One, Two, Three (1961)

Director: Billy Wilder

Genre: Comedy

Movie Type: Farce, Political Satire

Main Cast: James Cagney, Horst Buchholz, Pamela Tiffin, Arlene Francis, Liselotte Pulver

Release Year: 1961

Country: US

A Coca-Cola executive in West Berlin tries to keep the boss's daughter from marrying a Communist.

C. R. MacNamara(James Cagney), a fast-talking Coca-Cola sales representative in West Berlin, is attempting to introduce the beverage behind the Iron Curtain, hopeful that such a coup will result in his promotion to head of European operations. His hopes are dashed, however, when he learns that his company is not interested in dealing with the Russians; instead, he is ordered to chaperone his boss's daughter, 17-year-old Scarlett Hazeltine, during her 2-week stay in Berlin. The girl's visit lasts 2 months, in which time she secretly marries Otto Ludwig Piffl, a beatnik Communist from East Berlin. MacNamara learns the horrifying news at the same time he receives word that Hazeltine is arriving in West Berlin the next day. Frantic, MacNamara plants on Otto a copy of the Wall Street Journal , which gets him arrested by the East German police. After arranging to have the marriage certificate removed from official files, MacNamara learns that Scarlett is pregnant; aware that he must present Hazeltine with an ideal son-in-law, MacNamara gets Otto out of the East Berlin jail, buys him a royal title, and converts him into a well-groomed capitalist. He is so successful that Hazeltine decides that Otto is the man to head Coca-Cola's European operations; MacNamara must settle for a vice-presidency in the Atlanta office.

Cagney was an extremely versatile performer who was adept in musical and comedic roles as well as drama. In One, Two, Three, he really excels and is able to give full justice to the madcap lunacy found in the screenplay written by Wilder and his frequent collaborator I.A.L. Diamond. It’s difficult to imagine any other actor who could pull off this role half as well as Cagney. On the surface, MacNamara is not a likeable character, but Cagney manages to make him simply gruff and grumpy in a way that the viewer can’t help but like the guy regardless of whether you like what’s he doing, reminiscent of the persona Walter Matthau later would adopt in many films. The rapid-fire delivery Cagney uses to such good effect here is a logical continuation of the style he developed in his gangster roles.


The set piece of the film is an eight-minute stretch where MacNamara does a high-toned makeover on the beatnik Piffle, bringing in a parade of tailors, barbers, haberdashers, etc., and rattling off pages of exacting dialogue with perfect articulation and precision – precisely as Wilder wrote it (it reportedly took many takes and some strained tempers). This dovetails into a mad car chase to the airport and a sharp finish. Audiences laugh – and then quiet themselves to not miss out on the next joke – Wilder’s pace leaves little room for reaction time, just a raised eyebrow or a quick breath.


Adapted by Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond from a Ferenc Molnar play, Wilder's rapid-fire comedy ferociously satirizes the Cold War divide between East and West. Featuring a peerless James Cagney in his last starring role and set in West Berlin, the breathless farce sends up everything from soft-drink capitalism to Communist hypocrisy, Soviet disorganization, male lechery, female giddiness, postwar Germany, and American pop culture. With a relentless stream of one-liners and numerous comic set pieces, such as a prisoner tortured with endless plays of "Itsy-Bitsy Teeny-Weeny Yellow Polka-Dot Bikini" and a mad tabletop striptease that shakes a portrait of Stalin off its perch, Wilder and Cagney never let up the pace for a moment, down to the final Pepsi Cola punch line. Earning critical accolades for its wit and its star, One, Two, Three received one Oscar nomination, for Daniel L. Fapp's crisp widescreen black-and-white photography. (Fapp won the color cinematography Oscar that same year, for West Side Story.) One, Two, Three became a popular hit in Germany after the Berlin Wall came down in 1989.




The non-stop action is brilliantly scored by Andre Previn, who makes great use of Khachaturian's Sabre Dance to accompany the film's multiple manic car rides through Berlin. 


