Frank Capra's classic black comedy is frantic and blessed with a sparkling performance from Cary Grant, who actually was only convinced to participate in this film by the chance to reunite with Jean Adair (who plays one of his creaky aunts) , his old vaudeville companion who had nursed him through a bout of rheumatic fever 20 years prior... Grant would later call this the least favourite of all his films and donated his entire fee to US war charities, but the film's black humour and farce has stood the test of time.
Raise the Red Lantern (1991)
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One of the most celebrated members of the "fifth generation" of Chinese film-makers, Zhang Yimou (director, more recently, of Hero and House of Flying Daggers) backed up the international success of his earlier films with this, a film about a repressed woman in 1920s China, full of vivid colour use, symbolic compositions and stylised sets, that is both compelling and beautiful to watch.
Arsenic and old lace:
ReplyDeleteAlways good to have some Peter Lorre on EFAS, and he is one of the highlights of this black farce, along with the dotty murderous old aunts.
Raise the red lantern:
One of the films that really heralded the emergence of Chinese cinema (beyond martial arts films anyway), Gong Li is superb, the atmosphere of deception, intrigue and machiavellian power-games between the 4 concubines (and their servants) is captivating, and the colour cinematography is a visual feast, the kind of ravishing colour use that Western films had never succeeded at and that would come to define the freshness and excitement of modern Asian cinema.