1964: The Train

The movie about a team of French resistance members trying to keep the Nazis from deporting a collection of world-renowned paintings to Germany is another one of those incredibly well-crafted 1960s Hollywood pics that provide really good entertainment, but don't even intend to grab you by the lapels. (7)

1961: Léon Morin, prêtre

In a Nazi-occupied French village, a priest, played by Belmondo, converts a woman (Emanuelle Riva) from one false belief system (communism) to the next (christianity). Will he get into more than just her mind? - Melville's commercially most successful film, and of those I've seen the one I found least interesting so far. It's not bad, but it doesn't have a lot to recommend it either, except for a little of that old French film charme that's hard to pin down. (6)

1965: The War Game

Fiction-documentary about what it might look like if Britain suffers a nuclear attack. Given that the outcome is rather dreadful anyway, I felt that the film might have been more effective if it had tried less hard. (6)

1963: L'aîné des Ferchaux (Magnet of Doom or An Honorable Young Man)

Melville's road movie about an industrialist fleeing France for the USA and a failed boxer accompanying him as his "secretary" is typically slow and melancholic and untypically unstylized. Certainly not for everybody, but for me. (7)

1962: The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner

The film about a deviant youth's time in a reformatory and how he got there is generally done well, and I especially like the use of music in the running scenes. Could have done without the grandstanding in the final scene. (6.5)

1964: The Killers

A couple of killers wonder why a victim they killed just stood there and took the hit, and soon they're tracing the million from a robbery he was involved in. When they line up accomplice after accomplice, the victim's story is told in a series of flashbacks. - No-nonsense, hardboiled and well-photographed movie of the kind that one imagines Tarantino enjoys. (7)

1966: Masculin feminin

Another loosely structured black and white film about young French people from Godard. In this one, both the naive main character and the filmmaker himself (via all-caps intertitles) get on one's nerves with simplistic messages from the far left, but it doesn't really matter: Like previous pics, Masculin feminin has that hard-to-pin-down nervous energy that they don't teach at film school. (7.5)

1966: Alfie

You can read this film about a womanizer with a small conscience as either a statement about the advantages of conventional monogamy or a celebration of alpha maleness with a tacked-on ending to set the church's mind at ease. Either way, a bad basic idea. (5)

1966: What's up, Tiger Lily?

I though it was a joke when it said on the back of the DVD case that they took a Japanese action movie and added a new soundtrack. Not so! Quite silly. I wouldn't want to see a hundred movies like that, but one was quite entertaining. (7)

1961: Experiment in Terror

The thriller about a bank clerk blackmailed into stealing 100,000 dollars is shot in pristine black and white and all-around well made. Not much else to say about it. A weak 7.

1963: Muriel ou Le temps d'un retour (Muriel, or The Time of Return)

Four people meet in a room in Boulogne-sur-mer and their interconnected lives proceed from there. There's love and hate and the war in Africa and a lot of stuff I'm sure I didn't get on the first viewing. But, if that's a basis for that kind of opinion, it's not about the plot anyway, it's mostly about style. Muriel has a modernist soundtrack (think Stockhausen), shows lots of modernist architecture, both interior and exterior, and employs at least two ways of quick editing: First, a kind of proto-hip hop cutting, in which quick successions of cuts skip only a few minutes each; second, quick cuts away from the main plot to show small scenes that are not allowed to take any longer than they absolutely must (e.g., four seconds). That's a main technique for presenting a film not only about specific people, but also one about the city on the whole, as a kind of side order. Or is it the main order?

For the time being, I'm giving it eight points, but I think it's a grower.

1963: Le petit soldat

Godard's second feature, starring Anna Karina and some bloke who's not Jean-Paul Belmondo, was banned by the French government for three years, for telling the story of a man who gets caught between the fronts of the opposing fractions fighting the Algerian war in Europe. More importantly, like the earliest talkies, it was apparently shot silently, with only the most important sounds overdubbed later. To me, that's a technical weakness rather than a bold artistic move, but I got used to it at the time. With its grainy black and white and its nervous energy, it feels like a lesser version of À bout de souffle, which is not to say it is a bad film at all. (7.5)

1960: Rocco e i suoi fratelli (Rocco and His Brothers)

Visconti tells the story of four southern Italian brothers who come to Milan in search of a better life, focusing on the tender Rocco and the up-to-no-good Simone. - It's got a last half hour to die for, but the other two have some (mild) lengths. Overall, a very good movie, though. (7.5)

1962: Salvatore Giuliano

The nonlinearly told film starts with the death of the title character, a 1940s Sicilian outlaw, and tells the stories of people connected to him, as well as the history of Sicily during that era. It's a little hard to follow at times, but nicely contrasts the city with the countryside, Sicily with Rome, and darkness with light. (7)

1962: Birdman of Alcatraz

You shouldn't think a film about a prisoner in solitary confinement who becomes a bird expert is all that interesting, but it's pulled off in a very professional manner: a well-structured screenplay (Guy Trosper) and no-nonsense direction (John Frankenheimer). Old Hollywood: It did have something going for itself. (7)

1963: Nattvardsgästerna (Winter Light)

I hear Jerry Bruckheimer's planning a remake of this one: A Swedish village pastor has doubts about the existence of god in Bergman's unremarkable, but decent significant-slice-of-life picture. (6)

1962: Cleo de 5 à 7

Cleo spends the two hours between visiting the hospital to have a test done which will tell her whether she suffers from cancer and receiving the test results driving in a taxi, being visited by her lover, talking to her maid, etc. Very good music (though sparse) and cinematography; overall decidedly decent. (6.5)

1962: El ángel exterminador

The bourgeois guests at a dinner party find themselves unable to leave afterwards. Their subsequent behaviour suggests poor stress resistance. Featuring lots of dialogue, perhaps too much, and the little surrealistic touches one may expect from Bunuel (in addition to the general surrealistic setup). Why not? (6)

1965: Per qualche dollaro in più (For a Few Dollars More)

Once you got over the concept of manliness that is promoted in the second installment of Leone's trilogy about the overly talkative bounty hunter and are ready to enjoy it for what it is (an exercise you're already familiar with, having seen the first one), you'll realize it's not very entertaining. (5.5)

1961: Blast of Silence

A killer comes to Christmastime New York to do a job. Grainy black and white, a hectic jazz soundtrack, lots of second-person voiceover, rooftops, nightclubs - this one delivers just what you expect from a noir. (7)