At the time of its release, One, Two, Three did not do well at the box office, including the U.S. and Germany. At least one Berlin newspaper film critic gave it a bad review. However, the film, which went unseen for over 20 years, was received enthusiastically in Germany when it was re-released in 1985. One, Two, Three was given a grand re-premier at a large outdoor showing in Berlin which was broadcast simultaneously over television. The film went on to spend a year in the Berlin theaters as it was rediscovered by West Berlin citizens.


Dialogues


C.R. MacNamara:Ten minutes early! That's a hell of a way to run an airline! Planes are supposed to be late, not early! 


C.R. MacNamara: Of course you were anti-Nazi and you never liked Adolf. 
Schlemmer: Adolf who? 


C.R. MacNamara: Schlemmer you're back in the SS, small salary! 




C.R. MacNamara: Cigarette? Cigar? 
Peripetchikoff: Here, take one of these. 
C.R. Macnamara: Thanks. Hm, 'Made in Havana'. 
Peripetchikoff: We have trade agreement with Cuba. They send us cigars, we send them rockets. 
C.R. Macnamara: Good thinking. 




C.R. MacNamara: You know something? You guys got cheated. This is a pretty crummy cigar. 
Peripetchikoff: Do not worry. We send them pretty crummy rockets. 




Borodenko: When will papers be ready? 
C.R. Macnamara: I'll put my secretary right to work on it. 
Mishkin: Your secretary? She's that blond lady? 
C.R. Macnamara: That's the one. 
Peripetchikoff: [after conferring with the others] You will send papers to East Berlin with blond lady in triplicate. 
C.R. Macnamara: You want the papers in triplicate, or the blond in triplicate? 
Peripetchikoff: See what you can do. 


Otto: I'll pick you up at 6:30 sharp, because the 7:00 train for Moscow leaves promptly at 8:15. 




Scarlet: Do you realize that Otto spelled backwards is Otto? 
Phyllis MacNamara: How about that? 
Scarlet: You'll like him. He looks just like Jack Kennedy, only he's younger and he has more upstairs. 
Phyllis MacNamara: More brains? 
Scarlet: More *hair*. And of course, ideologically, he's much sounder. 
Phyllis MacNamara: Maybe we voted for the wrong man. 
Scarlet: That couldn't happen in Russia. 
Phyllis MacNamara: They don't make mistakes. 
Scarlet: They don't *vote*. 

JERICHOW(2008)

JERICHOW

Germany

2008

93 Min

Director: Christian Petzold

Camera (color), Hans Fromm; editor, Bettina Boehler; music, Stefan Will; art director, Kade Gruber; costume designer, Anette Guther; sound (Dolby Digital), Andreas Muecke-Niesytka, Martin Ehlers-Falkenberg, Martin Steyer; assistant director, Ires Jung; casting, Simone Baer.

Thomas( Benno Fürmann) ,young and strong, has been dishonorably discharged from the army

Ali( Hilmi Sözer),an affable Turkish businessman, has seen some hard times but now his primary concern is making sure the employees of his snack-bars don’t cheat on him.

Laura( Nina Hoss),an attractive woman with a dark past, seems to find refuge in the shadows of her marriage to Ali.

Three people stumble into a fateful encounter. A classic love triangle is born, unfolding in desolate northeast Germany, where thick forests suddenly end on cliffs overlooking the Baltic Sea. Caught between guilt and freedom, between passion and reason, the protagonists have no hopes for fulfillment of their dreams.


Thomas, Ali, and Laura keep an eye on each other and keep their secrets to themselves. They want love but also security. They consider themselves independent, and what they desire can only be achieved by betrayal.


Despite the fact that Jerichow lacks a sense of purpose outside its loose noir mechanics, it succeeds as a  tightly constructed "dramatic thriller" in which the tension comes as much from what the characters are thinking as from what they end up doing, "Jerichow" again confirms writer-helmer Christian Petzold ("Yella," "The State I Am In") as a world-class talent who remains underappreciated beyond Germany.


Performance by Sozer (like Hoss and Fuermann, a Petzold regular) is the binding element in the drama, making Ali a character who's only half-unsympathetic. (One beautifully written line near the end sums up his feelings.) Hoss is perhaps least likable as the abused but still resourceful wife; Fuermann plays the blankest, and perhaps the weakest-written character of the three.How much Ali knows about the Thomas-Laura relationship, and whether he is deliberately setting them up, are two of several questions left hanging for much of the picture.


