映画批評から英語を知るのもあり。楽しまなければ英語は身に付かない。
I am not a native speaker of English. In order to improve my English ability,I would like to continue learing English every day. I am sure that the best way not to give up learning English is to enjoy it. I like movies, so learning English through movie-related documents is a suitable option for me. Reading and understanding a lot of the movie documents written by a native is a good way,I think. I would like to be able to write my reviews on movies fluently.
Judy Garland really projects Dorothy's innocenece and vulneribility
(脆弱さ）, and Margaret Hamilton truly scares you as the Wicked Witch. The special effects are still amazing, even after all that's come along since.Unlike many of today's films that age fast, this will continue to last.Young Dorthy is tired of her ordinary life in her ordinary town and is suddenly whisked away(連れ去られる） to Oz, a dream land full of color and beauty. Masterfully done job on everyone's part as the wonderful movie unfolds. It is so much fun, it's no wonder it is still around. It has survived many movies of the same time, as well as countlessly bad sequels and spin-offs, which is no surprise at all. Great cast in a great movie proves that being over the raindow is timeless.
The Wizard of Oz is rated ★★★★★
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The film begins with a voiceover of a woman speaking the first lines from the novel: "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again", to the images of a ruined country manor. She continues that she can never return to Manderley — as it no longer exists, except as a ruin.
Joan Fontaine plays a young woman (who is never named), an orphan, who works as a paid companion to the wealthy Edythe Van Hopper (Florence Bates). In Monte Carlo, she meets the aristocratic widower Maximilian (Maxim) de Winter (Laurence Olivier) and they fall in love. Within weeks, they decide to get married.
There's wonderful acting by Joan Fontaine as a naive and very green bride who marries a rich man and moves into his mansion. Little does she know that her husband's first wife had a very shady past, and a doting maid who still resides at the home. This movie is just wonderful, I encourage any romantic suspense lover to watch it! One of Hitchcock's best.
Rebecca is rated ★★★★★
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Spoiler alert!You might as well not watch the below video as it reveals the ending(まだ見ておられない方は、以下のビデオを見ない方が良いと思います。結末が分りますので）。
The movie is set in London in 1914, on the eve of World War I. 1914 was the year Chaplin made his first movie. Calvero (Charles Chaplin), once a famous stage clown but now a washed-up drunk, saves a young dancer, Thereza Ambrose, alias Terry (Claire Bloom), from suicide. Nursing her back to health, Calvero helps Terry regain her self-esteem and resume her dancing career. In doing so he regains his own self-confidence, but his attempts to make a comeback are less successful...
it's the story of a once-great stage comedian (Calvero, a formerly great tramp clown, played by Charlie Chaplin), who's been failing in his career, and has become an alcholic, who saves the life of a despondent ballerina (played by Claire Bloom) from a suicide attempt. The film is a juxtaposition(組み合わせ、並列） of these two personalities, one who rallies & goes onward, the other who falls further. It contains some of Chaplin's funniest & finest moments, include a nice pantomime of a flea circus, and a duet towards the end of the film with Buster Keaton. I wasn't really into charlie until I saw this and "the great Dictator". I know they are classic classic's when I watch them again.When he made this film he was about 64 years old....yet bouncy and buoyant(元気溌剌）...very charismatic, sweet and charming.
Limelight is rated ★★★★★
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The Great Dictator is a comedy film by Charlie Chaplin released in October 1940. Like most Chaplin films, he wrote, produced, and directed, in addition to starring as the lead. Having been the only Hollywood film maker to continue to make silent films well into the period of sound films, this was Chaplin's first true talking picture as well as his most commercially successful film.More importantly, it was the first major feature film of its period to bitterly satirize Nazism and Adolf Hitler.
At the time of its first release, the United States was still formally at peace with Nazi Germany. Chaplin's film advanced a stirring, controversial condemnation of Hitler, fascism, antisemitism(反ユダヤ主義), and the Nazis, whom he excoriates(激しく非難) in the film as "machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts".
Not only is it funny, but its message, especially the end speech, is deeply moving
Speech script:
I'm sorry but I don't want to be an Emperor, that's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible, Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another, human beings are like that. We all want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone and the earth is rich and can provide for everyone.
The way of life can be free and beautiful. But we have lost the way.
Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate;
has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.
We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in:
machinery that gives abundance has left us in want.
Our knowledge has made us cynical,
our cleverness hard and unkind.
We think too much and feel too little:
More than machinery we need humanity;
More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness.
Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.
The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me I say "Do not despair".
The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress: the hate of men will pass and dictators die and the power they took from the people, will return to the people and so long as men die liberty will never perish. . .
Soldiers: don't give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you and enslave you, who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel, who drill you, diet you, treat you as cattle, as cannon fodder.
Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts. You are not machines. You are not cattle. You are men. You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don't hate, only the unloved hate. Only the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers: don't fight for slavery, fight for liberty.
In the seventeenth chapter of Saint Luke it is written:
"The kingdom of God is within man"
Not one man, nor a group of men, but in all men; in you, the people.
You the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy let's use that power, let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give you the future and old age and security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie. They do not fulfil their promise, they never will. Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfil that promise. Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness.
Soldiers! In the name of democracy, let us all unite!
. . .
The Great Dictator is rated ★★★★★＋
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The last five minutes are simply exquisite,the scene takes on such emotional gravity as to defy explanation. Though shot in the early days of talking pictures, "City Lights" was silent. Chaplin still held onto his immortal character, the Little Tramp. Outwardly appearing as a bum(ホームレス), the Tramp has a heart of gold and is rather self-sacrificing. He encounters a blind flower girl. Determined to pay for a surgery to restore her sight, Chaplin performs several jobs to secure funds for the operation.
The end of the picture is a true gem(珠玉), among the most memorable and touching climaxes in screen history.Although this film is rather quite funny (the boxing match had me in stitches(笑い転げる）), Chaplin's brilliantly ends this film with one of the most touching scenes in cinema. Imagine spending 90 minutes laughing uncontrollably, only to be brought to your knees in tears as the tramp and the blind girl reunite. Surely this emotional transition is one of the greatest feats in the history of film.
City Lights is rated ★★★★★
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This film let the imagination of the viewer make up the horror, as everything is in the unseen.Irena(Simone Simon) is cursed with the supernatural ability to turn into a cat when angered. Irena is a tragic figure, doomed by her own inner terrors and torments. This deadly ability causes the detoriation of her happy marriage, the death of a man, as well as hers A sense of suspense and wonder permeates（浸透、充満する） the film, thanks to producer Val Lewton's celebrated use of light and shadow and the brisk direction of Robert Wise. Because of their small budgets, these films depended more on good writing and haunting atmospherics, rather then the usual corny（陳腐な、物まねの）, special effects to scare audiences. Lewton's movies might have at the time been considered "B-films", but they were extremely well made and most effective.
Cat People is rated ★★★★
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Power, greed, corruption and slavery are the main focus here and are enhanced by the constant use of religious imagery throughout the film. Despite the films age, the complicated sets and backdrops are spectacular and beautiful to behold. From the sweeping views of the ultra-modern Metropolis with its imposing skyscrapers, endless stream of cars and airplanes which fly within city limits to the workers' smog-infested dwellings and the majestic work machines that run their lives to the thousands of extras who were carefully set and choreographed all contribute in giving "Metropolis" its trancelike quality. The visual features used in the film are highly impressive especially when the technological conditions of the German film industry in the 1920s are considered. The symbolical usage of lights and shadows as well as the music contribute to the plot, and these features artistically enrich the film. The mechanical and cold atmosphere of the city is successfully represented through architecture. The gestures and mimics of the actors in Metropolis is one of the things that you cannot find in Hollywood films. This is absolutely a masterpiece of silent films.
Lang's film has many levels; one can approach it politically, in terms of class dynamics or in terms of gender and the representation of woman or its association with the evil, etc. The characters are brilliantly used for conveying the sub-themes in the film. You have to see this multidimensional master piece of science fiction; it is a feast for the eye, for the ear and the mind.
Metropolice is rated ★★★★★
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The movie opens with a policeman committing suicide in his home. His wife immediately finds him dead and reads a suicide note. Instead of calling the police, she first calls a major crime syndicate boss named Mike Lagana (Alexander Scourby). The police eventually arrive at the dead policeman's house and detective sergeant Dave Bannion (Glenn Ford) leads the investigation. One of the attractions of this story is the pace: it is fast-moving, and it's not too dated either, despite being over 50 years old.
From now on, I rate the movie by the number of star mark as follows:
★★★★★(best)
★(worst)
The big heat is ★★★★★
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The famous opening scene, an uninterrupted two minute tracking shot that bridges the US and Mexican borders, is almost enough to recommend this movie on it own. But then consider the cast of characters Welles assembled: Heston, Leigh, Dietrich, all giving masterful performances. As usual, it is Welles himself who steals the show.Welles himself is made to look huge. He was already a bit overweight anyway, but the camera angles used and make-up only serve to emphasis his bulk. He plays Hank Quinlan a crooked plice chief. The other main characters are Charlton Heston as Vargas a Mexican Policeman and Janet Leigh is his wife Susan Vargas. Both are excellent. From the famous oprning tracking shot, which lasts over 3 minutes, through to the ending this is a dark tale of corruption and drugs. The story is set right on the border between the U.S and Mexico so you are continually unsure about jurisdiction. You will have to concentrate when watching this.
