Tezuka’s animated short film is an allegorical gem in which a boy, in a country where the freedom to daydream is prohibited, is sectioned when he tells his parents of his sightings/imaginings of the titular (fictional?) character. Iain.Stott
Atomic clouds mutate into glasses of beer, and aliens with drawers for mouths tell tales about how the (now extinct) human race used to worship toilet bowls, in this silly, irreverent, and (unsurprisingly) rather lightweight yet very entertaining look at the role that memory plays in our everyday lives, from Japanese animator Tezuka. Iain.Stott
Cast: Catherine Deneuve, Nino Castelnuovo, Anne Vernon, Marc Michel, Ellen Farner, Mireille Perrey
Demy’s majestically gaudily coloured musical, in which all of the dialogue is sung by its beautiful young cast – producing a portrait of a 16-year-old girl, who falls pregnant to her petrol-pumping boyfriend just as he is called up for two year’s national service – is a very entertaining and exceedingly poignant illustration of the elasticity of the human heart. Iain.Stott
Cast: Tippi Hedren, Sean Connery, Diane Baker, Louise Latham, Martin Gabe, Bruce Dern
Hitchcock’s troubling film – in which a serial thief (Hedren, excellent) is blackmailed into marriage by one of her victims, despite her evident psycho-sexual problems – is one of his bleakest, most ambitious efforts but, perhaps due to Connery’s rather lightweight turn, it never quite reaches the heights of his best work. Iain.Stott
Writers: René Laloux, Roland Topor, Jacques Sternberg
Composer: Alain Goraguer
Narrator: Roland Dubillard
Laloux’s blackly comic short film – mixing animated footage with moving and still archive materials, showing images of war, murder, and execution – is presented, from an alien perspective, as an anthropological study of the peculiar behaviour of the residents of planet Earth. Iain.Stott
Cast: Nina Pens Rode, Bendt Rothe, Ebbe Rode, Baard Owe, Axel Strøbye
Dreyer’s majestic final film – in which the attractive, refined lady of the title strives (and fails) to connect with the four men in her life, refusing to make the compromises necessary for cohabitation – is a film of exquisite beauty, full of delightfully restrained performances and ravishingly expressive mise en scène. Iain.Stott
Cast: Sergio Corrieri, Salvador Wood, José Gallardo, Raúl García, Luz María Collazo, Raquel Revuelta
Although its championing of martyrdom leaves something of a bad taste, the film’s general rightness – an attack against tyranny, exploitation, and nefarious foreign interest – and the sheer poetic brilliance of its cinematic technique, make watching this fourth (and unfortunately final) collaboration between Kalatozov and Urusevsky an overwhelmingly memorable experience. Iain.Stott
This unsettling animated short film from (a pre-porn) Borowczyk, full of ominous train journeys, labyrinthine buildings, and macabre machinery, all in a dirty blood red hue, is an enigmatically powerful and rather disturbing piece of work. Iain.Stott
Made entirely from found footage, juxtaposing images of modern man at work, rest, and play, Lipsett’s stunning short film – nominally an attack against the dehumanising nature of society in the machine-age – is as much a celebration (at least through my eyes) of humanity in all its forms as it is a lamentation. Iain.Stott
Although it feels a little rushed at times and could be somewhat confusing for those with merely a passing knowledge of the New Testament, Pasolini’s dexterous adaptation of the eponymous book – a retelling of the life of Jesus Christ, the son of God, from immaculate conception to ascension to heaven – is never less than compelling. Iain.Stott
Marxist Shindō’s entertainingly visceral film – following the day-to-day lives of a pair of war widows in feudal Japan, who, left to fend for themselves, are forced to resort to murder and theft in order to survive – is a distinctive, well-made, metaphor laden work that takes well-aimed pot-shots at capitalism, war, and religion. Iain.Stott