Though not unputdownable, Mansfield Park has the stamp and class of Jane Austen. Like all other Austen novels, the principal events concern the fortunes of a family;Mr Bertrand’s four children and his niece Fanny Price. Fanny Price stands out from all the other characters. She is sensible and intelligent,compassionate and caring. She is pretty,though in…
The only artist who ranks along side William Shakespeare in the galaxy of literary greats is none other than Fyodor Dosteyevsky. It is not difficult to answer this question because it is Brothers Karamazov. Constructed around a family of four brothers, all sons of Fyodor Karamazov: Alexei, the sensualist and emotional giant, Ivan, the rationalist…
A reflection on Vittorio De Sica and Italian neorealism, where ordinary people, natural settings and unadorned truth become the substance of cinema.
I watched the movie Silas Marner starring Ben Kingsley. It made me reflect about the novel by George Eliot that I had read long ago. George Eliot’s simple story of a lost and found treasure which had been robbed from Silas Marner is a profound and moving tale about the humanism and honesty of the…
I watched John Ford’s “Young Mr. Lincoln” starring Henry Fonda. The movie carries that distinctive stamp of John Ford’s genius. Young Mr. Lincoln is the story of Abraham Lincoln in his young years practicing as an advocate in a Country Court. Ford achieves the aura and the mood of those days when life was more…
Ritwik Ghatak’s Subarna Rekha: Ghatak’s style is different from Ray’s. It is raw and edgy, replete with repressed energy. The film has a hopeful ending but Ghatak’s depiction of the social reality hits you hard. Caste prejudice, unemployment, poverty and migration are some of the themes. These forces were very strong in independent India as…
A cinematic moment achieves greatness in capturing a particular moment of life, a moment which although small and individual by itself, represents or even encapsulates an entire way of life, a culture, or the personality of the character in entirety; Charulatha swinging in the garden; What Blake calls ‘To see the world in a grain…
Two Fritz Lang films—M and Metropolis—open questions about justice, alienation, power, the city and the social responsibility of cinema.
Onibaba is an erotic horror story. It is about an old woman and her daughter-in-law living on the fringes of life, hunting down soldiers returning from the battle or killing embittered and emaciated warriors. They stash away the belongings of those who they kill to sell it to a local merchant who gives them sake…
The American movie goers have voted it to be the greatest movie ever made. It has been called a masterpiece, an example of exquisite movie craftsman ship and the greatest triumph of Orson Welles. I’m talking about Citizen Kane. Charles Foster Kane is a newspaper baron, a publishing tycoon who wins and loses friends as…