Reviews

After having succeeded in Europe, the master of spy films, Alfred Hitchcock was invited to Hollywood by David O. Selznick in the year 1939. This time the director reached for a novel 'Rebecca' by Daphne du Maunier. It is a story of a young woman (Joan Fontaine), who becomes a second wife of a British lord (Laurence Olivier), and his residence she meets with the cult of Rebecca. Rebecca was the lord's previous wife and she has died in very peculiar circumstances.

Film cost more than a million dollars. And it was matter of conflict between the creator and the producer. But it gathered more than 10 Oscan nominees and two Oscars for the best movie and cinematography. Selznick himself was quite surprised by the piece of art. He decided to produce the movie only due to the fact that the final scene of fire reminded him of the fire of Atlanta in 'Gone with the Wind'.

This master psychological thriller opened a new chapter in Hitchcock's works, making him the Hollywood's master of manipulating with mood.

A master story - ambiguous, multi-level, fascinating and both visually and musically beautiful.

Awarded with an Oscar surrealistic story from the Japanese master of the genre ('Princess Mononoke') was likely compared with 'Alice in Wonderland'. Truly, the main character is a little girl who gets into a world populated by strange creatures and ruled by mysterious laws. However this is where similarities end.

10-year-old Chihiro - a girl, to be honest, quite spoiled and whimsical, is on her way with her parent to her new place of accommodation. At one time the father who is driving, decides to take a short-cut through the forest, drives through an odd tunnel and the whole family lands in a strange place that resembles an abandoned entertainment park. Meanwhile Chihiro ends up in an enormous bath-house which is a place of relaxation for all the ghosts of the world. She is threatened that she will be turned into an animal and eaten at the nearest ghost feast. Having that as an alternative, she decides to work in the bathhouse...

It sounds a bit eccentric and it in fact is (I must add that I really simplified the main plot of the film). "Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi" mostly resembles a dream (or a fantasy taken out of a child's mind) and it is like a suggestive dream and arbitrary in its solutions. The characters here change both shape and identity. Magical power shows up and disappears. Everything has its own soul and it lives equally in the real and the phantom world. Beauty and grotesque ugliness, or charm and fear are not opposites in here. They adjoin each other by an inch and create a feeling of that wacky world's unity. It is an exotic experience and it is rather not for babies.

The film is a bitter, sci-fi story. It is the year 2035. 39 years earlier the mankind was hunted down by a mysterious virus. Only those survived who managed to hide underground. The scientists from the underground world decide to send a man to the past. A man who would be responsible for finding out where the virus came from and how to defeat it. What they have is an archival telephone record suggesting that the virus comes from Philadelphia and it has lots to do with an organization exotically called The Twelve Monkeys.

It is Philadelphia where in 1996 James Cole (Bruce Willis) is supposed to land.

There is one thing that must be said. Inside this adventure story there have been concealed many important things. 'Twelve Monkeys' destroy the clarity of two definitions - time and identity that is.

Richard Sherman. The editor of cheap books in New York. An honest husband and a caring father. During summer in a flat in Manhattan he is left by himself against the temptation of Marylin Monroe's beauty and shapes.

The film has been following the moral code of the 50's. And so it reduces that romance-or-so to the play of a male imagination. It exposes the plot on the the attractive neighbor. The director and co-writer of the film, Billy Wilder, was perfectly clear about one thing. How big can Marylin Monroe be as an asset to this film.

And truly the story itself is funny and well told, with a good performance of Tom Ewell (Golden Globe Award) and hilarious quotes from other films (i.e. the parody of the beach love scene from 'From Here to Eternity'). But it would have been forgotten nowadays. It would have, if it was without Marylin Monroe. There is a scene that has gone well into the pop-culture. It is that scene in which the actress stands on top of the subway vent. And the blow of air lifts up her white, almost transparent skirt to the level of her arms. The episode was shot in front of the Trans-Lux Theatre in Manhattan. Even though it was 2 AM, few thousands of people gathered to clap at the star after every shot was taken. The present husband of the actress was noticed in the crowd. It was a former baseball player - Joe Di Maggio. The gossip wouldn't even be worth mentioning if it wasn't for the fact that Monroe divorced him even before the end of filming. And the crisis in her private life was synchronized with the attempt to change the course of her carrier. After the divorce Monroe, who was usually confused, not remembering the dialogs, guided by the director step by step; came back on stage calm and focused. She surprised the crew with perfect co-operation.

'It's the biggest slapstick comedy ever created,' Billy Wilder used to warn the reporters.

Gangsters from the era of prohibition and ladies from a female orchestra. Milioneers and the unemployed of the Great Crisis. Escapes and chases. Love. Sex and dressing-ups. All this spins in a craftly-planned order.

