Favorite foreign films?

[Jeebo]

Last edited Thu Aug 24, 2023, 10:20 PM - Edit history (1)

Here are my favorite foreign films:

Beauty and the Beast, 1946, French, Jean Cocteau director, Josette Day as Beauty, Jean Marais as the Beast. Imagine a painting of the well-known fairy tale that comes to life and moves. That's this movie.

Run Lola Run, 1998, German, Tom Tykwer director, Franka Potente as Lola. This movie is a relentless 80-minute roller coaster ride.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, 2007, French, Julian Schnabel director, Mathieu Amalric as Jean-Dominique Bauby. A sad and tragic true story but nevertheless uplifting because of what the central character was able to accomplish with what little he had.

The Wall, 2012, Austrian, Julian Polsler director, Martina Gedeck as the unnamed central character. This is one of the best science fiction movies ever made, in my humble opinion. I categorize it as science fiction because the title phenomenon can be explained only as coming from some mysterious extraterrestrial technology.

And three silent films:

Metropolis, 1927, German

Battleship Potemkin, 1925, Russian

The Passion of Joan of Arc, 1928, French, Maria Falconetti as the title character. When Joan of Arc was interrogated there were scribes present who took careful notes of the interrogation. Those notes survive and as I understand it were used essentially as the script for this film. That has a lot to do with how realistic this film is. It's so realistic that I have seen this movie only once and could not bear to watch it again, because of that burning at the stake scene at the end.

-- Ron