What would film-maker K G George pick, if he were asked to choose four best films that he liked from World Cinema? Obviously, it would be some of the best. Those film buffs who have missed these classics can watch them again, at the monthly Banner Film Festival to be held this coming Sunday at the Lenin Balavady, behind Tagore Theatre in Vazhuthacaud.
The festival starts with the screening of the relatively slow-paced film ‘The 400 Blows’ directed by Francois Truffaut at 9.30 am. One of the films that defined the French New Wave, ‘The 400 Blows’ reflects many of the traits that were characteristic of the movement.
The film is about an adolescent Antoine Doinel living in Paris, who is often misunderstood much more than an usual teenager is and is thought to be a troublemaker by his parents and teachers. The film received numerous awards and nominations, including the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Director, the OCIC Award, and a Palme d’Or nomination in 1959. The film was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Writing in 1960.
This will be followed by the screening of ‘Cinema Paradiso’ (1988) written and directed by Giuseppe Tornatore at 11.30 am. In Rome during the 1980s, famous Italian film director Salvatore Di Vita returns home late one evening, where his girlfriend sleepily tells him that his mother called to say that someone named Alfredo has died. Salvatore obviously shies away from committed relationships, and he has not been back to his home village of Giancaldo, Sicily, for 30 years. As she asks him who Alfredo is, Salvatore flashes back to his childhood.
After lunch it is Hitchcock time, with the screening of his most talked about film - no, not ‘Psycho’, but ‘The Birds.’
A film that provides no answers is how this ambitious adaptation of a Daphne du Maurier story is known as. Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 follow-up to his 1961 ‘Psycho’ is not as horrifically shocking as ‘Psycho’, but ‘The Birds’ is supposed to be a more sophisticated film, and represents a high watermark in the prolific career of the maestro.
Reviews raved about the film as ‘’groundbreaking’’ on several levels of cinematic technique and dramatic form. ‘The Birds’ was a film that many critics felt combined forward-thinking special effects with an unconventional sound-scape to instill a palpable lurking fear in the audience.
The festival concludes with Fellini’s ‘La Dolce Vita.’ The film is the story of a passive journalist’s week in Rome, and his search for both happiness and love that will never come. ‘La Dolce Vita’ won the Palme d’Or (Golden Palm) at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival and the Oscar for Best Costumes.
The movie centres on Marcello Rubini, a writer from a provincial middle-class family, who has set aside his literary ambitions to become a fashionable gossip columnist and reporter on the sensational activities of the smart sybarites around the Via Veneto.
They’re an assortment of international aristocracy, showbiz folk, dubious nouveaux-riches, and their assorted hangers-on.