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Mildred Pierce is a 1945 American drama film starring Joan Crawford, Ann Blyth, Jack Carson, Zachary Scott, and Eve Arden in a film noir about a long-suffering mother and her ungrateful daughter.
This melodramatic film noir is one of the most decorated films of the genre, nominated for 6 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and winner of the Best Actress Oscar for Joan Crawford's portrayal of the title character. Like several of film noir's most famous examples, "Double Indemnity" among them, "Mildred Pierce" is based on a novel by James M. Cain. In this case, the novel was adapted by Ranald MacDougall, with some uncredited assistance from William Faulkner. As the film opens, Mildred Pierce (Joan Crawford), a sophisticated woman, obviously distraught, makes an apparent attempt to frame a business associate for her husband's murder. She is taken to the police station, where she recounts the events of the past few years to an investigating officer. We see, in flashback, her split from her first husband, her preoccupation with providing an aristocratic lifestyle for her eldest daughter, her business success, and eventual marriage to her now-deceased second husband.
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Lana Turner herself admitted this film is here career best.Part of this film was set near beaches in santa monica and other parts of southern california,it is enjoyable to see the unspoiled beauty of southern california beaches of mid 1940s.Turner gives an icy hot performance here, with many long takes between she and Garfield as they are drawn to each other like moths to a flame. Much is made of director Tay Garnett framing Turner in sexy white outfits throughout the film. Her best scene, however, and the one in which she is the most strikinginly beautiful, she is dressed in a black bathrobe. Cora is in the kitchen caressing a knife and agonizing over her dreams and what needs to be done to make them come true. When Frank walks in on her, her voice catches, her reluctance to follow through real. She tells Garfield in a quivering(震える）voice, "If you really loved me."
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"How Green Was My Valley" is one of John Ford's best films,the sentimental story of the Morgans, a family of Welsh coal miners.
It is the warm picture of a closeknit loving family .
It is a tear jerker(涙を誘う） but not in a silly sentimental way.
What this movie suggests is that the inspiration one needs to overcome adversity need not be found only in the wisdom of others.
Sometimes,it can be found within one's own heart. Huw Morgan found that out even as a child.
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The movie is a true classic, endeared by generations of filmgoers and influencing much of what we see in today's romantic comedies. It's responsible for a specific formula: The common scenario being boy meets girl, boy and girl despise each other, boy and girl fall in love with each other, boy loses girl, boy eventually wins girl back. You've seen it. So many times in fact that the stories and characters generally seem jaded (うんざり）and contrived（わざとらしい）. Many of these films fail to duplicate the magic of this 1934 classic. The acting, too, usually isn't up to par to a Gable or Colbert--both of whom deliver stellar（素晴らしい） performances in this film. The sparring （スパーリング）between these two legendary actors is priceless!
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It's the (mostly) true story of Edward D. Wood, Jr. Wood was a rabid(狂気じみた、それほど熱意がある） movie-lover who passionately wanted to make movies and didn't care what he had to do to make it happen.In addition to his lack of talent, Ed liked to wear womens' clothing. Sometimes, he supposedly even directed his movies while wearing womens' clothing. His first film was a debacle（大失敗） called Glen or Glenda, one of the most painfully inept and mind-blowingly awful movies in the history of cinema. This is a great movie that is so frequently overlooked among all the great movies that came out in 1994. Even in Tim Burton's filmography, the film is often overlooked. Anyone who loves cult movies, or just movies in general should see Ed Wood. It's an offbeat（型破り）, unusual masterpiece that tells a fascinating story about a man who made up for his lack of talent with an abundance of passion.
Well, this film is not listed in the best 1001movies mentioned before(chucles).
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Dietrich remained popular throughout her long career by continually re-inventing herself, professionally and characteristically. In the Berlin of the 1920s, she acted on the stage and in silent films. Her performance as Lola-Lola in The Blue Angel, directed by Josef von Sternberg, brought her international fame and provided her a contract with Paramount Pictures in the US. Hollywood films such as Shanghai Express and Desire capitalised on her glamour and exotic looks, cementing her stardom and making her one of the highest paid actresses of the era. Dietrich became a US citizen in 1937, and throughout World War II she was a high-profile frontline entertainer. Although she still made occasional films in the post-war years, Dietrich spent most of the 1950s to the 1970s touring the world as a successful show performer.
In 1999, the American Film Institute named Dietrich the ninth greatest female star of all time.
