The Bicycle Thief (Vittorio De Sica, 1948)

The Bicycle Thief is a gem attributed to the Italian Neo-realist movement. The film shows the creative bankruptcy of today's filmmakers. The film is slender and poetic. It tells a story that has universal appeal and is sure to touch hearts of all who have suffered misfortune and misery in a treacherous world, even once in their lifetime. By the measure of that metric only, the film is applicable to all. The beauty of the film lies in the simplicity of its screenplay. It shows how simplicity can achieve greatness, save the obfuscations of most modern day crap. The screenplay is not charmingly witty, not philosophically deep, not characteristically complex, not contemplatively silent. It is intensely emotional (without overdoing it) and fiercely personal. The story is rather simple: in post-World War Two Rome, Italy, jobs are scarce, and Antonio Ricci finally gets a job offer, as a billboard sign man, posting billboards about town, after waiting for months in front of the downtown labor office. One catch, he needs a bicycle. He has one, but it’s at a pawnshop. His wife, Maria, sells their good bedsheets so Antonio can get back his bike. The job is apparently a good one, as other workers anxiously vie for the job. Antonio suddenly feels human and dignified again, wearing a uniform, and being able to make money. Yet, on his first day at work, while pasting posters, his bike is stolen by a young man. Antonio has the weekend to get the bicycle back, so he can report to work on Monday with it. He gets his acquaintance, Baiocco, a garbageman, to help him look for the bike the next morning, along with some of his pals in the garbage company. But it is to no avail, so they keep on searching, and Antonio and Bruno have a number of encounters, such as seeing the thief with an old man, whom they track down to a church, but the old con man gives Antonio the slip, by saying he wants some of the free soup the church is offering. They do get a tentative address of the thief, and eventually Antonio catches up with him, and forces him back to his apartment, where his mother and neighbors declare him a good boy, an innocent. The vile wolfpack mentality closes in, and the thief plays his false innocence to the hilt, like the true professional grifter he is- likely having sold the bike already to another pawnshop, as a policeman is powerless to do anything, after they search the thief’s apartment. Antonio and Bruno eventually end up outside a soccer match, where hundreds of bikes are parked. He sees one in an alleyway, and, in a scene that shows a human desperation and honesty that are too often overlooked in art, Antonio gives Bruno some money to take a trolley home, and decides to steal the bike in the alley. Of course, he almost falls as he tries to pedal away, and the bike’s owner raises alarums, and this man’s neighbors chase and quickly capture Antonio- who is now pilloried as a bicycle thief, and a low man. He is so ashamed and without that he cannot even say a word. He is totally humiliated- all his honesty, honor, and playing by the rules have forced him into doing something wrong, and Bruno, who stayed behind, witnesses his father’s capture, runs to him, and weeps. The old man, whose bike it was, decides not to press charges, possibly out of pity for Antonio’s humiliation in front of his son, and Antonio walks away with his son, both weeping, yet hand in hand, having been defeated inside and out. Reputedly, none of the film’s actors were professionals, at the time. Antonio comes across so realistically, and wholly believably. Bruno is magnificent. He is wisecracking, but not in the annoying way Hollywood smart aleck kids are. There are numerous scenes that pinpoint the director's keen eye for details and highlight his tendency to maintain a desired balance between personal loss and humor, which relieves the viewer. Many critics have concluded that in The Bicycle Thief De Sica has tried to show that good and evil are relative. But nothing can be farthest from the truth. For instance, we know, all along, that the young professional thief would likely be a con man regardless as all of his neighbors are cheats and liars, and even his mother lies for her clearly guilty son. De Sica wants us to remind that sometimes evil can be born not out of pure evil, greed, and compulsive characteristic flaws, but can be born of different circumstances like desperation and poverty, as with Antonio. The Bicycle Thief is great art. It is not a political manifesto as many critics have vehemently suggested.The Bicycle Thief tells a simple tale, but it documents the crushing of the human spirit at the hands of poverty, indifference and misery.