Though it lacks the emotional complexity and mystical edge of "Yella," "Jerichow," with its clean dramatic arc, is overall better shaped. The sudden ending says everything about the characters' futures -- as the viewer has, in effect, been given strong hints about it already.

Knife in the Water(1962)

Knife in the Water(Polish Title:Nóz w wodzie 1962),Roman Polanski’s first feature is a brilliant psychological thriller that many critics still consider among his greatest work.The first Polish film to be nominated for a Foreign Language Oscar.

The story is simple, yet the implications of its characters’ emotions and actions are profound.It features only three characters and deals with rivalry and sexual tension.This Film established him as a filmmaker to be reckoned with, winning top honors at the Venice Film Festival, a Best Foreign Film Oscar nomination, and a place on the cover of Time in conjunction with the first New York Film Festival. Polanski's career-long fascination with human cruelty and violence is already evident, as is his intense interest in exploring the complex tensions involved in close relations.

An upper class man, Andrzej (Leon Niemczyk), and his wife, Krystyna (Jolanta Umecka), are driving down a country road of Poland in a luxury car. The man is obviously annoyed with his wife's driving, going so far as to yank on the steering wheel at one point. Krystyna stops the car without a word, gets out and walks around to the other side of the car. Andrzej slides over behind the wheel. He might as well drive in actuality, since he's intent upon driving virtually anyway.

Andrzej speeds on down the roadway and, spying a hitchhiker in the road, refuses to slow down or stop until the car is very nearly on top of the lad. Andrzej hops out of the car to berate the lad (Zygmunt Malanowicz), but finally agrees to give him a ride. Andrzej and Krystyna are on their way to a lake to spend the day sailing on their private sailboat. Andrzej takes every opportunity to belittle the young man, while showing off his own athleticism and competence for the benefit of his attractive wife. In fact, Andrzej so enjoys using the lad as fodder for his machinations to inflate his male ego, that he invites the boy to join them for a day on the lake. The lad comments, "I knew you'd call me back. You want to go on with the game." Andrzej replies, "You're not in my class, kid." Sure enough, Andrzej is an expert sailor and the lad inexperienced on the water, so the opportunities for Andrzej to excel and instruct are numerous. "I'm at the helm. You can't take over," says Andrzej. Though the young man has less need to dominate, he is nevertheless determined to assert his independence and the advantages of youth. "I could try," he responds. Later, the boy proves agile enough to scamper up the mast of the boat and is particularly adept with the switchblade that he carries.

For her part, Krystyna occasionally tries to placate the rivalry between the two mismatched men, but mostly quietly ignores them. When she tries to blunt her husband's verbal assaults, he simply becomes more fired up by her sympathy for his rival. The boy comments that it is noon, but Andrzej corrects him, saying, "It's ten past." Krystyna points out that the young man doesn't even have a watch, which makes his estimate from the sun's position rather astute. As the film progresses, Krystyna gradually makes herself increasingly attractive, by the expediencies of removing her glasses, letting down her hair, and donning a scanty, two-piece bathing suit. As her sexiness becomes more overt, it stokes the competition between the males. Some of the more pleasing aspects of her curvature begin to find their way into the foreground of the film frames, tantalizing members of the audience as well. The two men on the boat begin to look more and more like adolescents posturing for dominance, rutting rams, or male peacocks in display.Nobody really ever threatens anyone - at least not directly - but the tensions that develop aren't easy to analyze or categorize, even by the trio themselves.Tension between the men intensifies, with the pocket knife that represents the hitchhiker's particular skills lending a continual suggestion of violence and sexuality to the goings-on. Things eventually do get violent.

Equally impressive is Polanski's mastery of the camera.It's still the best description of the director's supremacy: at any given moment, Polanski's camera is always where it wants to be.In an interview. Polanski ,While discussing styles, he voices his hilarious opinion of the Dogma film movement (paraphrase): "I'm allergic to Dogma, all that shaky camera nonsense. It looks like the cameraman has Parkinson's Disease, or maybe while filming he's masturbating."