A stunning film made famous by Marlene Dietrich but carried largely by the fantastic performance of Emil Jennings. The stodgy（四角四面） professor gives up everything to be with his blue angel and pays the ultimate price for it. This is a story of the road to ruin as seen through a travelling cabaret.Dietrich is really not too impressive (she is even a bit pudgy（丸々とした） here until she sings. When she arches her back, raises her leg, and languidly croons(物憂げにささやくように優しく歌う) her little song about being helpless to resist lovers, she becomes an international star. She is in total command of the camera and herself(指揮をとる）. It is a snapshot of a self-satisfied whore（娼婦）, indifferent to what the world thinks or does around her. From a well-dressed, punctual and rigidly authoritarian teacher, he becomes late, poorly dressed, embarassing to himself and others, and in sore need of a shave. When he realizes how he has lost himself through his love of Lola Lola, it is too late.
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Six-year-old Ana is a shy girl who lives in the manor house（領主邸） in an isolated Spanish village on the Castille plateau with her parents Fernando and Teresa and her older sister, Isabel. The year is 1940, and the civil war has just ended with the Francoist victory over the Republic. Her aging father spends most of his time absorbed in tending to and writing about his beehives; her much younger mother is caught up in daydreams about a distant lover, to whom she writes letters. The entire family is never seen together in a single shot. Ana's closest companion is Isabel, who loves her but cannot resist playing on her little sister's gullibility（だまされやすいこと）.At the beginning of the film, a mobile cinema brings Frankenstein to the village and the two sisters go to see it. Ana finds the film more interesting than frightening, particularly the scene where the monster plays benignly with a little girl, then accidentally kills her. She asks her sister, "Why did he kill the girl, and why did they kill him after that?" Isabel tells her that the monster didn't kill the girl and isn't really dead; she says that everything in films is fake. Isabel says the monster is like a spirit, and Ana can talk to him if she closes her eyes and calls him: "It's me, Ana".
It is said that Ana was traumatized by viewing the Frankenstein movie and by her sister's horrid joke, and then by the blood she sees in the old building by the well where the fugitive had rested. But I think it would be better to say that Ana was challenged by new-found knowledge of the ever close proximity of death, and in reaction she ran away into her own world to find an answer. Notice how the scene from James Wales' Frankenstein in which the monster kneels beside the water with the little girl is repeated in Ana's fantasy, and how she looks at the monster with big, wide-open, questioning, waiting eyes. What is life, and what is death?
Some films are just so amazing that one cannot put into words just how truly remarkable the film really is. `El Espiritu de la Colmena' is one of those films. There are few words spoken throughout the film, but the rich imagery and the delicate handling of the childlike revelations are so full of life and meaning that words become obsolete
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The Tramp (Charlie Chaplin) travels to the Yukon to take part in the Klondike Gold Rush. Bad weather strands him in a remote cabin with a prospector(探鉱者) who has found a large gold deposit (Mack Swain) and an escaped fugitive (Tom Murray), after which they part ways(進路を違える）, with the prospector and the fugitive fighting over the prospector's claim, ending with the prospector receiving a blow to the head and the fugitive falling off a cliff to his death. The Tramp eventually finds himself in a gold rush town where he ultimately decides to give up prospecting.
After taking a job looking after another prospector's cabin, he falls in love with a lonely saloon girl (Georgia Hale) whom he mistakenly thinks has fallen in love with him. He soon finds himself waylaid（待ち伏せ、呼び止め） by the prospector he met earlier, who has developed amnesia(記憶喪失） and needs the Tramp to help him find his claim by leading him to the cabin.
One sequence was altered in the 1942 re-release so that instead of the Tramp finding a note from Georgia which he mistakenly believes is for him, he actually receives the note from her. Another major alteration is the ending, in which the now-wealthy Tramp originally gave Georgia a lingering kiss; the sound version ends before this scene. Now, they share a romantic moment by the old house.
The greatest silent films had no need to add music or narration to hold an imaginative viewer's attention. The concentration required to watch a silent film has, of course, been lost to audiences accustomed to the naturalism - and literalism - of sound films.
The most memorable scene is one in which he dines on an old shoe... he carves(肉の切り分け） it carefully, smacks(舌なめずり） his lips in anticipation, and then eats it with gusto and appreciation, sucking the nails as if they contained the most juices and twirling（回す） the laces around his fork as if they were spaghetti...
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This movie has influenced countless future films.
Some of the depictions of brutality on the ship being borrowed for Gable's "The Mutiny(反乱） on the Bounty" and the baby pram（乳母車） on the Odessa Steps being borrowed for Costner's "Untouchables" .Odessa Steps sequence is cinema folklore, but the death of the mutineer leader and the vision of the hung men（つるされた） are equally unforgettable.
The fade ins and fade outs that show the crowds gathering on the steps as a way to speed up the action as well as the many facial close-ups of the sailors and the victims.
This film was first released for the public in 1967 in Japan,
Screening this film was banned by the government censorship before the war in Japan,
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