Satantango (Béla Tarr, 1994)

Counting his production of Macbeth for Hungarian television, Tarr has directed nine films since 1979. Tarr's early works are rooted in common, insular social environments. Tarr's later films are similarly distinctive but their visual styles are often characterized by frequent long takes that recall the work of Andrei Tarkovsky. This rigorous style is on display throughout the director's seminal Sátántangó, a film that is routinely lauded in film circuits but has rarely been seen by the public. Sátántangó begins with a formidable opening shot that is hypnotic: within a rural farming community, a single take captures a herd of cattle as they exit a warehouse pen. Some roam about and graze inattentively while others impulsively copulate. The entire herd moves between houses and barns, and slowly moves toward the horizon. This action is stark, unusual and darkly satiric. In these opening minutes the farmers' livestock is able to freely move around, however, it is this option of freedom that no human character in the film shares. Rain is a constant companion in the film, and Tarr seems to analogize it with poverty. Most of the film's principle characters develop a scheme to rob a sum of money that has been promised, in shares, to each farmer. The possibility of wealth fosters greed, deceit, and infidelity. Futaki and Mrs. Schmidt are seen plotting, and are interrupted by Mr. Schmidt, another secret conspirator who unknowingly reveals his scheme to a hiding Futaki. One sin leads to another and deceit interconnects each person in the entire community. The characters in Sátántangó are assembled in a hierarchy of domination and betrayal; it's a trap where even the most secret conspiracy is disruptively repercussive. At the fringe of this web is the young Estike. She has been fleeced of her modest savings by her bother, and this loss results in frustration. She latches on to a pet cat, terrorizing it and finally forcing its head into a bowl of poisoned milk. Afterward she fashions an identical elixir for herself. In this manner, betrayal inevitably tenders the highest cost for the lowest-tiered conspirator. The tragedy affects everyone. The entire film is stitched together from a series of long shots—a minute number in proportion to the film's epic length. This cinematographic tactic visually manifests the film's thematic intentions. There are numerous instances of this visual signature, and the effect is hypnotic: sunrises occur in real time; figures move toward distant horizons and diminish; close-ups track along walking heads that bob vertically—and endlessly—in and out of frame. These actions are all captured with bold, static patience, and are demonstrative of the ennui of the film's deprived community. Sátántangó is structured in a repetitive chronology that apes the rhythmic tally of the tango. Episodes are followed or preceded by others that transpire simultaneously but from different perspectives, and passages without action (for example, a lengthy scene where characters engage in the titular dance) are supplementary to ones that precede or follow. Slowly, the viewer is informed of every betrayal and lie, of every deceit in a community that relies, ironically, upon faith. The film is divided into 12 episodes, some of which only indirectly convey the film's signifying theme of desperation. In illustrative contrast to Estike's desperate violence, a community doctor, a voyeur who records the actions of neighbors through his window, fumbles through his every scene in a permanent vodka-induced stupor. He is as poor and desperate as any other character, yet his behavior is comic in what is an otherwise tragic film. Sátántangó is a compilation of such stark and discriminated pieces. It's the cumulative alliance of a number of contrasted themes that derives the film's irony: it is at once sympathetic and patronizing, both tragic and satiric. It is this insidious yet ambiguous political nature that characterizes Sátántangó as a Hungarian film, in turn perpetuating its obscurity and qualifying its art.

The Man from London (Béla Tarr, Ágnes Hranitzky, 2007)

After the more complicated narratives of Satantango and Werckmeister Harmonies, Hungarian filmmaker Bela Tarr reduces down a Georges Simenon novel to a few elemental essentials the center of which deals with a railway worker in a musty and run down port town, who witnesses a murder while stationed on a tower and then stumbles into a stack of cash. The Man from London is about staring, listening, and living with a guilt-ridden heart accompanied by a suggestive minimalist soundtrack and ravishing black-and-white cinematography. Tarr's superglacial camera movements and long-drawn-out shots generate a hypnotic sense of curiosity, giving us enough moments to think and always implying far more than they show. The Man from London is grave and intense, but not particularly involving, and its hard to evaluate the actors work because theyre given so little to say. Like all of Tarr's films, The Man from London is an auteurist creation par excellence, with Tarr in complete control of space, light, sound, and camera movement. But the sum of all turns out to be a test of viewers threshold of tolerance. The Man from London wished to explore some existential concerns other than offer a compact, emotionally capricious, and somber piece in which the aesthetics occupy center stage at the expense of substance.

Baishey Shravana (Mrinal Sen, 1960)

Baishey Shravana can be succinctly summarized by the following Japanese haiku:


The man was no villain.
The woman was all grace.
It was a cruel time.


Baishey Shravana  literally means the twenty-second day of the Bengali calendar month of Shravana.Baishey Shravana  in Sen's film merely happens to be the wedding day of an ill-fated couple, the man too old, the wife too young, the man almost uncouth to look at, the wife charming and aristocratic, both struggling to adjust with each other in their own way. Abject poverty in the face of a famine, and a desperate attempt to cling to their last glory lead to the wife's suicide on their wedding anniversary. In their life and death, Rabindranath Tagore, who was born on this date, was of no relevance. The film is based on poverty, famine, death, and a total erosion of human values. Nothing could have been more un-Tagorean!This is Mrinal Sen's cruellest film. We have seen anger, unrest, deprivation, and many other negative passions in his films, but in no other film are we faced with such oppressive, almost claustrophobic, atmosphere. In Baishey Shravana  there is no redemption, no compassion. The famine enters silently, and one must give credit to Sen that he never shows the famine physically. Just as he had established the war with the shot of a passing convoy and a flying aeroplane, he conveys the famine in the film by one long shot - villagers moving to the city in search of food. The important message of the film is that how poverty can rob a man of his last vestige of humanity, and bring him down to the level of a beast. Sen also took great care to ensure that the memory of Pather Panchali by Satyajit Ray should not eclipse his film. Ray's camera had painted on celluloid the absorbing beauty of Bengal's countryside; Sen chose to focus only on the faces of the villagers - no tree, no river, not even a flower diverted his attention. Baishey Shravana  went to London and Venice festivals and earned rave reviews. However, the cruelty and the sense of doom of the film were intolerable for the audience at home as they were not prepared for the turn of the horrific events by the director. In Baishey Shravana,  Sen was making a human document and he mostly succeeded in his pursuit. 

Wild Strawberries (Ingmar Bergman, 1957)

Wild Strawberries is a humane reflection on age, lost love, emotional vacuity, and existential guilt. The film interweaves personal memories, dreams, and nightmares with the present to furnish magnificent images that became hallmark of art house films dwelling upon acute nostalgia. The film is about Isak Borg who is a lonely man standing at 78. Isak is a widower; an acclaimed medical professional; has a married son who has distanced himself from Isak due to strained financial relationship; and lives with an old maid with whom he has a rather childish run-in bond. The film opens with an analytically viable (known from a later scene where Isak visits his mother and discovers his father's handless clock), visibly opulent, and a poetic dream scene with its manifest symbolism of handless clocks, lifeless human existence, beating and stopping of clocks, and an alive Isak inside a coffin, all of which announce the end-of-life crisis in which Isak finds himself. The plot of the film is a series of dreams strung together like beads on a strand and passed through Isak's mind as he journeys onward to receive a honorary degree at the Lund University. And during this journey Isak regresses back to all sorts of memories and dreams that associate with his past life. The film is laced with a voiceover of Isak who reminisces about his childhod house, his girlfriend Sara who married Isak's rather debonair brother Sigfrid, and a few other things of mortal importance. In his road trip, he is accompanied by a young girl who resembles Sara, her two suitors, and Isak's daughter-in-law Marianne. The five people in the car are also, to me, symbolic figures:Isak Borg may be Ingmar Bergman himself. Sara is Bergman's yearning for youth, virginity, and more importantly lost love. Anders, one of the two suitors, is Bergman's spiritual and artistic side that is interested in the existence of god. Victor, the other suitor, is Bergman's intellect steeped in strict rationalism. Marianne can be construed as Bergman's conscience. And the car-trip itself is a symbol of Bergman's own past life passing by the side windows.
One common misinterpretation of Isak's character by many film critics is that Isak is emotionally frigid. However, in the film we see no evidence that may justify such a conclusion. Isak is accused by others of being cold, selfish, and unsympathetic. These interpretations, however, do not mesh well with an unprejudiced analysis of Isak's character. He comes off as a sweet old man, one who seems merely deeply passionate, yet unable to express himself. In this review, I will attempt to lay out the evidence by carefully analyzing Isak's interactions with some of the characters from the film, which would defy such a flawed portrayal of Isak.

