The Bad Sleep Well tells the story of corruption at the highest levels of Japanese business and its tragic consequences. Though flawed by a tedious introductory sequence and by an ending that seems out of sync with the story, it is a fascinating movie and the middle part is especially exciting. Japanese legend Toshiro Mifune plays Koichi Nishi, the seemingly stoic bridegroom who is trying to get ahead by marrying the boss's daughter, Kieko (Kyoko Kagawa), who was crippled as a girl. The bride's brother, in a shocking display, exposes the groom's motives during his wedding toast and threatens his new brother-in-law with death if he disappoints his sister. But Nishi is not who we think. He was born the illegitimate son of the man who Kieko's father, Iwabuchi (Maysayuki Mori), manipulated into suicide. Now Nishi wants revenge for his father's death. As Nishi slowly destroys Iwabuchi's life, he makes the fatal error of falling in love with his wife, who already loves him. Their unconsummated marriage stands between these two like a palpable pillar of stone. But just when we think the stone has been tossed aside by love, Iwabuchi finds out who his son-in-law really is. [+]

To say that Jean-Luc Godard's fourth feature, Vivre sa vie (1962), is about a young Parisian woman who drifts into prostitution would be roughly as useful as saying that Taxi Driver is about the problems facing the Manhattan transportation system. It's true that Godard did, in the 60s, seem to have a bee in his bonnet about the oldest profession, and it went on to buzz ever more angrily the more he cuddled up to the doctrines of Marx, who instructed him that under late capitalism we are all prostitutes. It's also true that one section of Vivre sa vie, which is divided up into a dozen tableaux, offers a bland, documentary-style account of the French sex industry that could have been made for a news and current affairs slot. Even so, it's clear-especially four decades on-that whoredom is only one of the many topics on Godard's hyperactive brain. The scenes which you take away from the film aren't the sexy bits (which are few, and almost glacially offhand) but the exasperating, perverse or anguished bits: Nana, the heroine (Anna Karina) alone in a cinema, silently weeping at and for the silent vision of Maria Falconetti in Carl Dreyer's La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc; Nana in a pool hall, improvising an artlessly peppy dance routine; Nana in a café, endlessly talking Plato, Hegel and Kant with the grizzled, real-life philosopher Brice Parain. In short, the truest subject of Vivre sa vie-and it is a rich one-is nothing other than its star, Anna Karina, the piercingly beautiful model who had married her director just a year before, and who obviously inspired him to perplexity, rapture and despair. Technically, the film is insouciant to the point of arrogance-Godard constantly fiddles around with the soundtrack, the camera movements and framing as if all the usual rules of cinema were a pair of itchy underpants-and yet the film aches with melancholy. It's unlikely that the video will make many new converts, but for those willing to pay the price of admission to Godard's world (and the price includes boredom), the reward is one of the strangest and most troubling love letters in the history of cinema-apart from Godard's half-dozen other films about his wife, that is. -Kevin Jackson.

Arriving from the provinces to embark on his studies, naïve, plodding country cousin Charles (Gérard Blain) finds himself way out of his depth as he struggles to negotiate the niceties and posturing of Parisian student life in the fast lane at the end of the '50s. Try as he might, his stay at the home of his sophisticated, cynical, hard-living cousin Paul (Jean-Claude Brialy) turns into a harsh lesson in modern urban living. In almost every respect, Les Cousins is the mirror image of Chabrol's depiction of rural France in his earlier film Le Beau Serge. Brialy and Blain essentially reprise their roles in an urban context, and-despite some exemplary New Wave glimpses of Paris from speeding cars-Le Beau Serge's extended flirtation with the documentary form is here ousted by crisp expressionistic cinematography and taut editing. Les Cousins presents a fable about moral confusion as traditional French values come under threat from burgeoning post-war consumerism. Chabrol repeatedly foregrounds the superficiality of Paul's circle of friends, with their tastes for fast cars, expensive apartments, and militaristic ritual and guns. Meanwhile the lucid exploration of the overlap between hedonism and fascism in 1950s Paris serves as a sharp reminder of the deep roots of neo-fascist politics in contemporary France. -Michael Witt.

This delirious mix of sex, sadism and style has a masked man stalking the gorgeous mannequins of a Roman high fashion house, murdering them in a strikingly fetishist manner and then leaving the corpses to be discovered like grisly works of art. Mario Bava's 1964 film, originally titled Sei donne per l'assassino, is one of the earliest slasher movies, and remains a suspenseful, disturbing and oddly seductive film. The complex, lurid plot features blackmail, murder for profit, drug addiction and scandal among the beautiful people. Smooth Cameron Mitchell and lovely Eva Bartok are the conspirators, pursued by a plodding Columbo-style detective. However, Bava goes beyond the world of Agatha Christie or Edgar Wallace to embrace the surreal and the nightmarish. Each murder is handled like a musical number, with elaborate camera moves, striking colour effects and a strangely memorable jazz score. There is certainly more than a tinge of misogyny in the treatment of actresses as disposable dummies, but the plot is equally cynical about its grasping, feeble, suspicious male characters. This welcome video release-more complete than any previous UK edition-is letterboxed to show off the cinematography and, most importantly, preserves Bava's astonishingly rich colour effects. -Kim Newman.