In the year 1984 an English magazine 'Time Out' judged 'Some Like It Hot' very harshly. 'Stereotypical sexism, hopelessly stupid jokes, lots of bad taste.' Five years later, the same magazine asked 60 film critics and directors to join a survey for 100 greatest film in the history of cinema and Wilder's movie ended up on the 4th place. As the greatest comedy of all times. In movie guidelines edited by that newspaper, the quoted opinion has never been repeated.

The idea was given to the writers by a German film 'Fanfares of Love' with a female orchestra 'The Cyclamens' and dressing-ups. They however changed everything here. The plot begins in the year 1929 in Chicago. Joe and Jerry. Two unemployed musicians. They unwillingly become witnesses of the infamous St. Valentine's Day massacre and the begin running away in female costumes. They join a female orchestra which is on its way to Florida. Joe. Dressed as Josephine. He falls in love in a singer called Sugar. And Jenny as Daphne becomes an object of energetic courtship of an old millionaire.

A parody of gangster movies from the 20's. It fluently bind with humor and burlesque of the crazy comedies from the 30's. The dressing-ups give occasions of playing uncountable spicy jokes. And they co-create the atmosphere of the film which is filled with eroticism. But Wilder succeeds in keeping balance.

The film was such a big success thanks to marvelous acting of the the three main performers. Tony Curtis as Joe makes a parody of Cary Grant. Jack Lemmon with the role of Jerry/Daphne begun a wonderful co-operation with Wilder (7 movies, including 'The Apartment'). And Marilyn Monroe. Sensual. Full of charm. Always troubled with something. She made a discrete parody of a naive-blond-type. And she filled the gaps of her role with some songs.

There was however a mass of trouble with her. Monroe was usually late or she didn't appear on the stage. She didn't remember her dialogs. She sometimes got the grip after more than 20 cuts. There is a scene. She goes into Joey's room in it. And she asks, 'Where is the bourbon?'. That scene was repeated 47 times. Nothing helped. Even cards with text that were put in the drawers she was opening. Noot even big signs behind the camera. Her partner, Tony Curtis, was significantly frustrated. He was tired of repeating because his freshness of play was gone. After the scene with the kiss, Curtis said, "Kissing Monroe is like kissing Hitler". The behavior of the actress was later explained by her shyness. Her problems. Suspecting her own disbelief in her talent. And psychological depression caused by the fact that she was pregnant at that time.

The movie won Golden Globe Awards for the best comedy and the performances by Marylin Monroe and Jack Lemmon. However the Oscar went only to the costume designer - Orry-Kelly.

A gentle comedy about an extraordinary friendship between two socially-unprepared 40-year-olds.

Small, shy Elling (Per Christian Ellefsen) lived with his mother all his live, and after her death, unable to live on his own, he was placed in a mental clinic. He shared a room there with Kjell Bjarne (Sven Nordin), little mentally-disabled, unclean thug who dreamed mostly about food and women. After a few years of therapy both of the so different men are, in the means of resocialization, placed in a common flat, where they are supposed to begin a normal live. And it isn't easy...

A funny film, in which comical attitude comes out of the relations between so the totally different characters (Elling is a grumpy, neurotic intelligent while Kjell Bjarne - good-natured, bear-like strongman). But not only that - the remarks of these social outsiders about out everyday reality are surprisingly precise. They make us see its "under-skinned" absurd. Making movies about "the abnormal" is quite difficult. You have to be wary about not to be too protective, not to be to cheap in feeling, and not to make an easy joke. The Norwegian director was able to dodge all those traps. He told this strange story in a very natural way. It is fresh and very tasty.

Is is a story of a taxi driver named Jerzy Kiler (Cezary Pazura) who is taken by everyone for a hit-man called the Killer. It's no use for the taxi driver to explain that mistake. Finally, for his own protection, he decides to pretend to be who he was thought to be...

There are many well done jokes in here. The story goes quickly and has its own charm. But there is also a sad reflexion. It is the moment where Polish popular cinema begins to feed on itself. The most characteristic thing about Polish commercial cinema is its resemblance towards the hits signed "made in USA". That pretending looks as false as Jerzy Kiler pretending to be the Killer. Machulski knows about this perfectly and makes fun of it. In one of the funniest scenes Pazura plays in front of the mirror some on-screen characters like "Taxi Driver" or "Leon".

Film begins in not-so-happy mood. Like the classic "Bambi" it begins from a mother's death. A little fish called Nemo in the effect of a barracuda's attack looses his birth-giver (and 399 potential brothers and sisters). After this horrible experience Nemo's father - Marlin, became over-caring towards his son. But he won't be able to save his from the lurking dangers. That's because on the first day of his (underwater) school Nemo swims to the dangerous areas of the ocean and he gets caught by a diver and places in an aquarium. Desperate Marlin goes out on the search for his son...