The first piece of evidence comes from a scene, later in the film, the second dream sequence that reveals that Isak is viewed by Sara as rather sensitive, shy, and prudish as opposed to unemotional and cold. In that dream sequence, Sara reflects to Charlotta on her relationship with Isak:

Sara: Isak is so refined. He is so enormously refined and moral and sensitive and he wants us to read poetry together and he talks about the after-life and wants to play duets on the piano and he likes to kiss only in the dark and he talks about sinfullness. I think he is extremely intellectual and morally aloof and I feel so worthless, and I am so worthless, you can't deny that. But sometimes I get the feeling that I'm much older than Isak, do you know what I mean? And then I think he's a child even if we are the same age, and then Sigfrid is so fresh and exciting and I want to go home.

To provide further testimony to the fact that Isak is shy or moralistic in sexual matters, Isak's relationship with his old domestic, Miss Agda, is a case in point. Their relation belies a true affection, if not sexual attraction. Early on in the film Agda thanks heavens that two of them are boss and employee and not husband and wife, and we sense a deep bond between them. By the film’s end, there is a suggestion that even Miss Agda has always wanted something more from Isak.When, at his son’s house, Agda suggests that her bedroom door is always open, should he need something. That in the forty or so years of their relationship they have never gotten beyond calling each other ‘Professor’ and ‘Miss’, much less entered into a sexual relationship, does not imply that Borg is cold and unfeeling, merely prudish and shy or both.
Thus a more legitimate interpretation, it seems, is that Isak has simply invested too much into others’ interpretations of his conduct and emotionally pays for it. In general, it seems that Isak suffers from naïvete in life. In one of the dream sequences, when Isak dreams of watching his dead wife Karin cuckold him, he hears her sarcasm of his expected reaction to her dalliance, and censures his lack of resentment and jealousy over it. Isak is told that he has been accused by his wife of "indifference, selfishness, lack of consideration." He is led by Alman to a court-like clearing in which he sees his wife and her lover. Afterward, Alman says:

"Many men forget a woman who has been dead for thirty years. Some preserve a sweet, fading picture, but you can always recall this scene in your memory. Strange, isn't it?"


Yet, we viewers never really know if this act was really an extreme import. The fact is that Isak recalls the exact date of his wife’s infidelity mainly runs counter to the notion that he was unfeeling over it, that he would try to impute blame upon the victimized, himself. From all of these, it seems far more likely to me that Isak’s real existential predicament in this film is not that he ever was a frigid individual. For the worst accusation emerges when Marianne complains of his merely asking his doctor son Evald to repay some debts to him. A dispassionate analysis would, however, suggest that Isak is far from being a tyrant, and rather merely a man trying to hold his grown son to his own words. Marianne, who seems to have bought into others’ interpretations of her father-in-law also finally overcomes such an attitude in the course of the film and finally develops a deep affection for him, despite her initial scorn, including telling Isak his son hates him.

