Preferably 1930-70s. I haven’t seen too many, but they are very personal. Very conversational, usually in a few settings. I saw one with only 2 characters - which is really awesome. I can’t explain why I love them so much.
I’ll name a few now, and more some after - I don’t want to load the sample, and I’m curious to see if anyone’s matches mine.
-Two Half-Times in Hell
-The Fifth Seal
-Knife In The Water
-The Last Day of Summer
Worker and Parasite
The Saragossa Manuscript, Poland, 1965. Based on the 1815 novel by Jan Potocki. Layer upon layer upon layer…morbidity, gothicism, sex. The Spanish soldier is seduced by two beautiful Moorish princesses, who implore him to embrace Islam and let them bear his children. Each time he refuses, he is hurtled back through time and finds himself below a (loaded) gallows. And a new adventure begins. Jerry Garcia bought the rights to this!
Lemonade Joe, Czech, 1964. Extremely funny parody of US westerns, featuring a clean-living hero who attempts to turn a hard-drinking frontier town into teetotalers.
I’m fond of this one.
I prefer the epic tale of Jozin Z Bazin.
The Fabulous World of Jules Verne (Vynález zkázy). An adaptation of a Jules Verne novel that was designed to look like the illustrations of his book.
Pretty much anything made by Karel Zeman is worth watching, including The Fabulous Baron Munchausen (Baron Prásil, 1962) and The Stolen Airship (Ukradená vzducholod, 1967).
From Finland, The White Reindeer (Valkoinen peura, 1952), an eerie and surreal “folk horror” story.
From Russia, Planeta burg (1962), generally intelligent sci-fi with a cool robot and some cheesy elements. Theme: Man is necessary and more reliable than machines.
The Soviet versions of War and Peace and Crime and Punishment.
All of the movies directed by Eldar Ryazanov and featuring his stable of actors: Watch Out for Cars, Carnival Night, An Office Romance, Forgotten Melody for Flute, The Garage, The Irony of Fate, A Train Station for Two, A Cruel Romance, and many others.
Sorry, that predates my favourite films, which would be 80s Emir Kusturica films like When Father Was Away on Business and Time of the Gypsies
A Serbian Film :o
Neco z Alenky, by Jan Švankmajer.
It combines several things I love…Alice in Wonderland, weird, dark shit, and stop motion animation.
Siberiade and Andrei Rublev.
And, in a guilty-pleasure sense, W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism. Wilhelm Reich vs. Stalin!
I clicked thread title to say I only remember watching one Eastern European movie (which makes it my favorite automatically!) but right there in OP …
I’ve seen that one! But liked it much less than “my favorite”: a Czech film from the 1960’s about the beginnings of the Holocaust. The film’s name was probably Obchod na korze / The shop on Main Street.
I only watched it once, almost a half-century ago, but it made a powerful impression on me. I asked at SDMB for the film’s title, got a prompt and correct response! … but I’m afraid I’ve forgotten it again. (Google does show many SDMB recommendations for The shop on Main Street.)
Viy (1967) is a Russian occult-folk tale horror movie, set in medieval peasant times.
The Shop On Main Street is great. Don’t know how I forgot that one. Great story.
I also loved that film.
Eastern Europe includes Russia/USSR, right? Alexander Nevsky by Eisenstein is my favorite film of his. The imagery is amazing. And a great WWII propaganda film … made in 1938. People knew what was coming.
Nobody mentioned “Come and See”, the hard hitting Byelorussian war movie, with the Germans doing scorched earth on villages as they retreat across the country?
What the hell was that?
—Krusty
Anyway, does Polish count? Kieślowski’s *Blue, Red, *and White.
If we’re counting the Soviet Union, there’s their version of Don Quixote. It’s one of the better adaptations and it’s especially fun to hear everyone saying “Don Quixote de la Mancheski.”
There’s also the Oscar-winning Burnt by the Sun
It was also a short story by Nikolai Gogol. Scared the crap out of me! :eek: