার ? !!   সিনেমাটোগ্রাফিতে নতুন কিছু নেই। অভিনয় দুর্বল, কয়েকটি মুহূর্ত ছাড়া। ক্যামেরার   কাজ  অপরিণত। শব্দ গ্রহন ও সম্পাদনা দুর্বল। সঙ্গীত ( শান্তনু মৈত্র )  নিজের মতো এগিয়ে যায়, ছবির সাথে বিশেষ যোগ নেই তার। সব  মিলিয়ে পাশ মার্কের একটু ওপরে।  মোট স্কোর  4.2 / 10


৬ । কাহানি / সুজয় ঘোষ,   মার্চ ২০১২, 
        

         
অভিনয়ঃ  বিদ্যা বালান, পরমব্রত, সিদ্দিকি
          মোট স্কোর   6.0 / 10


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My personal selection of 160 foreign movies that must be seen :   I may keep adding  to this list as & when I get to see some more.   - S K Lahiri.



Director   (no.of films selected)            >              Titles
Abbas Kiarostami (6)  > Shirin (2008) / Taste of Cherry / Close Up / 
The wind will carry us / Through the olive trees / Where is my friend's home

Almodover  (1)   > All about my mother
Antonioni  (3)    > La Notte  / Red Desert  /  Blow Up
Bergman I (8)      >  Smiles of a summer night / Scenes from a marriage / Wild strawberries / Summer  with Monika / Fanny & Alexander / The silence / Seventh Seal / The virgin spring
Bertolucci  B (7)  >  The last emperor / The sheltering sky / The conformist / Stealing beauty / The dreamers / Last tango in Paris / Besieged
Billy Wilder (2)   >  Sunset boulevard / Some like it hot
Bresson  R  (4)     >  The trial of Joan of Arc / Pickpocket / Mouchete / Diary of a country priest
Bunuel  L  (8)       > The discreet charm of the bourgeoise / The obscure object of desire / Land without bread / Nazarin / Diary of a chambermaid / Andalusian dog / Simon of desert / The phantom of liberty
Carlos Saura (2)   > Blood wedding / Secret of Anna

Chabrol (1)   >  The butcher
Chaplin  C  (2)       >  The great dictator / Modern times
Chukhrai  G (1)     >  Ballad of a soldier
Cocteau  J (1)       >  The blood of a poet

Dardenne Brothers (1)   > The kid with a bike (2011)
David Lean (1)     >  Lawrence of Arabia
Eisenstein S (2)      >  Battleship Potemkin / Ivan the terrible
Fassbinder R  (5)  >  Love is colder than death / Marriage of Maria Brown / Beware of a holy whore / Veronica Voss / Chinese roulette
Fellini F  (4)         >  La dolce vita / 8 and ½  / La strada / Nights of Caberia
Godard  J L  (14)   >  Two or three things I know about her / First name Carmen / Breathless / In praise of love / A woman is a woman / Pierrot Le Fou / Masculine Feminine / Sympathy for the devil / Passion / Alphaville / JLG by JLG (1995) / Goodbye to language (2014) / Le Petit Solidat / Forever Mozart
Giancarlo G (1)   >  Caligula
Herzog W (8)      >  The enigma of Kasper Hauser / Aguirre : the wrath of God / Fata Morgana / Stroszek / Even the dwarf started small / Signs of life / Heart of glass / Lessons of darkness
Hitchcock A (4)   >  The 39 steps / Rear window / North by Northwest / The man who knew too much
Imamura (1)        >  Black rains

Janov (1)   >   Colour of pomegranates
Jansco (1)           >  Electra, my love

Jafar Panahi (2)   >  Crimson Gold / The white baloon
Jiri Menzel  (3)   >  I served the king of England / Closely watched trains / Capricious summer