Juxtaposing images of pristine, romantic innocence with ones of mute, meaningless violence, Godard's Masculin-Féminin first lulls with a hypnotic, disjointed story line and then stuns with scenes of tremendous depth and meaning. This outrageous film follows the somewhat ineffectual courtship of Madeline, an aspiring pop singer, by Paul, an erstwhile journalist and interviewer but mostly groundless searcher. As in most Godard films, plot mechanics are secondary to elements such as dialogue (generally marvellous, but sometimes a bit too pointed), lighting (bizarre and over-saturated, but nevertheless than fascinating), shot framing (extraordinarily thoughtful), and performance. Godard allows his camera to linger on single faces, without cutting, for what seems by modern standards to be extremely long segments-perhaps even excruciatingly long-but the remarkably subtle cast members never disappoint, particularly the fantastically adept and frequently hilarious lead actors, Jean-Pierre Léaud and Chantal Goya. The filmmaker has little to add to our collective understanding of the relationship between masculin et féminin writ large; in fact, most of the female characters are uncomfortably stereotypical, framed as either wilfully oblivious to the world or subtly (or overtly) deadly. But as an examination of a young generation faced with the prospect of war in Vietnam and the vagaries of French socialism, Masculin-Féminin proves remorselessly and chillingly trenchant. A towering influence, it would seem, on Whit Stillman's similarly themed Barcelona-but while Stillman lacks the conviction to follow his instincts to their logical, violent conclusions, Godard faces his uncompromising story with elegance and courage. -Miles Bethany, Amazon. com.

Kenji Mizoguchi, greatest of Japanese directors, only made two films in colour, and this is the second of them. It's also the last of his many period dramas, a genre of which he was undisputed master. The story is set in the 12th century, at a crucial point in Japanese history: the moment when the samurais ceased to be mere hired fighters, despised by the courtly aristocrats, and took over as the dominant class in Japanese society-a status they would enjoy for the next 700 years. The politics of the film are complex-essentially it tells how one samurai clan, the Taira, broke the arrogant power of the Buddhist temples, with their armies of warrior monks, and began to undermine the supremacy of the Emperor. But it's not necessary to follow all the intricacies of the historical background to appreciate the dramatic sweep of clashing forces and the subtle psychological interplay of emotions as the young hero, Kiyomori, head of the Taira clan, finds his loyalties pulled this way and that, culminating in a crisis of identity as his parentage is called into question. Above all, Tales of the Taira Clan is supremely beautiful to look at, even by Mizoguchi's standards. The sumptuous sets and costumes, often shot at night or in deep-shaded half-light, take on a jewel-like sheen, and his sweeping, serene camera captures all the turbulence of a troubled era. -Philip Kemp.

Mizoguchi reckoned The Life of Oharu was his masterpiece, and who are we to disagree? Certainly it's among his most perfectly structured films, in which anger at the treatment of women in Japanese society is balanced by the director's flawless sense of period, and by expert pacing and visual composition. The story is set in the 17th century, when Japan had settled into a rigidly hierarchical society. Kinuyo Tanaka, in perhaps the finest role of her career, plays Oharu, a highborn woman of the Imperial court. Disgraced when she falls in love with a man of a lower class (Toshiro Mifune, in his only film for Mizoguchi), she's made the mistress of a feudal lord. After bearing him a son she's cast out, and gradually sinks into prostitution and penury. The inevitability of Oharu's fate is tempered by her resilience of spirit-and by the compassion of Mizoguchi's gaze. Although the story is set in the past, he fully intends parallels with modern-day Japan; just after completing the film, he told an interviewer, "Comparing today with [earlier] periods, I don't find much difference: women have always been treated like slaves. " The Life of Oharu was shown at the 1952 Venice Festival, where it was awarded the Golden Lion. It brought Mizoguchi a belated international fame just four years before his death, and initiated the run of late masterpieces that rounded off his career. -Philip Kemp.

It's long been one of the revered classics of international cinema, but there is no fine layer of dust over La Grande Illusion. Jean Renoir's film is just as vibrant, exciting and wise as it has ever been. The story is set during World War I, mostly in a couple of German POW camps, where two very different French prisoners plot to escape: the working-class officer Maréchal (Jean Gabin, the French Spencer Tracy) and the upper-class de Boieldieu (Pierre Fresnay). The suspenseful backbone of the story is formed by these escape attempts, but Renoir is primarily concerned with the way people treat each other, and especially with how class and nationality inform human relations. Most compelling of all the film's characters is the aristocratic German officer von Rauffenstein, unforgettably incarnated by stiff-backed Erich von Stroheim; although he runs a prison camp, von Rauffenstein cannot help but strike up a friendship with de Boieldieu, a kindred spirit from the doomed nobility. There is nothing dewy or naive about Renoir's vision (and two years after the release of this antiwar film, Europe was plunged into another world war), yet La Grande Illusion is one of those movies that makes you feel good about such long-outmoded ideas as sacrifice and brotherhood. After it won a prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1937, the Nazis declared the film "Cinematographic Enemy Number One". There can be no higher praise. -Robert Horton, Amazon. com.

