Thread: Foreign Films

One of my favourites is "La Reine Margot", a.k.a. "Queen Margot", from the Alexandre Dumas novel. It shows the events following the forced marriage of the king's sister, Marguerite de Valois, to the Protestant King Henri of Navarre, possibly as an attempted reconciliation, and possibly to lure French Protestants into Paris for the St. Valentine's Day massacre. It is a grim and gloomy story of the principal characters intriguing, sometimes unsuccessfully, to save their lives, and although intensely erotic, it is the sort of erotic you do not wish to be around. But there is optimism in it, for we see Margot finding herself, and ending up a better person than she began. It also reminds us that France was a living advertisement, like the Spanish Inquisition, for all the Elizabethans wanted to keep out of the English court, politics and Reformation.

I once saw the star, Isabelle Dajani, in a modern Hollywood thriller with Sharon Stone. I forget the name, although no doubt it had one. That was a lesson, for although I think she is an incomparably superior actress, that film turned her into a sort of second-rate Sharon Stone. Let's hope she got over it.

Another favourite of mine, "The Quest for Fire", is tailor-made for the world market, because it contains no word of any real-life language. It is a story of prehistoric man, but unlike many, it is probably very true to life. They had Desmond Morris the zoologist and author of "The Naked Ape", as consultant, and Anthony Burgess, the novelist and linguist, composed the language. It shows the interaction between tribes, and perhaps even species, at different levels of cultural evolution. But what most people remember is Rae Dawn Chong's costume, which consisted of two colours of wood-ash.

A more recent French film is "La graine et le mulet", a.k.a. "Couscous", which is the story of an Algerian family, long-term residents in a French Mediterranean seaport, who strive to open a restaurant in a near-derelict ship. It shows them fighting their way through hideous bureaucracy, in a country where prejudice runs a little further up the social scale than in ours, plus facing a disaster or two of their own. But again, it is an optimistic film, in which they keep their identity and yet end up more content and valued members of French society than they were before.

Anything with Gerard Depardieu is good, but two of my favourites are his "Cyrano de Bergerac" (the man who taught me fencing around 1970 was no thinner and he was very, very good), and "Vatel". In the latter he is the valued and respected estate manager of the Prince de Condé, a great general who must win the favour of Louis XIV, and a military appointment, to avoid financial ruin. This means laying on ruinously lavish entertainment for a royal visit. Tim Roth is a convincingly odious villain (harder to find in the movie business than a hero), but several others who seemed pretty repulsive turn out on the side of the angels after all. But Vatel's downfall comes when the prince gambles his services, like a slave's, for the king's new palace of Versailles.

If a British film counts as foreign here, "The Gathering Storm" is a front runner for my all-time favourite. All of a sudden Albert Finney, after the intervention of a long and successful career, isn't Tom Jones any more, but Winston Churchill in his wilderness years, when a once-promising political career seemed to have foundered on his alarmist predictions that Germany was arming for war. Most of is set in his house of Chartwell, which I have visited many times. The film ends with his reappointment to his First World War post, First Lord of the Admiralty. Inevitably it simplifies, and goes for the modern fashioon for interpersonal conflict. The director admitted that four civil servants, as well as many other sources, were as important as Ralph Wigram in supplying Churchill with government information on German rearmament, and it is arguable that as Churchill was a Privy Councillor, with a right of access, passing them to him wasn't illegal at all. He was nowhere near as excluded from information and consultation as the film makes out. But Finney gives an astonishingly true picture of the 1930s Churchill, with his barely understandable sense of purpose and grasp of detail, and yet his depression, sometimes childish petulance, self-absorption and fascination with hobbies and minor pleasures.

The French film I've named are available with English soundtrack or at least subtitles. For people in the European Community it is easy to buy them and have them delivered fairly cheaply by Amazon.fr : livres, DVD, jeux vidéo, CD, lecteurs MP3, ordinateurs, appareils photo, logiciels et plus encore ! , with no question of import duty or delays.

Originally Posted by LarryAndro

That sounds like a movie I would enjoy. Reminds me, in a way, of a British film showing a small kid getting pulled into a gang. Sorry, can remember the name of the movie.

That would be Shane Meadows' "This is England". Great film.

Also:

"Ip man" is a fantastic film.