Jodorowsky  (1)   >  El Topo
Kalatazov M (1)  > The cranes are flying
Kim Ki Duc (2)     >  Samaritan girl / Spring Summer Fall Winter Spring
Kurosawa A (7)    >  Kagemusha / Dersu Ujala / Rashoman / Red beard / Throne of blood / Dreams / Lower depths
Milos Forman (2)  >  One flew over the cuckoo’s nest / Loves of a Blonde
Minnelli  (1)           >  Lust for life
Mizoguchi (2)        >  Ujetsu Mongatari / Ballad of Narayama
Martin Brest (1)    > Scent of a woman
Makhmalbaf M (1)  >  A moment of innocence
Ozu Y (1)                   >  An autumn afternoon
Orson Wales (1)     >  Citizen Kane
Paolo Pasolini
(5)    > Oedipux Rex / The Canterbury Tales / Decameron / The Arabian nights / The hawks & the sparrows
Polanski R (3)        >  Rosemary’s baby / Knife in the water / The Pianist
Resnais (1)     >  Night & Fog

Rohmer Eric (4)      >  Paulin at the beach / Love in the afternoon / The aviator’s wife / The bakery girl of Monceau
Ron Howard (1)      >  A beautiful mind
Spielberg S (2)           >  The jurrasic park / Schindler’s list
Stanley Kubric (3)   >  Eyes wide shut / A clockwork orange / 2001: a space odyssey
Szabo Istvan (2)      >  Taking sides / Mephisto
Tarkovsky A  (4)      >  Andrei Rublev / Solaris / Nostalgia / Sacrifice
Teshigahara (1)      > Woman in the dunes
Theo Angelopoulos (2)  >  Eternity and a day / Landscape in the mist
Tom Twyker (1)     >  Run Lola Run
Truffaut F  (10)         >   The man who loved women /  The last metro / Day for night / The 400 blows / Farenheit 451 / Shoot the piano player / Jules et Jim / Stolen kisses / Small change / Mississippi Mermaid
Visconti L (1)    > The damned
Vittorio De Sica (4)   > Bicycle thieves / Two women / Umberto D / Shoe shine
William Wyler (1)  > Ben-Hur
Zoltan Fabri (1)      >  Boys from the Paul Street

Total 160 movies.



-----------------------------------------------------------------------------


Notes on films :


1. Even Dwarfs Started Small
/ Werner Herzog.   Its a 1970 film.

Herzog is one of the most influential filmmakers in New German Cinema and one of the most extreme personalities in film, Werner Herzog quickly gained recognition not only for creating some of the most fantastic narratives in the Film history, but for pushing himself and his crew to absurd and unprecedented lengths. He is a film director, producer, screenwriter, actor, and opera director!

( reviews are mostly sourced from the IMDb)




Plot: "The inhabitants of an institution in a remote country rebel against their keepers. Their acts of rebellion are by turns humorous, boring and alarming. An allegory on the problematic nature of fully liberating the human spirit, as both commendable and disturbing elements of our nature comes forward. The film shows how justifiable revolt may be empowering, but may also turn to chaos and depravity. The allegory is developed in part by the fact that the film is cast entirely with dwarfs." 
My rating : ( 7.7 / 10 )

2. That obscure object of desire / Luis Bunuel.  Its a 1977 film.


"Just after boarding a train, much to the surprise of his fellow passengers, a man pours a bucket of water over a young girl on the platform. Over the next few hours he explains (and we see in flashback) how he became obsessed by her (she was played by two different actresses, representing different sides of her personality; this is something unique in this Bunuel film), and how she tantalised him, but would never allow him to satisfy his desire for her..."
My rating : ( 7.5 / 10 )

3. 2 or 3 things I know about her / Godard. It is a 1967 film.


