Ditto Nuovo cinema Paradiso
I haven’t seen tons of foreign films but I also found memorable:
Monsieur Ibrahim Great vehicle for Omar Sharif, not a romantic leading man part
Like Water for Chocolate (Como agua para chocolate)
Chocolat
Tampopo
Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources
Ran
Das Boot
Samurai I, II, III
Cinema Paradiso
The Ladykillers
Shadow Warrior
Throne of Blood
The Horse’s Mouth
Hidden Fortress
The Vanishing
Animated:
Spirited Away
The Triplets of Belleville
The Atlantic Man (Duras)
Vivra sa Vie (Godard)
… lots of others.
I can understand conversation in French, German, Italian, and to a variably-limited extent other Romance languages such as Romanian and Portuguese. However, I think it’s one of the absolute travesties of American corporatism that dubbed foreign films are not regularly shown, nor even made available on digital or analog media. It’s simply unreasonable to suggest that the intonation patterns of one language (Chinese, say, or even French) somehow are meaningful to a native speaker of American English. So why not drop the pretense? Films such as “A Touch of Zen,” or Kurosawa’s “High/Low” are arguably improved for the student by the preservation of the original audio tracks, but many more “foreign” B-movies (which use conventions developed by Hollywood, and exploited maximally by, say, the Italians) are not being shown in the US, for example, because either it’s simply not worth the effort of the film-goer to forgo the proper cinematic experience (audio + moving picture), or it’s not profitable to dub. The addition of a frame-extrinsic mechanism, superadded in an arbitrary fashion to the original picture, is not always desirable.
Let’s see, I think of “foreign films” as “not english”, so no myazaki or brit movies.
Recently, I’ve enjoyed :
Russian -
“Nightwatch” & “Come and See”
French:
recently rewatched, and enjoyed - “Jules et Jim”, “The Double Life of Veronique”
and “The Reader/La Letrice”
also enjoyed “Amelie”
German:
“Even Dwarves Started Small”,
“Aguirre, Wrath of God”,
“Wings of Desire” (I think possibly my all-time favourite)
and “Funny Games” I really enjoyed.
Italian:
“Volare, volere” was funny.
Spanish:
I’m partial to “Tie me Up, Tie me down” (please don’t ban me!)
Chinese:
“Hero” and “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” are both firm favourites.
Most of the local (SA) films I’ve seen are in English, and I haven’t seen Tsotsi yet.
Farinelli …“drugs, sex and rock & roll 18th century style” (movie review) starring Stefano Dionisi and Enrico Lo Verso. I believe it was a Golden Globe winner for a foreign language film.
Adding some more to the list – maybe not anybody’s top picks, but certainly well worth seeing:
The Virgin Spring [Swedish, 1960; B&W; dir. Ingmar Bergman] – a morality tale of horror and revenge set in the 14th century, radically updated as The Last House on the Left by Wes Craven in 1972.
Elvira Madigan [Swedish, 1967, dir. Bo Widerberg] – a Victorian romantic tragedy, based on a true story. Though set in the late-19th-C. Swedish countryside, it is arguably the quintessential “Summer of Love” film, being an ode to casting off bourgeois propriety and acting on one’s wildest romantic impulses, to hell with the consequences… Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 was used to great effect, and was subsequently known by many as the “Elvira Madigan” concerto.
Burnt By the Sun [Russian/French, 1994, dir. Nikita Mikhalkov] – based on actual events from 1936, in which the Stalinist purges reach a group of family and friends summering at a country dacha. The writer/director played the patriarch and old-school general; his real-life six-year-old daughter played his daughter in the film. Mikhalkov is currently making a sequel, Burnt By the Sun 2, also starring himself, his daughter, and the actors who played his wife and the sinister “Uncle Dimitry”.
Die Weisse Rose (The White Rose, 1982) and **The Nasty Girl ** (1990), both West German, dir. by Michael Verhoeven, and starring Lena Stolze. “Rose” is based on the true story of the Nazi prosecution (and execution) of a small group of Munich college students, banded together as “The White Rose,” who distributed anti-Hitler pamphlets protesting the war. The movie depicts the last week of Sophie Scholl’s life, during which she is interrogated, tried, convicted, and executed, and is as spare, minimalist, and depressing as you might expect. Like the retelling of the story currently playing in art houses, Sophie Scholl: The Final Days, “Rose” uses the actual speech of the Bavarian Gauleiter to dramatic effect, but the real lesson here is the illustration of what Hannah Arendt famously termed the “banality of evil” – the inexorable workings of a murderous machine as manifested in its legal bureaucracy, a system of exhaustive documentation and officious civil servants (and a few hotheads) who go about their seemingly bloodless work with a dismaying efficiency.
