The “good German” in war movies

Major Grau (Omar Sharif) witnesses General Tanz (Peter O'Toole)'s pleasure in destruction in Anatol Litvak's The Night of the Generals (1967)

A decade after the end of World War Two, with Germany now an important ally against the Soviet bloc, popular culture was making an effort to rehabilitate the former enemy by showing “good Germans” in the movies. Twilight Time have recently released a couple of examples on Blu-ray: Edward Dmytryk’s The Young Lions (1958) and Anatole Litvak’s The Night of the Generals (1967).

An evening of Guy de Maupassant on film

The 19th Century French writer Guy de Maupassant had a spare style and an acute understanding of social class and psychology, both characteristics which lend themselves well to cinematic adaptation. Criterion’s Blu-ray edition of Jean Renoir’s A Day in the Country and the older Montparnasse DVD edition of Robert Wise’s Mademoiselle Fifi represent the best of de Maupassant on film.

Oh, the horror!

Recent viewing runs the horror gamut from the low-budget exploitation of David Cronenberg’s debut, Shivers, to George Romero’s bid for studio respectability with a pair of adaptations in the late ’80s and early ’90s, to a really creepy Australian first feature, Jennifer Kent’s remarkably assured The Babadook.

Blasts from the past

Recent Arrow viewing

One-Shot Wonders: samurai slaughter and zombies

Disk error: No Blade of Grass (Warner Archive)

Five Shades of B

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