Camerawork is by Jerzy Lipman(http://www.cinematographers.nl/GreatDoPh/lipman.htm)

Many of the shots include both elements of the boat (in the foreground or middle ground) and views of the water, sky, woods, or marshes (in the background). The juxtaposition of the claustrophobic atmosphere on the boat (which had once belonged to Herman Goering) with the expansiveness of nature all around gives symbolic emphasis to the inability of the characters to escape their psychological limitations despite the beautiful openness of nature all around them. The weather cooperated miraculously with the filmmakers, often mirroring the changes in mood among the characters. The phallic straight lines of the mast and riggings seems to express the excess of testosterone on board ship while the open serenity of the landscape reflects Krystyna's calm and quiet influence.

By the use of deep focus and clever selection of camera angles, many of the frames include all three characters, with one in the foreground and two behind, constantly emphasizing the triangular nature of the interpersonal dynamics. Many of the shots are unusually tight in, adding to the tension. For some of the shots, the cameraman had to be tied to the mast because of the cramped quarters on board the sailboat. A cameraman was likewise tied to the hood of the Mercedes for some of the shots near the film's opening. The inclusion of the eight Polanski shorts in this treasure trove helps to illuminate how the director came to be such a master at expression through images. All of the shorts were shot without sound in accordance with the policy of the Lodz film school, which aimed at ensuring that the students would first learn to tell their stories visually. What little sound occurs in the short films was dubbed in later. Polanski later became known for his naturalistic camera, which seems to come upon the action by chance, as it is happening, and the first indications of that style are already in evidence here.

The three cast members for this film had extremely different levels of qualification and experience. Leon Niemczyk was an experienced actor and gave the film its grounding with his solid and intense performance. Zygmunt Malanowicz was fresh out of acting school and, according to Polanski, still stuck on method acting. Since the role is that of a neophyte, Malanowicz's lack of experience added a degree of verisimilitude. Polanski later dubbed in his own voice for Malanowicz's character. Interestingly, the Internet Movie Database states that it was because Malanowicz's voice was a strongly developed bass, but Polanski states, in his interview included on the Criterion release, that Malanowicz's voice was too high-pitched. Either way, the voice we hear in the film belongs to Polanski. Jolanta Umecka had no acting experience. Polanski scoured the local pools for a young woman with the right look for the part. He found it extremely difficult to get Umecka to react the way he wanted her to for the various plot developments. Nevertheless, her lack of "acting" served the part reasonably well, providing the implacability that her character needed to manifest. More importantly, perhaps, she had all of the physical attributes necessary to excite the required level of machismo on the part of the men.

Filmed in black and white, this film is extremely assured, concise, and telling in its characterizations. KNIFE IN THE WATER is also notable in the career of another Polish filmmaker, co-scenarist Jerzy Skolimowski (http://www.culture.pl/en/culture/artykuly/os_skolimowski_jerzy),

( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerzy_Skolimowski ) , who had already begun to direct, but emerged internationally in 1982 with the offbeat MOONLIGHTING. Some would argue that KNIFE IN THE WATER is a more interesting movie than any Polanski made in the west after leaving his native land. Brilliantly told and well-acted, Polanski's half tongue-in-cheek, lugubrious and sinister filmic style seemed quite refreshing at the time.

With its oblique but unrelenting psychological violence, politically charged nihilism and incisive visual forms – the images in this film, like the knife of its title, will cut you if you get too close and this film is not only one of the filmmaker’s best films, the only feature he made in his home country and native tongue before emigrating on towards fame and infamy and back towards fame again, but also one of the most enervating treatises on human relationships committed to celluloid.

Roman Polanski had intended to take on the role of the young hitchhiker himself, but Jerzy Bossak, head of the Polish film unit KAMERA (under whose auspices the film was made), turned him down because he didn't consider the director attractive enough. The character's voice, however, is Polanski's, who later dubbed the part over. Zygmunt Malanowicz had a strong, developed, bass voice, which was quite inappropriate for the character.