His story about the double search of father and son, when you omit the naiveness, makes its character "human-like". Even the smallest fish under its paddles has its own soul.

End the from begins that thriller dark a. If you have problems with understanding the previous sentence, you are going to have even more trouble with understanding the film. Its basic idea is turning the action around. Not in a mechanical way, fortunately. "Memento" is a pack of scenes that end in the moment the previous scenes started in.

The main character is an ex-detective from an insurance company (Guy Pearce). His wife, as everything seems so, has been brutally raped and murdered while he himself was hit in his head. The effect of damage is the so-called short memory loss. Our hero remembers exactly who he was before that tragical incident, but he doesn't remember who he talked to and what about five minutes ago. That is why he has to write everything down. He collects Polaroid pictures of the people he meets. He fills his pockets with some quick notes. He even treats his own body as a big organizer and he tattoos his chest with the main memorized clue: "John G. murdered your wife".

This film has its own style and class. The idea itself about a guy who doesn't remember his experiences from a second ago is great. The "reverse gear" narration used here seems to be both logical and functional solution. Sometimes it is quite funny. For example, when the character doesn't know whether he chases someone or he is being chased.

This modest, non-color film by Robert Glinski is one of the most important achievements of Polish cinema after the year 1989. Not just because it won many prestigious awards in the country as well as abroad. (That includes the most important Golden Lions at the Festival in Gdynia the Polish Eagle for the best picture of the year). That is because it is one of the deepest insides and observations of the modern Poland and the costs of changes going in it. The picture is more emotional due to the fact that Glinski turnes his camera on the weakest, nearly children.

The action of the film takes place in a block neighborhood, where the camera only very rarely looked in. The main character's family is neither good nor bad. It is frighteningly normal. The father drinks more and more and occasionally loses his job, while the religiously fanatical mother focuses on the growing daughter. Tereska (Ola Gietner, given the American Young Artist Awards, a teenager form of Oscar) who dreamed about an Art School, gets o a Tailor School. Since she dreams about creating fashion clothes, it is a good direction. The false of that direction will be unnoticed in her environment.

What Tereska has left is the playground filled with its subculture and materialism. Here, nothing except the feeling of being hopeless, is stable. Even friendship and whatsmore the thing that seems to be love. Tereska is however looking for some warm and she finds it thanks to a disabled porter. The relation between that seems at first odd, but later kind of charming. It probably would have turned into something beautiful. It would be a union of the weak against the cruel world. But it would be impossible because of the surrounding, this relations evolves in. Traited by her closest friend and left alone by her family, the girl will seek revenge...

Non-color tape, documentary style, a collection of cast including breakthrough performances and professional actors (Zbigniew Zamachowski as Edzio) - all that seems that Glinski's movie is watched as a common thing that a normal person has contact every day with. The film was shot in one of the block neighborhoods of Warsaw's Prague, but this picture could have been set in many other places. Everywhere where there are no jobs or dreams and where the only thing left is a gray existence with social institutions like the administration or even church, feeling totally helpless. The picture is unwanted, but extremely real.

Woody Allen is concerned about what is happening to his intelligent characters. And he is crying "Help!" right off the screen. Because they are reasons to fear. The world begins to look like a TV show. Fame has depriced. Instead of real qualities it gives us a parody of them (a preacher from TV thinks about whether The Beatles were more popular than Jesus).

The main thing is how to find yourself in this world. Allen seems to doubt. He think that we might be zombificated. Let's look at Robin Simon (Judy Davis) from his movie. Soon ago she was an English teacher, A specialist in Chaucer's poetry. Then she met a handsome producer Tony Gardella (Joe Mantegna). She becomes a host of a TV show and makes stupid interviews. What's worse, she feels good doing that. She sees nothing inappropriate in walking into Charles Manson's (the massacre at Polanski's villa was his inspiration) cell with camera. The TV producer seems to be a modern wizard. At a family party his relatives ask his to do this or that. He can do everything.

The character of the film, celebrity journalist Lee Simon (Keneeth Branagh), can't resist of that kind of life's luxuries. His first two novels weren't successful. He has problems with finishing the third one. He'd rather work on a movie screenplay. It's bigger fame and bigger cash. Only a simple old woman, Gardella's grandmother is left with the remains of sanity. She is disturbed when hearing about a guy that was being held hostage by some thugs and now he is giving performances in schools as a hero. She asks surprised whether it is enough.

"Celebrity" is a great fun about revealing the rules of that crying game that involves selling your own identity. The memoirs of a star taken back to the house she used to live in, seem like if they were written for a tabloid. A young actor Darrow (self-ironic DiCaprio) demolishes the hotel room, but the owners have nothing against his destructive actions. His presence in the hotel is in fact an advertisement. Darrow pretends for a second there that he takes life seriously. Just as he treats the script given by Simon. But all in all Darrow is interested only in parties, women, drugs and boxing fights. Nola, the statist (Winona Ryder) will go to bed with anyone who will make her an actress.