The Nasty Girl’s titular character, also played by Stolze, is a fiercely spirited high-school student who researches what the people of her beloved village did during the war. Although she doesn’t have to pay the grave price young Sophie Scholl did, the local powerbrokers do all in their power to conceal the facts and squelch her investigation.
A Taxing Woman [Japanese, 1987; wr./dir. Juzo Itami] – the writer and director of the gentle comedy Tampopo also made this somewhat slapsticky vehicle, also starring his wife, who plays a resourceful, determined female tax inspector.
Himmel Uber Berlin (Wings of Desire) is not just my favourite foreign film, it is one of my favourite films period. Amazingly touching, like a gentle dream, watching it is a unique and wonderful experience.
Le Souffle au Coeur (Murmur of the Heart) by Louis Malle is, at once, warm and hillarious. Because it deals with incest, the film has not gotten the exposure or championing it richly deserves.
Speaking of Louis Malle, don’t ever miss a chance to see Lacombe Lucien, his seldom seen and vastly under publicized masterpiece about a confused young man in WWII France.
Just watched this last week, via Netflix, and I think I want to own it. Gorgeousity, indeed, and a murky plot. Were there two mad scientists? Did one of them create the other?
Great thread. I’m adding to my Netflix queue.
The Devil’s Backbone – not to be confused with The Devil’s Rejects or Devil’s Rain – is a Spanish film about young boys being cared for in an orphanage in the middle of nowhere during the Spanish civil war.
It’s a very subtle ghost story, with some heartbreaking scenes. Well-acted, with nice (not overdone) special effects.
I’ll try not to repeat too many choices other people have mentioned, except where the films are so good they have to be seen.
I love almost everything with Takeshi (Beat) Kitano.
My favourites:
Zatôichi
Hana-bi
Tokyo Eyes
And both the Battle Royale films.
Pedro Almodóvar is always watchable.
Especially:
La Mala Educación (Bad Education)
Hable Con Ella (Talk to Her)
Todo Sobre Mi Madre (All About My Mother)
La Flor de mi Secreto (The Flower of My Secret).
Mujeres al Borde de un Ataque de Nervios (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown)
I also like Jeunet:
Amélie
Un Long Dimanche de Fiançailles (A Very Long Engagement)
Delicatessan
Akira Kurosawa was a genius. All his films rock.
Hayao Miyazaki is another director to watch out for. Everyone is getting into his whimsical and weird animation at the moment.
Try Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle
Bits and bobs:
Lola Rennt (Run, Lola, Run)
Les Invasions Barbares
The TV spin off from the awesome City of God- Cidade des Homens (City of Men)
Le Samouraï
The Good Thief (it’s sort of foreign, being based on Bob, le Flambeur).
Jamón, Jamón
Diarios de Motocicleta
Ying Xiong (Hero)
Y Tu Mamá También
Vers le Sud
Lagaan
Kung Fu Hustle
House of Flying Daggers
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
La Vita è Bella (Life is Beautiful)
Amores Perros
Akira
Nuovo Cinema Paradiso
I have a thing for Gael García Bernal which is why he’s in most of my favourite Spanish Language films (the films are excellent too).
Well, everybody has already said Goodbye Lenin! but I’ll add in a film which was ok and has the same lead (Daniel Brühl), The Edukators, and I’ll also second Tale of two sisters. A good Australian film is The Castle, and I also loved Hero.
Night of the Shooting Stars- GREAT obscure Italian war film
Band of Outsiders
Bicycle Thief
Diabolique
Rififi
Elevator to the Gallows
The Wicker Man
Garden of the Finzi-Continis
City of God
Croupier
He Loves Me He Loves Me Not
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul
Battle of Algiers
Bob Le Flambeur
Casque D’or
Le Voyou- awesome obscure French crime flick
Dance with a Stranger
A Taste of Honey
This Sporting Life
Touchez Paz Au Grisbi
Most of mine have already been mentioned, but if French Canadian counts I’ll give
Jésus de Montréal- one of my favorite films about religion and a shame more people haven’t seen it.
We saw that in my Catholic religion class in school. It really liked it then, but unfortunately I have never seen it again.