"In this film, 'Her' refers to both Paris, the character of Juliette Janson and the actress playing her, Marina Vlady. The film is a kind of dramatised documentary, illustrating and exaggerating the emotionless lives of characters in the new Paris of the 60s. The film focuses primarily on the sophisticated but empty life of Juliette Janson ((Marina Vlady), a seemingly bourgeois married mother who begins her day dropping off her screaming child to a man who has a flourishing business doing childcare for call girls. - Godard, doing a voice over in the role of a self-questioning narrator, discusses his fears to the audience about the contemporary world."
My rating : ( 7.2 / 10 )

4. First Name Carmen / Godard. Its a 1983 film.


"Carmen is a member of a terrorist gang who falls in love with a young police officer guarding a bank that she and her cohorts try to rob. She leads him on while dragging the two of them closer to their ultimate doom. Jean-Luc Godard intercuts the film with shots of a string quartet practicing Beethoven, and his main protagonist, Carmen, is played by Maruschka Detmers creating a stunning effect in many scenes of extended nudity."

My rating : ( 7.4 / 10 ) 

5. The Man Who Loved Women (1977) . F Truffaut


"A very engrossing & entertaining film, - it might just be Truffaut's funniest comedy but, what is more, it also presents an insightful picture of an obsessive womanizer Bertrand, brilliantly played by Charles Denner.

Already in the very beginning of the movie it is told that the protagonist has died.  At the cemetery where many women are attending Bertrand’s burial, we enter a long flashback which equals most of the film. Those women are all the ones that 40 years old engineer loved. -Flashback: Bertrand's life and love affairs, told by himself while writing an autobiographical novel. – It is a film about the love relationships, the need to charm and the literary creation."

My rating : 7.5 / 10


6. The Sheltering Sky (1990) by Bertolucci


"The American artist couple Port and Kit Moresby travels aimless through Africa, searching for new experiences that could give new sense to their relationship. But the flight to distant regions leads both only deeper into despair."


My rating :  7.7 /10

7. Stealing Beauty  (1996) by Bertolucci
 


"Stealing Beauty" is a fluid, intoxicating work. The flow of the director's images creates a sense of heightened awareness; every frame is eroticized, potent. (The north Italian countryside in the rolling Tuscan hills has never looked more alluring.)  

Story: After her mother commits suicide, nineteen year old Lucy Harmon travels to Italy to her ancestral farmhouse.  However, she has other reasons for wanting to go. She wants to renew her acquaintance with Nicolo Donati, a young boy with whom she fell in love on her last visit four years ago. She also is trying to solve the parental riddle left in a diary written by her dead mother, Sara."
My rating :  7.3 /10


8. The Dreamers (2003) by Bertolucci




"Set against the background of the '68 Paris student riots. While most students take the lead in the May 'revolution', a French poet's twin son Theo and daughter Isabelle enjoy the good life in his grand Paris home. As film buffs they meet and 'adopt' modest, conservatively educated Californian student Matthew. With their parents away for a month, they drag him into an orgy of indulgence of all senses, losing all of his and the last of their innocence. A sexual threesome shakes their rapport, yet only the outside reality will break it up.
A masterpiece with controversy stamped all over it. A swooning love letter to Paris, to cinema and to love."
My rating :  7.5 /10


9.  A Clockwork Orange (1971) by Stanley Kubrick 


“Protagonist Alex is an "ultraviolent" youth in futuristic Britain. As with all luck, his eventually runs out and he's arrested and convicted of murder and rape. While in prison, Alex learns of an experimental program in which convicts are programmed to detest violence. If he goes through the program his sentence will be reduced and he will be back on the streets sooner than expected. But Alex's ordeals are far from over once he hits the mean streets of Britain that he had a hand in creating. - Kubrick's best film ever, absolutely mind-blowing, quite disturbing though.”

