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From the NOR Dossiers
A Cinematic View by Robert E. Lauder
A Movie Masterpiece
October 1986Kurosawa dramatizes the truth that the sins of the parents are visited on their children. The harm Ran has done has returned to haunt his old age.
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Memories of Great Comedies from the Past
September 1986Is moviemaking such a risky business that even an extraordinarily gifted performer cannot be sure in advance how a proposed project will turn out?
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Trivialized Sex, Cheap Film
July August 1986Hollywood's standard view of sexuality frequently works against a film’s best intentions. Is all the bed-hopping supposed to have any real significance?
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Fellini Back in Stride
June 1986An artist who apparently works very much from his feelings and intentions, Fellini turns his camera on people and lovingly watches their foibles and failures.
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Just Awful
May 1986Contemporary film is quite advanced; the tools are available for making significant films. What is obviously lacking is insight.
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The Marx Brothers as a Sign of God?
April 1986There may be a benevolent God and life may have a meaning because how else can you account for the marvelous humor in a Marx Brothers’ movie?
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Out of Africa
March 1986It was from her 17-year experience in Africa that Karen Blixen, under the pen name of Isak Dinesen, wrote her highly acclaimed stories of Africa.
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Clerical Complicity
January-February 1986"The Official Story" explores the conversion of an upper-class Argentinian interested only in the happiness of her own family into a deeply caring, unselfish woman ready to perform heroic acts of justice and charity.
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Sanctity as Insanity?
December 1985The classic battle between science/secularism and faith/religion seems like a preliminary for a main event that never happens.
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The Extraordinary Career of Francois Truffaut
November 1985Truffaut made five more or less autobiographical films, starting with "400 Blows" when actor Jean-Pierre Leaud was 14 and ending 20 years later.
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From Chance Encounter to Friendship
October 1985The Kiss of the Spider Woman powerfully portrays the almost magical changes that friendship can bring about in people’s lives.
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Black Comedy at Its Best
September 1985John Huston’s film career, which has spanned more than 50 years, has been a curious blend of the sublime and, if not the ridiculous, the strikingly mediocre.
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The Panoramic & the Personal
June 1985With Forster’s A Passage to India Lean reached for something a bit deeper: to film the specifically spiritual against the background of the clash between English and Indian cultures.
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The Prison of “Freedom”
May 1985Rohmer’s films are uniquely cinematic, bearing the mark of his simple visual style and nuanced outlook on and delicate treatment of human relationships.
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Depicting the Workings of Grace
April 1985Places in the Heart stands with Chariots of Fire as one of the few films in recent years with both a sympathetic and profound view of religion.
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Blasphemous Battle With God
March 1985Two films that are interesting adaptations from another medium are "Amadeus" and "Cal," each rewritten by its original author for the screen.
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John Cassavetes & the Mystery of Moviemaking
January-February 1985His typical work is at times a beautiful blend of intuition, sensitivity, and compassion but at other times a maddening mixture of overly long scenes, aimless dialogue, and directionless plot.
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Jean-Luc Godard: Low-Altitude Narcissism
December 1984What evil an artist can legitimately and accurately depict depends on the altitude from which the artist sees that evil.
VIEW ARTICLE"Catholicism's Intellectual Prizefighter!"
- Karl Keating
