A group of flamenco dancers are rehearsing a very spanish version of the Prosper Merimee’s drama. Antonio (the coreographer) falls in love with Carmen (the main dancer). Their story then turns similar to the play.
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Nuits de feu (1937) Marcel L’Herbier, Gaby Morlay, Victor Francen, George Rigaud, Drama
Le procureur Andreiv requiert sévèrement contre un criminel qui a tué l’amant qui le trompait. Andreiv prétend que dans cette infortune le mari devait disparaître. Or, voici qu’une situation semblable se réalise au foyer du procureur. Il découvre l’amour que se portent mutuellement un jeune avocat, Serge Rastoff, et sa femme, Lisa. Après une discussion, le procureur disparaît au bord de la Neva. On repêche son corps défiguré, et une lettre d’Andreiv indique son intention de disparaître. On conclut au suicide. Mais un jaloux substitut, sur certains indices, accuse Serge et Lisa d’avoir tué le procureur. Ils comparaissent aux Assises et vont être condamnés lorsque Andreiv reparaît. Il s’est engagé dans l’armée. Son témoignage innocente Lisa et Serge, et il repart aux tranchées chercher la mort dans le combat.
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Joshû sasori: Dai-41 zakkyo-bô / Female Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41 (1972) Shun’ya Itô, Meiko Kaji, Fumio Watanabe, Yukie Kagawa, Crime, Drama, Thriller
After spending a year in solitary confinement, Matsu escapes from prison with six more convicts, followed by the guards led by the vengeful warden who wants her dead at all costs.
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Bodas de sangre / Blood Wedding (1981) Carlos Saura, Antonio Gades, Cristina Hoyos, Juan Antonio Jiménez, Mystery, Musical
In a sense, Carlos Saura’s first foray into filming classical dance, Blood Wedding, may be seen, not as a stark departure from the immediacy of his narrative films, but rather, as an oblique return to form towards the social interrogations implicit in his earlier work on the fundamental question of Spanish identity – a particularly timely and relevant re-assessment in the aftermath of a contemporary history marked by institutional repression, creative censorship, and historical revisionism. It is within this framework that the selected adaptation of the seminal “rural trilogy” play by Spanish playwright, Federico García Lorca – a writer who was executed by Falangists in the early days of the Civil War and whose work was generally banned throughout Franco’s regime – seems particularly suited to this post Franco-era cultural introspection in its dark and tragic tale of passion, betrayal, and revenge.
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Camino solitario (1984) Jesús Franco, Antonio Mayans, Lina Romay, Ricardo Palacios, Thriller
Private detective Alfredo Pereira is hired by eccentric couple Raden and Eve to find their missing sister, Adriana. Despite his limitations, Pereira soon finds the woman, but foreplay between characters complicates things.
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Fuck me! / Baise-moi (2000) Virginie Despentes, Coralie, Raffaëla Anderson, Karen Lancaume, Céline Beugnot, Crime, Drama, Thriller
Manu and Nadine lose their last tenuous relationship with main-stream society when Manu gets raped and Nadine sees her only friend being shot. After a chance encounter, they embark on an explosive journey of sex and murder. Perhaps as a revenge against men, perhaps as a revolt against bourgeois society, but certainly in a negation – almost joyful in its senseless violence – of all the codes of a society which has excluded, raped and humiliated them. Controversial for its violence and real sex scenes: a vividly nihilist road movie set in France.
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Anna Karenina (1948) Julien Duvivier, Vivien Leigh, Ralph Richardson, Kieron Moore, Drama, Romance
Stefan and Dolly Oblonsky have had a little spat and Stefan has asked his sister, Anna Karenina, to come down to Moscow to help mend the rift. Anna’s companion on the train from St. Petersburg is Countess Vronsky who is met at the Moscow station by her son. Col. Vronsky looks very dashing in his uniform and it’s love at first sight when he looks at Anna and their eyes meet. Back in St. Petersburg they keep running into each other at parties. Since she has a husband and small son, they must be very discreet if they are going to see each other alone.
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Der Himmel über Berlin / Wings of Desire (1987) Wim Wenders, Bruno Ganz, Solveig Dommartin, Otto Sander, Drama, Fantasy, Romance
Visible only to those like them and to human children, Damiel and Cassiel are two angels, who have existed even before humankind. Along with several other angels, they currently wander around West Berlin, generally on their own, observing and preserving life, sometimes trying to provide comfort to the troubled, although those efforts are not always successful. Among those they are currently observing are: the cast and crew of a movie – a detective story set in WWII Nazi Germany – which include a sensitive and perceptive Peter Falk; an elderly man named Homer looking for eternal peace; and the troupe of a financially failing circus, which has closed early for the season because of those financial problems. One day, Damiel tells Cassiel that he wants to become human, to feel not only the sensory aspects of physical beings, but also emotional aspects. He embarks on this thought with the full realization that there is no turning back if he decides to do so. His thoughts are largely …
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Dracula (1958) Terence Fisher, Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Michael Gough, Fantasy, Horror
On a search for his missing friend Jonathan Harker (John Van Eyssen), vampire hunter Dr. Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) is led to Count Dracula’s (Christopher Lee) castle. Upon arriving, Van Helsing finds an undead Harker in Dracula’s crypt and discovers that the count’s next target is Harker’s ailing fiancée, Lucy Holmwood (Carol Marsh). With the help of her brother, Arthur (Michael Gough), Van Helsing struggles to protect Lucy and put an end to Count Dracula’s parasitic reign of terror.
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Full Circle / The Haunting of Julia (1977) Richard Loncraine, Mia Farrow, Keir Dullea, Tom Conti, Drama, Horror, Mystery
After the sudden accidental death of her small daughter, Julia Lofting, a wealthy American woman living in London, bolts her unhappy marriage and buys a house in Kensington which is haunted by the ghost of a quite obscenely nasty little girl who died in the 1950s and plans to use Julia as her pawn in a terrible revenge.
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