The Janus Challenge

Besides his crazy agrarian reform ideas, the state-run film industry also objected to Eisenstein’s use of non-standard camera angles, montage sequences, and other tell-tale signs of his lack of commitment to Mother Russia.

In addition to the Polish James Dean, A Generation also starred the man often called “the Polish Roman Polanski”: Roman Polanski.

“In the empty, silent spaces of the world, he has found metaphors that illuminate the silent places of our hearts, and found in them, too, a strange and terrible beauty: austere, elegant, enigmatic, haunting.” – Jack Nicholson

“Oh, for God’s sake,” I can hear you complaining. “Another war film? Another RUSSIAN war film?”

The answer to your question is, “Yes, Jean Cocteau was also a manager of professional boxers.” I shit you not. As near as I can tell, Jean Cocteau was the bisexual Chuck Norris of the Surrealist movement.

First, let’s get this out of the way: No, Marcel Camus did not write The Stranger. That was Albert (no relation, apparently).

“My notion is that cinema was invented for Brief Encounter.” – Dan Talbot, founder of New Yorker Films

Carol Reed was the offspring of an illicit affair between the impresario Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree (Oh my sweet lord how I love that name) and his mistress, May Pinney Reed.

“I don’t have any unifying theme. I just make pictures I like.” – Kon Ichikawa

Marco Bellocchio was born in 1939, studied philosophy in Milan, and studied film at the Centro sperimentale di cinematografia (I’m betting that translates roughly as “Center for Experimental Filmmaking”).