German-born, French by adoption, Viennese by sensibility, Max Ophüls was the ideal choice to film the life of one of the great cosmopolitan femme fatales. Lola Montés, dancer and courtesan extraordinaire, cut a swathe of scandal through Europe in the mid-19th century, becoming mistress of the composer Liszt, of the king of Bavaria, and of plenty more. Ophüls' poignant last film, his only one in colour, is no conventional biopic. Instead, he mounts a sumptuous baroque extravaganza, part circus, part pageant, packed with flashbacks, and sends his restless camera scaling and prowling around the elaborate décor. In the title role, Martine Carol gives a sullen, emotionally glazed performance, but for all her limitations she fits Ophüls' conception. His Lola is simply the passive blank on to which men project their fantasies, and her final destiny as a sideshow attraction, selling kisses for a dollar each, reduces her career to its most brutal logic. Originally running 140 minutes, the 1955 film was butchered by its distributors; this 111-minute version is the fullest that's known to survive. -Philip Kemp.

Made in 1957, Wild Strawberries finds the great Swedish director Ingmar Bergman at the height of his powers. It's a road movie, in effect: an aged medical professor (Victor Sjöström)-lonely, disillusioned and haunted by dreams of death-travels across country to receive an honorary degree. But as with all good road movies, the outer journey parallels an inner one. Incidents along the road conjure up memories, and Professor Borg finds himself forced to confront the failures and lost opportunities of his life. Gentle and elegiac, Bergman's film is a masterpiece of compassion and reconciliation, and also a tribute to his predecessor Sjöström, the greatest Swedish director of the silent era. The 78-year-old film maker gives an austere, moving performance, and Bergman treats his lined features like a landscape of yearning and regret. Sjöström is ably supported by other members of Bergman's regular repertory company of the period, particularly Bibi Andersson, heartbreakingly appealing, as the lost love of Borg's youth. -Philip Kemp Wild Strawberries, Ingmar Bergman's 1957 follow-up to the The Seventh Seal, is a "journey" movie. Victor Sjostrom plays Isak Borg, an elderly retired professor of medicine, setting out by car to the University of Lund to receive a Jubilee doctorate degree. With him on the journey is his daughter-in-law Marianne (Ingrid Thulin). [+]

G W Pabst's 1928 silent masterpiece Pandora's Box stars the luminous and highly photogenic Louise Brooks. She plays the irresistible Lulu, a cabaret star who entices, captivates and eventually destroys all men who cross her path. Her beauty and her fetching charm draw an assortment of repressed and lonely people; Schigolch, a boozy old man who pretends he's her father; Geschwitz, a countess who has also fallen for Lulu, and Schoen, a rich tycoon who carries on an affair with Lulu even though he's to be married. His short solution is to put Lulu in his son Alwa's vaudeville show. As Alwa, too, becomes trapped in Lulu's charms, Schoen's fiancée catches Lulu and Schoen in a backstage embrace. Lulu quickly takes her place as Schoen's bride, only to drive Schoen to suicide during their wedding party. Put on trial for murder, Lulu almost gets out of it by simply batting her eyes at the prosecutor. Still, she is found guilty and Alwa, who has grown increasingly obsessed, causes a distraction to allow Lulu's escape from the courthouse. Alwa, Lulu and Schoen become desperate fugitives, eventually ending up in London where Lulu finally meets her match: Jack the Ripper. Pandora's Box offers pure cinematic delights-Pabst's luscious photography, the tense drama of its story line and, most impressively and importantly, Louise Brooks, who gives a performance that is certainly one of the best in the history of cinema. [+]

In 1953, before any American studio exec used the phrase "high concept", Henri-George Clouzot's The Wages of Fear boasted a premise so literally explosive that audiences were excited before they got into the theatres. With an oil-fire burning out of control deep in the South American jungle, two lorryloads of highly unstable nitro-glycerin have to be driven through miles of unstable terrain littered with dangerous turns, crumbling planks, falling rocks and mediocre hardtop. One good jolt will vaporise truck, nitro, drivers and a substantial swathe of the countryside, so the company recruits desperate souls among the loser tramps who loiter around the nowhere town of Las Piedras, begging for any kind of work. On the road, Clouzot stages a string of unforgettable sequences: one stretch of badly paved track can only be crossed by driving at under six miles an hour or over 40; a mountain turn requires that the trucks back out onto a rickety, rotten wooden structure; a 50-ton boulder has fallen into the road, and one of the drivers calmly drains a litre of nitro into his thermos to blow it up, only remembering when the fuse is lit that this will rain pebbles all over the countryside and a few good hits on the cargo will set it off. This is perhaps as great a mix of action-adventure and contest as The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and still a textbook example of sustained suspense. On the DVD: The print is in great shape, though the image is a little soft; the menu has a clever explosive aspect and uses the same vintage artwork as the sleeve cannily combined with a snippet. There are trailers for both Wages and Clozuot's other masterpiece, Les Diaboliques, as well as biographies of the principal cast, eight stills and three posters. -Kim Newman.