Though commonly classified as a thriller, Knife in the Water is less of a suspense film than it is a terse and cynical drama about marriage. The final scenes reveal what this has all been for. If the pick-up sticks game was the combination, the ending is the lock opening. Polanski chooses not to show us any decisions on the part of the couple, but rather to leave them stuck in between. Do they trust each other anymore? Did they ever? Has this all been a game to add a little spice to the stew? Or is this truly where two people bored with each other end up?

A must watch Movie.

The Tenant(Le Locataire)-1976

The Tenant (French: Le Locataire) is a 1976 psychological thriller/horror film directed by Roman Polanski based upon the 1964 novel Le locataire chimérique by Roland Topor. It is also known under the French title Le Locataire. It co-stars actress Isabelle Adjani. It is the last film in Polanski's "Apartment Trilogy", following Repulsion and Rosemary'sBaby. It was entered into the 1976 Cannes Film Festival.

Director Roman Polanski casts himself in the lead of the psychological thriller

The Tenant.Trelkovsky (Polanski) rents an apartment in a spooky old residential building, where his neighbors -- mostly old recluses -- eye him with suspicious contempt. Upon discovering thatthe apartment's previous tenant, a beautiful young woman, jumped from the window in a suicide attempt, Trelkovsky begins obsessing over the dead woman. Growing increasinglyparanoid, Trelkovsky convinces himself that his neighbors plan to kill him. He even comes to the conclusion that Stella (Isabel Adjani), the woman he has fallen in love with, is inon the "plot." Ultimately, Polanski assumes the identity of the suicide victim -- and inherits her self-destructive urges.

The Tenant Interview

This interview is from two very old newspaper clippings, I do not have the exact date, however it was conducted during the filming of "The Tenant" which will have been around 1975 I should think.. Here Polanski discusses the movie and also many interesting opinions on filmmaking.

Polanski in Paris By A. ALVAREZ

The unpredictable Polish director Roman Polanski once remarked that he would like to make a movie that has only one character. "The Tenant," the story he is now filming in Paris, is not quite that-the cast includes Shelley Winters, Melvyn Douglas and Isabelle Adjani, who won acclaim in Truffaut's "The. Story of Adele H."-. But the hero, a man in the grip of a peculiarly distressing, ultimately fatal paranoia, is in almost every scene. And that hero is played by Polanski himself who, as well as directing, also collaborated on the script.

Polanski is in his early 40's and looks at least 10 years younger. His hair is thick and brown, without a trace of gray, his face, boyishly unlined. He is small trim fit and self-contained, a sharply defined presence, nothing blurred about him-which means not much emotion and no indecision at all. He looks as if he lives his life as he drives his Ferrari-with skill, precision, impatience with other people's hesitations, and no room for error. When at the start of a recent interview I remarked how young he looks, be said, "Age is a state of mind," and changed the subject.

Unlike "The Tenant's" doomed protagonist, Polanski is a survivor, and he has the survivor's knack of never looking back, a knack which he developed to a fine pitch so long ago that he is no longer aware of it. After all, he has had to be self-sufficient since the age of 8, when he escaped from the Cracow ghetto and went to live with a family of peasants. His parents were less lucky: they were rounded up and sent to Auschwitz, where his mother died. His father remarried when he returned Polanski chose not to live with him. He was 12 by then..

Polanski found solace in acting, attending art school, and, finally, studying at the famous film school at Lodz. In 1958, as his senior thesis, he wrote and directed a brilliant surrealist short, "Two Men and a Wardrobe," and went on to establish himself as a major figure on the international film scene with such stunning works as "Knife in the Water," "Repulsion" and "Rosemary's Baby." With the latter film, one of the, biggest box-office hits of 1968, Polanski graduated into the genuine big time and he seemed invulnerable: professionally, acclaimed, financially successful and married, at last to Sharon Tate, "the only girl," says his friend Kenneth Tynan, "who ever moved into his life on equal terms."

