Babette’s Feast is a humorous social reflection with pronounced religious elements. It follows the consequential appearances of two men in an old Danish fishing village where a Protestant tradition obtains; both the men are Catholic and come from Paris, around the time of the revolutionary 1871 Paris Commune. But they have different purposes for making the trip: the first, an army officer, is sent there to be reminded of the seriousness of his military duty, which he has jeopardized through…

Cocteau’s La Belle et la Bête is a remarkable film. Whereas the well-known Disney animated feature casts Madame Leprince de Beaumont’s 1757 tale as an opulent, high-flown adventure, Cocteau’s piece is introspective and eerie, and draws the viewer into the psychology of pain and power. Cocteau’s bête is characterized by a compelling vulnerability. His trust in Belle is not suspended over a foul temper, but rather reinforces his despair and loneliness. The opening up of their relationship always throws us…

Come and See is a powerful episode from the German occupation of Belarus, set there in 1943. It follows the wartime trials of an adolescent, Florya (meaning ‘flower’), who digs for weapons at an abandoned battle site, and who becomes an over-eager conscript for a Soviet partisan militia. His attitude is tremendous: the way he shoulders off his mother’s desperation, how he winks at his two younger sisters with axe-in-hand. These haunt him (and the viewer) for the remainder of…

Although Chaplin himself was born an Englishman, City Lights is as useful to understanding the concerns of American cinema as, say, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales is to a survey of English poetry. (It is an amusing critical exercise to draw parallels between Chaplin’s film and Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull). All of the elements are here: Chaplin’s “Tramp” is a vagabond, trouble-maker, and oft-time schlemiel on the streets of Los Angeles. He goes wild for a beautiful blind woman—his Lady of Fortune—who…