On his way down to the University of Lund to get his honorary degree, Isak stops near his family’s old summer home, pays a visit to his really old and unemotional mother, and stops for a gas refill in a town where Isak used to live during his medical internship. These events shed important light on Isak's psychological map. His stop at his old summerhouse brings him back to a patch of Wild Strawberries that trigger his journey back to his childhood, and lends the film its title. The scenes where Isak loses Sara to Sigfrid are deeply resonant for a viewer and infuse an empathetic mood in the viewer for Isak's loss of love and, more importantly, uncover a deep sentimentalism in his character.  On his way, Isak arrives at his old town, and is warmly greeted by the local gas station attendant, Henrik from whom we hear some of the good deeds and favors Isak the doctor is fondly recalled for in the village, even many years later. This positive scene lies in stark contrast to others' misinterpretations of Isak's character. Leaving Sara and her two suitors behind, Marianne and Isak pay a quick visit to Isak's 96 year old mother. Here the viewer gets some clear evidence of the biases with which others' analyze Isak. In a famous moment, Isak’s mother neglects Isak and his siblings' old photos and makes a rather offensive comment that they only visit her when they need money, and even mistakes Marianne for Isak’s long dead wife, Karin, whom she manifestly loathed. Yet, in the whole scene all we see is how Isak treasures those childhood mementos, and takes offense to his mother's remark. Likewise when he goes to visit his mother on the trip; he doesn't really want to be there because it reminds him of his own strained relationship with his son that seems to be a formality at best. Also, in his trip Marianne becomes frustrated at the quarreling couple and asks them to leave and Isak does not object to that. As if he really wants to avoid those events from his life that are unpleasant and reek of conjugal bickering. All of these hardly fit into the archetype of coldness that others accuse Isak of. 
Most critics seem to have bought into the fact that the Isak is cold, yet little evidence of this is seen. One might argue that the whole tale is a flashback by Isak, who consciously or not is trying to guide the viewer to believe what he believes, yet, even if true, this only reinforces the notion that Isak has been grandly deluded by others into buying into a false notion of himself. Those folks, like Henrik, who has no agenda with Isak, see him in a far different light than those who have something to gain from him do. Indeed, the central dilemma of the film seems not to be how Isak comes to grips with his own objective failures as a human being, but rather how he comes to balance others’ flawed perceptions of himself with a growing sense by himself of who he really is, and has been.

As the film ends, the ceremony is done, and Isak waves to the kids as they leave. He has had another bittersweet argument with Agda, and seems reconciled with himself, ending with a dream sequence of seeing his parents on a far shore of the lake near their summer home. In his mind, all is bliss, for his remaining days are now not turbid with doubt, and even his son and Marianne seem to have reconciled, after a brief moment with both where Isak has had his say. 
What Wild Strawberries cinematically achieves is a melancholy statement about life. Wild Strawberries emerges as one of the Swedish director's most elegiac and humane films. It builds, through its flashback structure, a compassionate portrait of a man coming to terms with the disappointments and sorrows of an emotionally constrained life.

The Seventh Seal (Ingmar Bergman, 1957)

The Seventh Seal is poetic, existential, grim, somber, witty, and on the whole a medieval treatment of an eternally relevant curiosity of human race - the existence of god and the inevitability of death. It draws up a desirous balance of solemn and the carefree, the harsh and the satirical. A medieval knight named Antonius Block and his squire Jöns have just returned from ten wasted years in the Crusades to a Sweden in the throes of the black plague. Block is the most philosophical, perceptive, and inquisitive character who is never tired of seeking answer to an ever-contemporaneous inquiry into the existence of god. Jöns is verging on the cynical side of the inquiry, maintains an expression of scornful derision toward Block, and most prominently a strict enforcer of civil rules. 
We also meet a simple actor named Jof who holds a simple vision of life and a believer in the god, his wife Mia radiating eternal love and affection, and their infant son Mikael, a metaphoric object of future and hope. Vacillating between his inability to believe and his dissatisfaction with unbelief, Block fulminates against God’s frustrating elusiveness on the one hand and the God-shaped hole in his own heart on the other. "Why must he always hide behind unseen miracles and vague promises and hints about eternity?" Block complains. Yet he also asks, "Why can’t I kill God within me? Why does he live on inside me, mocking and tormenting me till I have no rest, even though I curse him and try to tear him from my heart? Why, in spite of everything else, does he remain a reality — a maddening reality I cannot get rid of?" Besides struggling with doubts about God’s existence, Block also resists death in the hope of performing a single meaningful act before dying. He challenges Death, the grim reaper, in a game of chess only to temporize his search for god. The reprieve is granted by Death who intermittently engages in his usual pitiless acts to remind us the inevitability of him. Block does get an opportunity to perform his meaningful act before the film ends — even in a way cheating Death — ultimately this gives him no consolation or peace. Instead, his only respite from his existential dread occurs, notably, during an encounter with the playful couple, Jof and Mia, in which Block briefly shares in their peaceful existence, enjoying a simple meal of wild strawberries and milk. In final, Block and his company with the exception of Jof, Mia, and Mikael accept lurking Death in a moment of submission. In The Seventh Seal, Bergman scrutinizes life and death as a philosophical problem rather than living it as a man. He portrays agnosticism and existential angst with recognized expressions of excitements, but allows religious allegiance to appear only in archaic and repulsive forms. Throughout the film, each encounter with Death gives way to an earthy humorous episode reminding us the endless proceedings of a mundane life. Like Block, Bergman never attempts to enter into Jof and Mia’s uncomplicated way of life, yet still somehow seems to draw comfort from it. By the film’s end it’s clear that although the director has no wish to be like Jof and Mia, he nevertheless values their way of life and doesn’t wish to see them deprived of it. Bergman expresses his impression of Death in the following:
"I was afraid of this enormous emptiness, but my personal view is that when we die, we die, and we go from a state of something to a state of absolute nothingness; and I don’t believe for a second that there’s anything above or beyond or anything like that; and this makes me enormously secure."