Yet within a few months he was again reaching for his survival kit: Charles Manson's butchers' repeated what Nazis had done 25 years before. It took Polanski five years and two failures "Macbeth" and "What?"-to recover his stride. Then came "Chinatown," his best movie since "Knife in the Water." And now, with "The Tenant," it is more evident than ever that Pólanski is content only with total control: starring, directing, co-scripting, arguing technicalities with the technicians, camera angles with the great Sven Nykvist, Ingrnar Bergman's cameraman-and advertising campaigns with the publicity experts. I asked him if it wasn't hard to take on all these roles at once, particularly to act and direct. "No," he said. "That's easy, because it's one less person to argue with. It's not difficult to direct while acting. The difficulty is to act while directing. You stand in front of the camera and the moment the clapperboard claps you should concentrate, disconnect yourself from what's around you. If you keep thinking about lights and other people's performances and marks on the floor, then you can't act."

As a director, Polanski is a stern perfectionist. While I was at the studio, he did 30 takes of one sequence before he was satisfied. The first 15 came at the end of what had already been a long day's shooting. Polanski was playing a scene with Isabelle Adjani in which the hero goes back to the apartment of his sensual, but none too bright, girl friend. Both of- them are drunk, at cross-purposes. He wants to air his gathering paranoia; she wants to get him to bed. They sit together at a table, talking and drinking, and then she leads him to bed and undresses him while -he maunders drunkenly on. It was a long and difficult sequence, which might have been made easier if Polanski had broken it into shorter takes. I asked him why he hadn't done so.

"It's a gamble, but long takes create an atmosphere which might be lost by stopping every two seconds. That way, you don't have any continuity in the acting. To get the best out of actors, you have to give them time to build up. You don't have to use it all, but there's a chance of a better performance."

That evening, however, there was neither atmosphere nor continuity. Isabelle Adjani can convey feeling simply by moving her hand and she has one of those mobile faces, which can express anything, like a miracle plastic. But she was having difficulty with her English pronunciation, and both she and Polansk seemed to be fighting the script. There was also some tricky business with a Couple of glasses and a tequila bottle, which kept going wrong. The tension and frustration mounted steadily. Polanski tried using real tequila instead of water, but that only made things worse. At 8:30, he gave up 'and the exhausted company adjourned to the projection room to watch the previous day's rushes. At noon the next day they started again. This time it went more smoothly, although it took another 15 takes before Polanski was satisfied. At no point did he relent. He was tough and demanding with Miss Adjani and the crew, a man not generous with his praise. Was this deliberate?

"I just want them to do the job. I don't know whether that's a fault or a virtue. A lot depends on whom you are working with; every actor is different and requires a different approach. Faye Dunaway, for instance, is very temperamental, while Jack Nicholson has no temperament at all. He is one of the easiest persons to work with I've come across, and a very good actor."
What about politics? "Knife in the Water," which was made in Poland, was highly political, and many critics found political significance in "Chinatown."

"You make a film in a certain country, and if the subject is rooted in that place, then it is inevitable that it has some kind of political implication. 'Chinatown' was about a big swindle and the hero was a detective. Naturally, there were parallels with what's been happening in America. 'The Tenant' is a psychological drama of suspense about a man who is disintegrating mentally, so it doesn't have much to do with what's happening in France now. But that doesn't mean that it's not going to be deeply French. This is the most important thing in filmmaking: when you set your story somewhere it has to happen there-very French if it happens in France, very Polish in Poland. If you set it in Transylvania you must be sure it's very Transylvanian. You must establish where it happened. If the setting is a land of fantasy, you have to know everything about that land. You have to know the life of the imaginary place and then conform to the rules. The more lies you tell, the more you have to pretend they are true. That's where a lot of movies fail: you feel all the details are wrong; you just aren't convinced."

I mentioned that I had not been much convinced by the details in the Roland topor novel on which 'The Tenant" is based. It concerns a nondescript young clerk who takes over a dreary, faintly sinister Paris apartment from a woman who has fatally injured herself by jumping out of the window. Gradually, the clerk comes to believe that the other inhabitants of the building are trying to drive him, too, to suicide and he begins to fall apart. Everywhere he sees plots, the menacing signs and symbols of malice. He tries to escape but is drawn back, despite himself. He ends by dressing up as a woman and jumping from the window. It is effective melodrama, but as a study of madness it seemed to me sub - Kafka, rather naive. But perhaps that is the rule: good films come out of indifferent novels, and vice versa. Is literary excellence an inhibition for the moviemaker?

