The Sorrow and the Pity (1969)
Marcel Ophuls (son of French director Max Ophuls) documents the collaboration between French government officials and Nazis during World War II, exploring what people will compromise in order to survive and how a nation responds to an existential crisis.
He interviews members of the French resistance as well as French aristocrats who embraced Nazism and fought for the Germans on the eastern front.
Aside from the number of people interviewed, it’s similar to countless documentaries about WWII on the History Channel.
Magnificent Obsession (1954)
When Bob Merrick (Rock Hudson) loses control of his speedboat, rescuers send for the nearest resuscitator. While it’s being used to save his life, his neighbor across the lake, Dr. Phillips, dies of a heart attack.
Merrick becomes a pariah in the community because of his inadvertent role in the death of the beloved physician and he resolves to do something worthwhile with his life, but makes things worse by accidentally blinding Dr. Phillip’s widow, Helen (Jane Wyman).
After Merrick becomes a brain surgeon and performs an experimental procedure to restore Helen’s sight, they marry and live happily ever after.
Rock Hudson is fantastic and makes this preposterous movie believable. If audiences don’t believe his transformation from selfish cad to dedicated physician, the movie falls apart.
As the only ex-wife of a US President, Jane Wyman is now primarily a trivia question, but she was an Academy Award winning actress and great here as well.
A modern director would played the contrived plot for laughs, but Douglas Sirk, the master of melodrama, turns this ridiculous, domestic drama into a sweeping epic.
Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979)
The original 1922 German silent film was illegally adapted from Bram Stoker’s Dracula. After an unprecedented lawsuit brought by Stoker’s estate, a judge ordered every print of the film destroyed, but, fortunately, one survived.
Herzog’s remake is in color and includes both English and German audio tracks. Otherwise, the two films are remarkably similar, utilizing many of the same shots.
The more I learn about Klaus Kinski’s personal life, the more horrifying a presence this vile man becomes. His version of the vampire is disturbing, but I prefer the original version with the indelible Max Schreck’s as Count Orlock.