The Silence (Ingmar Bergman, 1963)

A group of three passengers, traveling in a train cabin that evokes the image of sweltering afternoon heat, are heading to an unknown city that is caught preparing for an impending war. A sickly translator, Esther, her sister Anna, a curvaceous woman preoccupied with corporal ambitions, and Anna's son Johan, an embodiment of purity. Suffering from a respiratory condition, Esther checks into a hotel room, while Anna and Johan occupying the adjacent suite. Soon, Esther's excessive attachment proves too suffocating for the sensual Anna, who walks out for a nightly adventure. The bedridden Esther overindulges herself with tobacco and alcohol in a vain attempt to subdue her loneliness. Johan is left to his own "strangeland" where he wanders through the near deserted hotel, encountering an elderly kindhearted hotel manager, and a band of dwarfs from a circus company. Johan who initially keeps a respectable distant from his ailing aunt gradually develops an empathy for her, drawn together by their mutual love for Anna and sense of solitude. On the final day of return, still unable to travel, Esther hands over Johan a letter containing a list of translations of foreign words for their journey. Anna and Johan leave behind ailing Esther in the desolate hotel and take a train homebound. The Silence is Bergman's last installment in his "God" trilogy, and arguably the most metaphysical and agnostic film of the trilogy. As Through A Glass Darkly equated human holiness with god, Winter Light analyzed spiritual bankruptcy, The Silence is an examination of emotional isolation in a world devoid of any God - where redemption lies in human connectedness the lack of which leads to wretched conditions. Allegorically, Esther has intelligent faculties at her disposal to communicate, but physical deficiency, fear of rejection by dear ones, and a sense of supremacy prevent her from being understood. Anna, on the other hand, perceives physical contact as a substitute for emotional intimacy, realizes the limitations of her understanding of communication, and is ultimately drawn to a state of emotional isolation. Johan's immature absorption of Esther and Anna's ideas leads him to tilt towards Esther, apparently. Bergman conveys alienation through spatial disconnectedness, partitioning physical space, darkness, sharp light angles, and scarcity of words. The use of mirrors creates a sense of distance between characters and the images in the mirrors further accentuate a sense of emptiness in characters. Note the scene that shows Esther observing Anna's reflection from the adjoining room as she washes her face, suggesting the ruptured intimacy between them. After a prolonged, asthma attack, Esther beseeches God to allow her to die in her own land. In the end, she is left behind by Anna and Johan to die in an abandoned hotel room in a strange land, Alone and forsaken:silenced by a conspicuous absence of God.