"No. I think great literature is unfilmable because its real value lies in the way it's written and not what it's about. Faulkner, for example, is a great writer but there has never been a good film made out any of his novels. That doesn't mean it can't be done, just that it's impossible to render the real value of literature through a camera. Assuming you have no inhibitions about the masterpiece, how do you render in images what has been achieved by words? You are forced to be pictorially literal, or to use parts of the book as a commentary or as internal dialogue. But that's not the way. The most perfect writing is poetry, but how can you translate a poem by Baudelaire into film? All you can do is show the story of the poem, and that's not it at all."
There are three main ingredients in a movie-the director, the stars and the script. In "The Tenant" he has assumed responsibility for all three. Which did he think the most important?
"To me personally, the script. For the simple reason that I have no time to think to conceive and to analyse during the period of shooting So I have to, be sure that I can rely on what Is written and if I just film it the way I anticipated, I won't go wrong. I have room for improvisation only within what's written in the script.

Polanski is now an international man, constantly on the move and speaking five languages-Polish, Russian, English, French and Italian. But he has kept his Polish passport t and, since the fall of Gomulka, has again become a figure on the Polish scene The Polish people, he says are proud of 'him. I asked him if he ever considered settling down In Poland

"If I am nostalgic, it is for friends and situations more than for the place. But I don't think you can ever have them back again, 'even if you try. Going back somewhere doesn't necessarily bring back what you had, loved or admired. Quite the contrary, it's usually a disappointment. Certain things have happened and they never come back again."

Majid Majidi's"The Song of the Sparrows"

Review:Janos Gereben

There is no better way to tour Teheran than on a motorbike with a man whose ostrich ran away. One of the many charms of Majid Majidi's wonderful new film, "The Song of the Sparrow" (Avaze gonjeshk-ha), is seeing the present-day capital from the streets as Karim is winding his way through traffic.
When we first meet weather-beaten, boxer-nosed, prematurely aged Karim (Mohammad Amir Naji, Berlin Film Festival award winner), he works at an ostrich farm, but when one of his charges escapes, and he is fired.
Without a job, supporting a family of four - including a teen daughter whose hearing aid needs to be replaced - Karim rides his motorbike to the city, and before he knows, he becomes a cycle-taxi driver.
From that point on, it's a fascinating travelogue both of the city and of Karim's urban pilgrimage through sins and redemptions, petty compromises with morality and heroic attempts to make up for his missteps.
With his sure touch, Majidi - director of the superb 1997 "Children of Heaven," and the 2001 "Baran," which also starred Naji - uses non-professional cast brilliantly; the children are especially a wonder to behold.
"In the name of God" says the opening frame of the film, which is mixing gritty, hilarious, affecting reality with respectful treatment of religion, so that it may be safe from the Revolutionary Guard, whoever wins today's election there - as if there was a question about that.

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Luis Buñuel &his Viridiana

After 25 years' exile, Luis Buñuel(The father of cinematic Surrealism and one of the most original directors in the history of the film medium, Luis Buñuel was given a strict Jesuit education,which sowed the seeds of his obsession with both religion and subversive behavior) was invited to his native Spain to direct Viridiana -- only to have the Spanish government suppress the film on the grounds of blasphemy and obscenity. Regarded by many as Buñuel's crowning achievement, the film centers on an idealistic young nun named Viridiana It is always hard to select the most outrageous scene in any Buñuel film; our candidate in Viridiana is the devastating Last Supper tableau consisting of beggars, thieves, and degenerates. As joltingly brilliant today as on its first release, Viridiana won the Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival

Synopsis-Viridiana

The film focuses on a young novitiate about to take her vows named Viridiana (Silvia Pinal), who is told by her Mother Superior that she should visit her uncle, Don Jaime (Fernando Rey), her only living relative. After some time on his large country estate, he tries to seduce her, believing that she resembles his deceased wife. Hearing of his desire to marry her, Viridiana attempts to flee the house immediately, but is subdued by Jaime and drugged with the help of his servant Ramona. He takes her to her room and considers raping her in her sleep, but decides otherwise. The next morning he tells her that he took her virginity, and says that therefore she cannot return to her convent. By this means he intends to make her wish to stay, but instead she is disgusted and starts to pack. He tries to rectify the situation by telling her that he lied, hoping it would convince her to stay, but this does little to appease her. He asks for her forgiveness, but she ignores him and leaves the house. She is on the way back to the convent when the authorities stop her, telling her something terrible has happened.

