Victim

This is the first English language film to use the word "homosexual"...42 years after its very first use in film (in the German 1919 film Anders als die Anderen).

Dirk Bogard plays barrister Melville Farr, who gets caught up in systematic blackmails of gays when homosexuality was still illegal in the UK. One young man, Barrett, is threatened with a photo of himself and Farr being exposed. To protect the much more prominent public figure Farr, he steals money from his employer when he runs out.

The police coming to the construction site where he works kicks the story off. He runs, unable to find much assistance from his friends, most of whom are gay and living a lie themselves and some of whom are also victims of the blackmailer. In the end, the police catch up with him and he hangs himself in his cell.

Farr, feeling guilty for not having taken Barrett's desperate phone calls, starts digging into the issue and trying to find people willing to speak up about the blackmails, but most refuse. Farr is married and his wife knew about a relationship he had with a man before their marriage but she is somewhat stumped that he still feels the same way. She does, however, stand by him throughout.

Ultimately, it has to be Farr himself that stands up against the blackmailers, even if it will cost him his career.

7/10
  

L'année dernière à Marienbad (Last Year at Marienbad)

Here is a film that has divided cineasts since it came out.

Some hate it. It has been included in Harry Medved's 1978 book The Fifty Worst Films of all Time (and How They Got that Way), but that book also lists the likes of The Omen, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia or Valley of the Dolls (so it needs to be taken with a grain of salt).

Some love it. Those who do (this includes me), do so passionately, it seems. Roger Ebert gave it a coveted four star review. And while I'm linking to other pages and many an article has been written about Marienbad, here is another one. You're welcome.

The story is quickly told. At a luxurious hotel in Marienbad, a man approaches a woman and tells her that they have met and fell in love the previous year at the hotel and he wants her to run away with him now. The woman, however, does not seem to recall the meeting of the year before. What complicates matters is that she is there with her husband. In the end, we don't know if the first meeting ever happened.

That is really all of the story. There are several theories of what it all means. The most common one is that the narrative is based on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, in which the man has to convince the woman to come with him (out of the underwold) and to do so on her own account.

What we are shown is a series of breathtaking images. In wide shots the shadows do not match. The people are decked out in Chanel clothing. The pose like mannequins for a long while before they start moving. Heard words do not match moving lips.

Seeing this, to me, was utterly fascinating. And I am not usually a fan of French cinema of the 1960's and 1970's like so many others, unexplicaply, appear to be.

Love it or hate it, the film is unique and you have never seen anything like it.

10/10

The Twilight Zone: Five Characters in Search of an Exit

An army major wakes up in unfamiliar surroundings with no memory how he got there. Worse even, he doesn't know who or where he is. The room he is in has no doors or windows, the only light source coming from high above his head.

Almost immediately he encounters other characters in the same situation - a clown, a ballet dancer (moving mechanically), a hobo and a bag piper. The major starts questioning the situation and looking for a way out.

Rod Serling makes an ominous appearance, looking over the edge of the pit, talking to the camera, telling us,

"We will not end the nightmare, we will only explain it, because this is The Twilight Zone."

Everyone tries to make the major feel more comfortable, explaining that they all suffer from neither hunger nor thirst and tell him that his efforts to get out are futile. They have themselves tried every conceivable option long ago. The newcomer then concludes that they are in hell.

The only break in their eternal boredom is an occasional ringing of a bell, so loud it makes their surroundings shake and hurts their ears. In the end, the five turn out to be toys at the bottom of a bin, collected for poor children as Christmas presents.

6/10

The Innocents

The 1961 film The Innocents is based on the novel The Turn of the Screw by Henry James. Originally, this was adapted for the stage and there is a theatrical feel to it. The setting is as ghostly and gothic as it gets in black-and-white British horror films - a country estate, way too big for its few inhabitants.

The focus of the story is on the new governess Miss Giddens (Deborah Kerr) and the two children she is hired to care for, Flora and Miles. The previous governess has died about a year before. Later we learn that she took her own life after the accidental death of her abusive boyfriend, who also worked on the estate as a valet.

Both, the former governess and the valet, appear to Miss Giddens as ghosts and she concludes that the children are possessed by the spirits of the lovers.

She takes it upon herself to get to the bottom of it all and - ultimately - save the children from the peril they are in. The two youngsters do appear to be rather mean spirited, especially the little boy. Miss Giddens' solution is to send off the staff and Flora and stay behind with just the boy, to help him freeing himself from his demon by facing him. It ends in tragedy.

Wonderful, classic film. The feel and setting was much later imitated in The Others, which I also recomend wholeheartedly.

8/10