The Silence (1963)

AKA Tystnaden

Director:
Ingmar Bergman

Writer:
Ingmar Bergman

 

After a nightly train journey through desolate countryside, two emotionally estranged sisters stop at a once-grandiose hotel in an unidentified Central European country on the brink of war or insurrection, in the middle of a heatwave. The older, more cultured sister, Ester (Ingrid Thulin), who is a literary translator, is taken seriously ill, which seems to be terminal. Her fear of death, as well as long-standing rivalry and need for control, cloud her relationship with her younger sister Anna (Gunnel Lindblom). The sisters are depicted as a spirit/flesh dichotomy, with Ester representing the heart and mind, and Anna representing the body and soul.

Upon arriving to the hotel, Anna's son, Johan (Jörgen Lindström), a boy of 8 or so, wanders around the seemingly empty hallways, encountering a friendly old man and a group of Spanish midgets who are part of a travelling circus. Meanwhile, Ester wastes away in her room, attempting to work on her translations, and Anna ventures into the city, eventually having a one-night-stand with a stranger, which infuriates Ester.

By the end of the film, Anna and Johan leave the hotel, and Johan reads a note given to him by Ester while boarding the train. The note reads: "To Johan- words in a foreign language". Anna, seemingly unaffected by it, opens the window and cools herself with the outside rain. It is implied that Ester dies at the hotel, alone.

The theme of 'silence' is repeated throughout the film: God has been silent to Anna over her life, and is now silent in Ester as she dies; in addition, none of the characters speak the language of the country, causing disorientation and confusion; and the two sisters constantly misinterpret the others' words, making communication difficult or impossible.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057611/

Late Spring (1949)

AKA Banshun

Directed by
Yasujirô Ozu

Writing credits
Kazuo Hirotsu (based on the novel "Chichi to musume" by)

Kôgo Noda (screenplay)
Yasujirô Ozu (screenplay)

Professor Shukichi Somiya (Chishu Ryu) has only one child, a twenty-seven-year-old unmarried daughter, Noriko (Setsuko Hara), who takes care of his everyday needs. However, a meeting with his sister Masa (Haruko Sugimura) convinces him that she is now of marriageable age. Noriko is close to his assistant, Hattori (Jun Usami), and Masa asks Somiya to question Noriko if Hattori is interested in her. However it turns out that Hattori already has a fiancée he is about to marry.

A Kyoto friend of Somiya, Professor Onodera, pays a visit to the Somiyas. Noriko learns that Onodera, a widower, has remarried, and she tells Onodera that she finds the idea distasteful - filthy even. Onodera teases her endlessly for harboring such thoughts. Meanwhile, Masa keeps pressurizing Noriko to go for a matchmaking session to see a prospective match who resembles Gary Cooper. Noriko declines, stating that she does not want to marry because of her father. Marrying will leave him alone and helpless. Masa declares that she plans to matchmake her father and Mrs Miwa, a widow, which will mean someone will take care of him.

At a Noh performance, Somiya nods to Mrs Miwa, which triggers a pang of jealousy in Noriko. When her father tries to talk her into going for the matchmaking session, he tells her that he is going to marry Mrs Miwa. Devastated, Noriko decides to go to see the match. To her surprise, she has pleasant impression of him. Masa talks to her if she will marry. Spurred by thoughts of her father remarrying, Noriko gives in to her aunt and agrees.

The Somiyas go for their last trip together, to Kyoto, where they meet Onodera and his family. Noriko reverses her attitude towards Onodera's remarriage when she finds his new wife a pleasant lady. While packing luggages for their way home, Noriko asks Somiya why can't they stay as they are now – she is happy with her father and marriage certainly can't make her any happier. Somiya admonishes her and gives her a short talk asking her to strive for marital happiness together with her husband, something that will take time and effort. Noriko apologizes for her earlier thoughts and agrees to wed.

Noriko finally leaves on her wedding day. Noriko's divorced friend Aya (Yumeji Tsukioka) stays with Somiya in a bar, long enough to hear him confess his supposed "remarriage" to Mrs Miwa is all a ploy to get Noriko married. Aya is touched by his sacrifice and promises to come and visit him often, but Somiya must go back and face the quiet night all alone in his apartment.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0041154/

A Story of Floating Weeds (1934)

AKA Ukikusa monogatari

Director:
Yasujirô Ozu

Writers:
Tadao Ikeda
Yasujirô Ozu (story)

The film starts with a travelling kabuki troupe arriving by train at a provincial seaside town. Kihachi Ichikawa (Takeshi Sakamoto), the head of the troupe, is a very popular actor. He takes time off to visit a former mistress Otsune (Chouko Iida), with whom he had a son years before. His son, now a student, does not know that Kihachi is his father, thinking him an uncle. Kihachi and his son, Shinkichi, spend a fruitful afternoon fishing for dace in a nearby river.

When the troupe's performance tour is postponed by the constant downpour around the region, one of the members of the troupe unwittingly reveals a secret: that Kihachi is seeing a woman every day. Otaka (Rieko Yagumo), one of Kihachi’s actresses and his present mistress, decides to pay a visit to Otsune's watering-hole with fellow actress Otoki (Yoshiko Tsubouchi). Kihachi becomes enraged, warns Otaka never to come and harass the mother and son again, and breaks off his relationship with her.

To get back at Otsune and Kihachi, Otaka suggests to Otoki to try to seduce Shinkichi and offers her some money. Otoki waits for Shinkichi at a tree by the road one day and offers to meet after her performance at the same place. Shinkichi agrees to the meeting, and the two start a clandestine love affair.