My rating :  7.4 /10


10. The Last Emperor (1987) by Bertolucci

"The story of the final Emperor of China.   A dramatic history of Pu Yi, the last of the Emperors of China, from his lofty birth and brief reign in the Forbidden City, the object of worship by half a billion people; through his abdication, his decline and dissolute lifestyle; his exploitation by the invading Japanese, and finally to his obscure existence as just another peasant worker in the People's Republic.
The film is well made, informative and quite compelling, which conveyed an emotional emptiness, and maybe even sadness at the end."
My rating :  7.9 /10


11. Knife in the Water (1962) by Roman Polanski





"The first Polish film to be nominated for a Foreign Language Oscar, Roman Polanski's "Knife in the Water" is one of the most impressive director's debuts.

The story is simple. A wealthy couple on its way to spend a weekend on their yacht picks up a young and attractive hitchhiker. The middle-aged husband, a successful and cynical sportswriter invites the young man on board, perhaps to show off his nice yacht, his seamanship, and eventually, his superiority. His young and sexy wife does not say much but as the yacht moves along and tension between two men rises, she seems to enjoy the presence of a passenger and the obvious competition between them for her attention."


My rating :  7.7 /10



12. Fahrenheit 451 (1966) by Francois Truffaut



“Based on the 1951 Ray Bradbury novel of the same name. Guy Montag is a firefighter who lives in a lonely, isolated society where books have been outlawed by a government fearing an independent-thinking public. It is the duty of firefighters to burn any books on sight or said collections that have been reported by informants. People in this society including Montag's wife are drugged into compliancy and get their information from wall-length television screens. After Montag falls in love with book-hoarding Clarisse, he begins to read confiscated books. It is through this relationship that he begins to question the government's motives behind book-burning. Montag is soon found out, and he must decide whether to return to his job or run away knowing full well the consequences that he could face if captured.”

My rating :  6.8 /10

13. Summer with Monika (1953) by Bergman
 





"Harry Lund is a nineteen year old young man who meets Monika, a romantic, reckless and rebellious seventeen year old, and they fall in love. They leave their families and jobs in their small town, Harry gets his father's boat and they spend the summer together in an isolated island. Monika gets pregnant, and Harry decides to marry her. He grows-up, gets a job and returns to his studies, trying to improve their lives and raise their daughter June, while Monika just wants to have fun.
The adventure ends up as a sad experience, without a job, money and having to steal some food to survive. Harry and Monika decide to return to the city, to get married and start from the bottom, without knowing that a painful time of suffering is waiting ahead."
My rating :  7.4 /10


14.  Smiles of a summer night  (1955) by Ingmer Bergman 





"A small town at the turn of the century. Lawer Fredrik EGerman has an ingenue-wife, Anne, and a grown-up son, Henrik, from an earlier marriage. His wife is still untouched, and instead he meets his former mistress Desiree after her performance at the theatre. - This light, frothy piece (in terms of Ingmar Bergman's general oeuvre) was made whilst the director was undergoing financial troubles, stomach pains (he weighed only 125 pounds at the time) and a romance with Harriet Andersson that was on the rocks. Bergman later said that if he hadn't made this film when he did, he probably would have attempted suicide."

My rating :  7.6 /10



15. Fanny & Alexander (1982)by I. Bergman



"The title characters are children in the exuberant and colorful Ekdahl household in a Swedish town early in the twentieth century. Their parents, Oscar and Emilie, are the director and the leading lady of the local theatre company. Oscar's mother and brother are its chief patrons. After Oscar's early death, his widow marries the bishop and moves with her children to his austere and forbidding chancery. The children are immediately miserable. The film dramatizes and resolves those conflicts. A sub-plot features Isak, a local Jewish merchant who is the grandmother's lover and whose odd household becomes the children's refuge."

My rating :  7.9 /10


16. The 400 blows (1959) by F. Truffaut



"A young Parisian boy, Antoine Doinel, neglected by his derelict parents, skips school, sneaks into movies, runs away from home, steals things, and tries (disastrously) to return them. Like most kids, he gets into more trouble for things he thinks are right than for his actual trespasses. Unlike most kids, he gets whacked with the big stick. He inhabits a Paris of dingy flats, seedy arcades, abandoned factories, and workaday streets, a city that seems big and full of possibilities only to a child's eye."