Back at the house, her uncle has hanged himself. Viridiana collects the village paupers, returns to the estate, and installs them in an outbuilding. Shunning the convent, she instead devotes herself to the moral education and feeding of this exceedingly motley group.

Meanwhile, Don Jaime's son, Jorge (Francisco Rabal), moves into the house with his girlfriend, Lucia. He, like his father, lusts after Viridiana, who scorns him. A model of moral rectitude, Viridiana will soon suffer for her good deeds. When they all leave to visit a lawyer in the town, the paupers break into the house, initially just planning to look around. But, faced with such bounty, things degenerate into a drunken, riotous orgy—all to the strains of Handel's Messiah.

Posing for a photo (sans camera) around the table, the beggars resemble Da Vinci's Last Supper. This scene, in particular, earned the film the Vatican's opprobrium. The members of the household return earlier than expected to find the house in shambles. As Jorge and Viridiana walk around the house in shock, the beggars excuse themselves and leave without explaining their behaviour. Jorge continues to inspect the house upstairs and encounters a beggar who pulls a knife on him. Another beggar comes from behind and breaks a bottle over Jorge's head, knocking him out. When Viridiana arrives, she sees Jorge on the floor and runs to his side, but is then overpowered by the two beggars.

Viridiana would surely have been raped except that Jorge, who is tied up, bribes one beggar to kill the other. Viridiana is a changed woman as the film concludes: her crown of thorns is symbolically burnt. Wearing her hair loosely, she knocks on Jorge's door, but finds Ramona, with Jorge in his bedroom. With "Shake Your Cares Away" on the record player, Jorge tells Viridiana that they were only playing cards, and urges her to join them, a conclusion that is often seen as implying a ménage à trois.

Personal Quotes of Luis Buñuel

I have a soft spot for secret passageways, bookshelves that open into silence, staircases that go down into a void, and hidden safes. I even have one myself, but I won't tell you where. At the other end of the spectrum are statistics which I hate with all my heart.

[When asked why he made movies] To show that this is not the best of all possible worlds.

I've always found insects exciting.

Nothing would disgust me more morally than winning an Oscar.

Thank God, I'm an atheist.

Sex without religion is like cooking an egg without salt. Sin gives more chances to desire.
I can only wait for the final amnesia, the one that can erase an entire life.

All my life I've been harassed by questions: Why is something this way and not another? How do you account for that? This rage to understand, to fill in the blanks, only makes life more banal. If we could only find the courage to leave our destiny to chance, to accept the fundamental mystery of our lives, then we might be closer to the sort of happiness that comes with innocence.

You have to begin to lose your memory, if only in bits and pieces, to realize that memory is what makes our lives. Life without memory is no life at all, just as an intelligence without the possibility of expression is not really an intelligence. Our memory is our coherence, our reason, our feeling, even our action. Without it, we are nothing.

The bar . . . is an exercise in solitude. Above all else, it must be quiet, dark, very comfortable - and, contrary to modern mores, no music of any kind, no matter how faint. In sum, there should be no more than a dozen tables, and a client that doesn't like to talk.

If someone were to prove to me right this minute that God, in all his luminousness, exists, it wouldn't change a single aspect of my behavior.

'God and Country' are an unbeatable team; they break all records for oppression and bloodshed. Give me two hours a day of activity, and I'll take the other twenty-two in dreams.
Tobacco and alcohol, delicious fathers of abiding friendships and fertile reveries.

A paranoiac, like a poet, is born, not made.

Fortunately, somewhere between chance and mystery lies imagination, the only thing that protects our freedom, despite the fact that people keep trying to reduce it or kill it off altogether.