As time goes by, Otoki realizes she has fallen for Shinkichi. She tells Shinkichi to forget her because she is merely a traveling actress. Kihachi discovers their affair, confronts Otoki and slaps her, demanding to know what she wants. Otoki reveals Otaka's setup, but tells him she now loves Shinkichi and is not doing this for money. Kihachi then beats up Otaka, but realizes he no longer has any control over the affair.

Kihachi decides to disband the troupe, selling all their costumes and props. The kabuki actors have one last night together. Kihachi visits Otsune, and tells her of his troupe's break-up. She invites him to stay with her for good, and they decide to tell Shinkichi of his paternity secret. Shinkichi and Otoki return, but Shinkichi and Kihachi get into a violent quarrel when Kihachi hits Otoki repeatedly.

Otsune now tells Shinkichi that Kihachi is his father, but Kihachi refuses to acknowledge him for abandoning them. Otsune reasons that Kihachi doesn't want Shinkichi to become a traveling actor like him. Shinkichi leaves for his room in a huff. Kihachi decides to restart another troupe, realizing he cannot stay. Otoki asks to join him, but Kihachi leaves her in Otsune's care and asks Otoki to help his son be a great man.

Shinkichi comes down to look for his father but he has gone on the road. At the railway station, Kihachi meets Otoki who helps light his cigarette with matches. He invites her to start a new traveling troupe with him at Kamisuwa. Otaka goes to buy an extra ticket to accompany him. The film ends with a shot of a train traveling toward Kamisuwa.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0025929/

Un Chien Andalou (1929)

Director:
Luis Buñuel

Writers:
Salvador Dalí
Luis Buñuel

The film opens with a title card reading "Once upon a time". What may be the film's conclusion unfolds; a middle-aged man (played by Buñuel) sharpens his razor at his balcony door and tests the razor on his thumb. He then opens the door, and idly fingers the razor while gazing at the moon, about to be engulfed by a thin cloud, from his balcony. There is a cut to a close-up of a young woman (Simone Mareuil) being held by the man as she calmly stares straight ahead. Another cut occurs to the moon being overcome by the cloud as the man slits the woman's eye with the razor, and the vitreous humour spills out from it.

The subsequent title card reads "eight years later". A slim young man (Pierre Batcheff) bicycles down a calm urban street wearing what appears to be a nun's habit and a locked box with a strap around his neck. A cut occurs to the young woman from the first scene, who has been reading anxiously in a sparingly furnished upstairs apartment, and she hears the young man approaching on his bicycle. She promptly throws aside the book she was reading (revealing a reproduction of Vermeer's The Lacemaker) and goes to the window. She emerges from the building and attempts to revive the young man after witnessing him collapse from the bicycle.

Later, the young woman assembles pieces of the young man's clothing on a bed in the upstairs room, and seemingly through concentrating on the clothing causes the young man to appear near the door. The young man and the young woman stare at his hand, which has a hole in the palm from which ants emerge. A slow transition occurs focusing on the armpit hair of an unknown figure and a sea urchin at a sandy location. An androgynous young woman appears in the street below the apartment, poking at a severed hand with a cane while surrounded by an angry crowd and police.

The crowd clears when the police place the hand in the box previously carried by the young man, and the androgynous young woman contemplates something happily while standing perilously in the middle of the now busy street, clutching the box. She is then run over by a car and a few bystanders gather around her. The young man and the young woman watch these events unfold from the apartment window. The young man seems to take sadistic pleasure in the androgynous young woman's danger and subsequent death, and as he gestures at the shocked young woman in the room with him, he leers at her and grasps her bosom. The young woman resists him at first, but then allows him to touch her as he imagines her nude from the front and the rear. The young woman pushes him away as he drifts off and she attempts to escape by running to the other side of the room. The young man corners her as she reaches for a racket in self-defense, but he suddenly picks up two ropes and drags two grand pianos containing dead and rotting donkeys, stone tablets containing the Ten Commandments, and two rather bewildered priests (played by Jaime Miravitilles and Salvador Dalí) who are attached by ropes. As he is unable to move, the young woman escapes the room. She finds the young man in the next room, dressed in his nun's garb in the bed.


The subsequent title card reads "around three in the morning". The young man is roused from his bed by the sound of a doorbell (represented visually by a martini shaker being shaken by a set of arms through two holes in a wall). The young woman goes to answer the door and does not return. Another young man dressed in lighter clothing (also played by Pierre Batcheff) angrily arrives in the apartment, possibly to punish the other young man for his lecherous actions against the young woman. The second young man forces the first one to throw away his nun's clothing and then makes him stand against a wall.

The subsequent title card reads "Sixteen years ago." We see the second young man from the front for the first time as he admires the art supplies and books on the table near the wall and forces the first young man to hold two of the books as he stares at the wall. The first young man eventually shoots the second young man when the books abruptly turn into pistols. The second young man, now in a meadow, dies while swiping at a nude figure which suddenly disappears into thin air. A group of men come and carry his corpse away.

The young woman comes into the apartment to possibly confront the first young man and sees a death head moth. The first young man sneers at her as she retreats and wipes his mouth off his face with his hand. Subsequently the first young man makes the young woman's armpit hair attach itself to where his mouth would be on his face through gestures. The young woman looks at the first young man with disgust, and leaves the apartment sticking her tongue out at him.

As she exits her apartment, the street is replaced by a coastal beach, where the young woman meets a third man with whom she walks arm in arm. He shows her the time on his watch and they walk near the rocks, where they find the remnants of the first young man's nun's clothing and the box. They seem to walk away clutching each other happily and make romantic gestures in a long tracking shot. However, the film abruptly cuts to the final shot with a title card reading "In Spring," showing the couple buried in sand up to their elbows, presumably dead, possibly bringing the film full-circle to a time after the unknown events of the opening scene.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0020530/