Political films

will make people sentimental for the days when newspapers could influence public opinion

Wars are nothing if not political, at least for the generals. Patton failed to play the political game, Eisenhower and Bradley succeeded.

A year after WW I officially ended, von Lhomond and his clan are fighting a hopeless war against the Communists in East Prussia. The final scene is almost unbearable to watch.

It's not the Japanese scenes that are memorable in this, it's what happened to the young woman after the Germans left her village.

What do you do if a German officer is billetted in your house during the war, and he insists on spouting ridiculous thoughts about culture and Franco-German rapprochement? The old man and his niece (the wonderful Nicole Stephane) remain silent--appropriately.

Romy Schneider gives a fine performance as Leni Pfeiffer, in love with a Russian prisoner in Germany and trying to conceal it.

Poor Ray Milland, trying to make his way through a very confusing wartime situation. Who's the Nazi agent, and who isn't?

The run-up to the war, in Paris where all sorts of secret agents are operating. Marcello gets the assignment to kill his old professor, and Hamlet-like, can't get down to the job.

Political in all senses: the war, the church trying to enforce conformity, the rise of social conscience among priests. Belmondo and Riva are both stunning as priest and housewife.

Malle's work of almost genius, marred a bit by the obscurity of some of the Vichy politics. Aurore Clement is exceptional as the love object.

Romy Schneider again, this time a young wife in Paris at the time of the OAS terrorism. Trintignant gives another scary, obsessed perfomance, as he had done in The Conformist.

Algeria, again. The pied noir student Henri hooks up with the wrong girl entirely--she's a Communist living in a small town in southern France. The subplots are fascinating.

Louis Malle played down the fascist aspects of this story by Drieu La Rochelle when he changed the time from the 30's to the 60's. It's still a powerful story though. Powerful performance by Maurice Ronet.

Fun with Catherine Deneuve and Philippe Noiret as the Allies prepare to land in Normandy, June 1944. He gets the danger to the household, she doesn't.

There's a strike in a Swedish town in 1931; it has lasting repercussions for the social order.

Marguerite Yourcenar's novel filmed with taste; renaissance Holland under Spanish occupation is suffering from oppression. Zenon is trying to spread the new knowledge, while the Inquisition is trying to stifle it. Political before there was the concept of politics, really.

The most important political-cultural act of the last millenium: Luther's 95 theses posted in 1517.

The new politics of the environment and species protection. Tim Treadwell was simply the wrong man to take up the cause of bears in Alaska.

Todd Haynes's wonderful study of just how far a woman might go to feel healthy. We watch Julianne Moore self-destruct with sympathy and a bit of horror.

Bertolucci always had the dramatic sense; here he just spends too much time on secondary characters.

Joel McCrae has to cope with some pretty hard situations in The US of the 'thirties

A very solid political film set in France in 1945 with Depardieu, Luchini (as a fanatical Communist) and the cynical profiteer Guiomar.