Summary: José, Paco and Luis – three friends who share a common history – get together for a day of rabbit hunting and invite Enrique, Paco’s brother-in-law, to join. The land on which they hunt, owned by José but maintained by his tenant Juan, was the site of many deaths during the Spanish Civil War…
Category: Media Studies
Casablanca (Movie) – Summary and Analysis
Summary: Against the backdrop of refugees fleeing the German advance in Europe during the early years of the Second World War we follow three characters involved in a love triangle. Victor Laszlo (Henreid) is a Resistance leader who has escaped from a German concentration camp. Accompanied by his wife, Ilsa (Bergman), he has reached Casablanca,…
Caché / Hidden (Movie): Summary and Analysis
Summary: Hidden is an art-house thriller which focuses on Georges Laurent, an arts journalist living in Paris, whose family comes under an unexplained threat with the arrival of several videotapes. These are anonymous surveillance tapes of the exterior of the family’s apartment, an unfamiliar Paris street and the farmhouse where Georges grew up. The investigation…
Pandora’s Box (Film): Summary and Analysis
Summary: Lulu is a beautiful woman with a mysterious past. Raised by the drunkard Schigolch, a pimp and possibly her father, she becomes the mistress of a wealthy and respectable newspaper editor, Dr Ludwig Schön (Fritz Kortner). Schigolch introduces Lulu to Rodrigo Quast, who offers her a role in his variety show. Dr Schön gets…
Brief Encounter: Synopsis and Analysis
Synopsis: Laura (Celia Johnson), a housewife, and Alec (Trevor Howard), a doctor, both happily married to other people, happen to fall in love with each other, quite by chance and apparently without calculation, after he removes a piece of grit from her eye. Friendship develops into romance, and the couple meet in town once a…
Boudu Saved From Drowning: Summary and Analysis
Summary: After losing his dog, the tramp Boudu tries to drown himself in the Seine. He is rescued by a Parisian bourgeois antiquarian bookseller, Lestingois. Insisting Lestingois is now responsible for his welfare Boudu is brought back to the Lestingois apartment. It is not long before Boudu’s anarchic behaviour clashes with the prim and proper…
Das Boot (Film): Synopsis and Analysis
Synopsis: During the Second World War, U-96, a German submarine, ships out from its French home port on a dangerous mission to sink shipping in the Atlantic. Commanded by a still young but highly experienced captain (Prochnow), the ship also carries a journalist (Grönemeyer), sent to write a propaganda piece on the heroic crew. Over…
Bonnie and Clyde (1967): Summary and Analysis
Summary: A violent yet romanticised account of the career of the notorious bank-robbing couple who meet and embark on their spree amidst the poverty of the Great Depression in 1920s USA. Analysis: When first released in 1967, Bonnie and Clyde was a critical failure and achieved only mediocre box office sales. Even then, however, it…
The Lion’s Den (1988): Summary and Analysis
Summary: Vitín Luna is a young police officer who aspires to be a respected member of the armed forces. In order to achieve this promotion, he volunteers to go to Chuspi, a village in the Andes which has been badly affected by the violence of the Shining Path insurgency group. There he first encounters Lieutenant…
Bob le Flambeur: Synopsis and Analysis
Synopsis: Bob is an ageing, former gangster turned gambler in Montmartre (Paris), leading a pleasant if unconventional life with his friend Roger, his protégé, Paolo, and a young woman, Anne, who he has picked up on the street and who he helps out. After a spell of bad luck, he’s running out of money and…