Winter Light (Ingmar Bergman, 1963)

A communion is meticulously performed before a dwindling congregation: a school teacher, Marta, a troubled parishioner, Jonas Persson and Jonas' wife, Karin. But the religious ceremony has lost its significance for its message-bearer, pastor Tomas, who has a crisis of faith. Tomas's inner predicament is fittingly captured by a series of close ups, a characteristic of Bergman's cinematic signature. Tomas is callous and uncaring to the woman, Marta, who loves him. His interactions with Marta are mostly mechanical and ultimately acrimonious. When an apprehensive and suicidal Jonas seeks peace on a perceived imminent nuclear holocaust, equivocating Tomas offers his own uncertainty. Jonas gives in to the internal crisis, laden with faith, and commits suicide. The most bare and visually somber of Ingmar Bergman's religious trilogy, Winter Light, the second film of the trilogy, is a film in transition. It marks Bergman's final exploration of religious faith, or of the reasons to doubt the lack thereof, and serves as an overture to the psychological drama, the last part of his trilogy. Similar to Through a Glass Darkly, minimal cast, dialogue, and scenery suffuse the film, squeezing out the atmospheric tensions of the plot to its fundamental essence: God's silence. The unique use of monologues, elongated silences, and extreme close-ups convey emotional plights of the characters and paint a picture of emotional isolation. In perfect harmony are the barren landscape, seasonal climate, and Tomas' illness that further reflect the cold emptiness of his soul. In the final scene, Tomas returns to the obligation of the ceremonial communion attended by a meager  mass. Tomas is seen to minister the vacant words for those who solicit comfort from their lofty meaning, extract from them stamina for their spiritual solace and emotional composure.

Through a Glass Darkly (Ingmar Bergman, 1961)

Four figures come into focus from a water thin horizon, moving toward the shore of an apparently uninhabited island: David, a struggling writer, his adolescent son, Minus, his psychologically tenuous daughter, Karin, and Karin's husband, Martin. All the family members have gathered at the remote island in order to facilitate Karin's recovery from a previous nervous breakdown. David is the most self-absorbed character whose literary struggle has distanced him from his dear ones. David studies Karin with a clinical detachment of a psychological experiment. David is aware of his behavior and his emotional honesty and compunction is profoundly framed in a shattering scene where David cries uncontrollably in a dark room upon realizing how distant he and his children have grown. Martin is the least confused character who is visibly concerned with Karin's well-being, but fails to discharge his sexual energy due to Karin's convalescing conditions. Minus, the most virginal of all, is preoccupied with his own sexual awakening, and uses Karin as a convenient source of female psyche. Minus' emotional closeness to his sister is aptly captured by his plea to the God as he retrieves a blanket for Karin. Karin is the most religious, whose character is represented as an important link between religious devoutness and psychotic delusion. Like most Bergman films, Through a Glass Darkly is a sketch of emotional loneliness, social alienation, and the process of seeking of the God or love, as Bergman would propose.  Through a Glass Darkly is the first film of Ingmar Bergman's religious trilogy, in which the director, in my opinion, establishes the notion of God as a symbol of love, a savior during moments of personal emotional crisis. And this love exists in human connections and familial closeness. This basic theme is represented in the form of the character of David, who realizes after a botched suicide attempt that “God is love”.The film is visually frugal, dark, crisp, and sometimes allegorical. Karin's mental disintegration inside the hull of a shipwreck, symbolizes the tormented soul of Karin. It is a brooding and highly personal film for Bergman whose struggle with his own religious identity and upbringing are supposedly instrumental behind this creative effort. The film's essence is captured when David tells Minus: "I don't know if love proves God's existence, or love is God Himself." In the end, Karin sees God behind the closet door - a stony spider god - a painful allegory of her own family's illusory love.

The Wrong Man (Alfred Hitchcock, 1956)

This film is based on a real-life incident in the New York City, and Hitchcock's first flight to believably portray a real-life event on the silver screen. A musician when back from his work on a fateful night is accosted by men who dragged him to a number of different  places. In each place they asked, "Is this the man? Is this the man?"He was then arrested for several robberies. Although he was completely innocent, he had to go through a trial, and by its end his wife had lost her mind. During the legal proceedings, a small infringement of the ritual caused a mistrial. As the preparations for a new trial were being made, the real culprit was arrested and he confessed. The film was shown from the point of view of the innocent man. Hitchcock has never been more himself than in this film, which nevertheless runs the risk of disappointing lovers of suspense and of English humor. There is very little suspense in it and there is no humor. The Wrong Man is Hitchcock's most stripped-down film. It is the roast without the gravy. The film is shot inexpensively in the street, subway, the places where the action really occurred. It;s because he knew that he was making a difficult and relatively less commercial film than he usually does. His concern was visible when he warned us before the title of the film was showed that what he was offering this time was something different, a drama based on fact. Henry Fonda is impressive, expressionless, almost immobile. Fonda is only a look. Never was Fonda so fine, so grand, and noble as in this film where he has only to present his honest man's face, just barely lit with a sad, an almost transparent, expression. Hitchcock almost made it impossible for the spectator to identify with the drama's hero; we are limited to the role of witnesses. We are at Fonda's side throughout, in his cell, in his home, in the car, on the street, but we are never in his place. That is an innovation in Hitchcock's work, since the suspense of his other films was based precisely on identification. The film's climax is based on a coincidence that makes scrupulous screenwriters scream. That is, when Fonda cannot prove his innocence, his mother tells him: "You should pray." So Fonda kneels down before a statue of Jesus Christ and prays. There is a close-up of Christ, a dissolve, and then a shot in the street that shows a man who resembles Fonda walking toward the camera until the frame catches him in a close-up with his face and Fonda's superimposed. This is certainly the most beautiful shot in the film and it summarizes all of it. It is the transfer of culpability, the theme of the double, a theme present if many of Hitchcock's films. Hitchcock offers a film about the role of an accused man, and the fragility of human testimony and justice. It has nothing in common with the actual incident of the New York City except its pessimism, appearance, and skepticism. In any case, it is one of Hitchcock's best films, the one that goes farthest in the direction he chose long ago.

Roberto Rossellini (1906 - 1977)

Roberto Rossellini is considered as one of the architects of Italian Neo-realism. Of all the films that he made, Rome, Open City (1945), Paisà (1946), and Germany Year Zero (1948) are considered his masterpiece. Rome, Open City (1945) is about a city, Paisà (1946) is about all of Italy from the south to the north, and Germany Year Zero (1948) is about a great country that has been conquered and destroyed. François Truffaut (The Films In My Life, p. 276, 1978) wrote the following about Rossellini's  style: "Rossellini detest clever titles, especially with scenes preceding them, flashbacks, and everything in general that's included simply for decoration, everything that does not serve the film's intention or the character development." 

Ghatashraddha (Girish Kasaravalli, 1979)

This is a Kannada language (the language mainly spoken in the state of Karnataka, India) film made by the renowned filmmaker Girish Kasaravalli hailing from the same state. The film is set in a remote village in the state in 1920; a traditionalist rural society  where women are forcefully downtrodden. The story revolves around two characters: a little boy named Ajit who comes to attend a local school run by a village scholar and the widowed young daughter of the scholar named Meena. The narrative of the film unfolds from the boy's perspective. The dainty girl falls prey to the carnal desires of a teacher from the school and is ultimately impregnated. While the girl is still alive, the father excommunicates the girl to avoid social condemnation by performing funeral rites known as Ghatashraddha . The local school shuts down after this soul stirring incident and the boy is forced to go back home. Kasaravalli slowly depicts the stifling social realities of the time  by drawing our attention to an array of religious and social practices that seem to perpetuate the interests of the ruling class (the Brahmins aka Hindu priests) and sufferings of the persecuted. The scenes where the male teachers coach the sacred hymns and the male children learn them by rote portray a perpetuation of patriarchy and instruments of maintaing social powers in the hands of a chosen few. Ajit fails to learn the hymns and becomes an outcast in the school. Analogously, Meena becomes pregnant out of wedlock and immediately becomes a social outcast. The two outcasts together accentuate the rigid social fabrics and the conditions of the people who dare to undermine the righteousness of the system. Kasaravalli's command of black and white images is unparalleled. Ghatashraddha is definitely an important social document and a gem in the New Wave of Kannada film history.