My rating :  8.0 /10


17. Scent of a woman (1992) by Martin Brest



"Frank is a retired Lt Col in the US army. He's blind and impossible to get along with. Charlie is at school and is looking forward to going to university; to help pay for a trip home for Christmas, he agrees to look after Frank over thanksgiving. Frank's niece says this will be easy money, but she didn't reckon on Frank spending his thanksgiving in New York."

My rating :  7.8 /10

18. Woman in the Dunes (1964) by Teshigahara




"An amateur entomologist searching for insects by the sea is trapped by local villagers into living with a mysterious woman who spends almost all her time preventing her home from being swallowed up by advancing sand dunes. The woman and the trapped man begin a strange and erotic relationship that stretches over years, as the man's hope for escape dims."

My rating :  7.1 /10


19. Bicycle Thieves (1948) by Vittorio De Sica



"Vittorio De Sica's ground/heartbreaking motion picture, The Bicycle Thief, is based on a very simple ideal for a story- man against the elements. In this case the elements are of a society that is often cruel and unforgiving, and that a job in post-war Rome is looked on as the luckiest of good luck charms.

Such a man as presented by De Sica is Maggiorani (an actor who really is the type of actor right off the street), a father of a little boy who gets a job putting up movie posters along some walls in Rome. To do this he needs a bicycle, or the job will be lost, and he gets one following a pawning of linen sheets. Very soon though, the bicycle is stolen, and from there a sad downward spiral unravels for the man and his son as they scour the streets for the bicycle."


My rating :  8.1 /10


20. Throne of blood (1957) by A Kurosawa 
 


"A transposition of Shakespeare's 'Macbeth' to medieval Japan. After a great military victory, Lords Washizu and Miki are lost in the dense Cobweb Forest, where they meet a mysterious old woman who predicts great things for Washizu and even greater things for Miki's descendants. Once out of the forest, Washizu and Miki are immediately promoted by the Emperor. Washizu, encouraged by his ambitious wife, plots to make even more of the prophecy come true, even if it means killing the Emperor.
Swirling mist, colossal trees dripping with rain, rich black volcanic soil and bulky fortress architecture provide the imposing, dread-laden backdrop against which the humans move in superbly stylized patterns. The director chose to shoot the action on Mount Fuji precisely because of the volcanic soil - and even had truckloads brought to the studio for pickup shots."
My rating :  7.2 /10

21. Last Tango in Paris (1987) by Bertolucci




"A young Parision woman begins a sordid affair with a middle-aged American businessman who lays out ground rules that their clandestine relationship will be based only on sex. Stars: Marlon Brando, Maria Schneider, Maria Michi, Giovanna Galletti."
My rating :  6.9 /10

4 comments:

  1. last tango কিন্তু আমার মনে হয় dreamers-এর চেয়ে অনেক বেশি rating পেতে পারে । in fact ... ওটা না থাকলে dreamers হত কিনা জানি না । আমার তো sequel মনে হয়েছিল ।

    ReplyDelete
  2. List e Polanski (tao abar Pianist) achey kintu Pasolini nei!!!!!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anirban,
      Pasolini-r chhobi ekhono dekhaa hayni, dekhaa holei ekhaane include korbo; naa-dekhaa chhobir aalaadaa list aachhe. Polanski-r 'The Pianist' aamaar priyo chhobi.

      Delete
  3. hmmmm ekhane jara thaktei parto... lars-von-trier, gasper noe, john abraham, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Darren Aronofsky... aro naam mone porchena...

    shankar lahiri... apni e... khnuje peye valo lagche... naya dashak e apnar kothopokothon porlam... relate korlam... apni ki kolkata little magazien mela ba boimelay kolkata asben?? apni ki akhon kolkatatei thaken? apnar sathe dekha korar jonyo unmukh thaklam...

    somtirtha nandi

    ReplyDelete