In Woody Allen's movie people are attracted to fiction. Nola allows Simon to seduce her when he speaks to her with words take out of a novel. The reality gives no one satisfaction, need re-editing. That is why everyone is after Dr Lupus, a plastic surgeon.

For many years now it is said that Allen is repeating his own motives and frustrations. Maybe it's true, but he still does that perfectly. He is even capable of making fun of directors shooting in non-color, while his own film is shot in that technique (cinematography by Sven Nykvist). The greatness of Allen allows the viewer to accept with astonishment such scenes that they would have been inappropriate if made by anyone else. That includes a runaway bride five minutes before wedding and a couple breaking off in a moment the removal company places her stuff in his apartment.

A master is a master.

In addition to many other detective story authors of the 30's and 40's, Raymond Chandler managed to find himself in Hollywood. He also had a great and active influence in creating a movie genre called film noir. All in all the first go was Dashiell Hammett's. It is his "Maltese Falcon", directed by John Huston, known to be the first movie of that kind. But it was Chandler who created the world of film noir with all of its double meaningness. It reflected the American reality of the 40's. It is not a coincidence that the only sane guide in this world is a private detective. A man who is between the good and evil. He seems cynical but in fact he is very tolerant. He's a precise observer and has a knowledge about human souls. He gets to sometimes shocking truth with an expression of tiredness on his face. The character of Marlowe is a detective from Chandler's novel. Its role demanded some sophisticated skills from the actor. Those who played it, went to history: Dick Powell, Humphrey Bogart or Robert Mitchum.

Mitchum has no match for himself. He plays detective Marlowe in search of a gangster's old friend who vanished. She cleared every trail behind her so that every trail of getting to her involves a threat of death. Mitchum is perfect. His words and gestures, not to mention his facial expressions, are just like they should be. And the most interesting fact is that when you look at Mitchum you have no impression of him actually playing the part. He simply is Marlowe - sometimes cynical, sometimes romantic guardian of the law who gets into a dangerous assignment not for the money (25$ a day plus expands)but for the curiosity of truth.

Mitchum had an easier task. He was coming into theatres when film noir had its best days and he was given a free hand from the director. But on the other hand you should have the power and charisma of Mitchum to face the myth 30 years after Bogart's triumph.

A group of friends are going on a picnic. They are stopped by unknown men during the way. They don't actually notice the moment when they become slaves of a game of absurd. A game they agreed to take part in. They were softly persuaded. Or they were trying to be kind. None of them is able to cross the line drawn on the sand. Except for one who will run away. The fugitive will be chased by the guest who do not do it because of fear. Simply said, they don't want to do any harm to the host...

An idyllic party turns into a prison camp, but the guests don't seem to notice that at all. It was a film about the world we used to live in. We were invited to a similar party and tried to pretend with keeping a smile on our faces. And the cinema was able to film that "escape towards freedom".

Jan Nemec was one of the biggest individuals of the young Czechoslovakian cinema of the 60's. It was already at college were he had trouble with censorship. It stated that he was picking the wrong subjects and that he reached out for wrong authors (Hlasko, Dostojevski). He was also accused of their wrongful interpretation.

This film is a sad picture about the 16th December 1981 in the Wujek mine in Katowice. As it is well known, after declarations that the country of Polnad is in a state of war and after the arrest of the leader of "The Solidarity", the miners went on strike in order for the authorities to neglect their previous declarations, free the miners' colleague and make the ruling power accept the documents of the "Porozumienie Jastrzębskie". On the 16th of December after trying to end the strike without the use of force, a tank broke into the mine crashing the compound's wall. The forces of the police and ZOMO broke into the mine's territory. There was a fight and shots were fired. Six miners were killed, while there were three more casualties from the given wounds. In the place those bloody events, the miners put a cross.

The movie about the tragedy in Wujek was directed by Kazimierz Kutz who is a director of "The Salt of the Black Earth" and "The Pearl in the Crown" - other moving stories about earlier problem of the people of Śląsk. A special committee in the mine was created to help to gather the money for the production (But the gathering of the money which was collected all over the country was unsuccessful and didn't get the predicted results).

In 1994 the movie was awarded at the Gdańsk Film Festival. It was given a special Jury Award as well as The Mayor of Gdańsk Award.

"Edi" has lost a lot thanks to the medial attention given to it. The viewers of the film that are watching it today expect no-one-knows-what while they are just going to get a film about the simplicity of life. That's it and that's a lot.

A story about a homeless philosopher - that sound like an idea for a problematical story filled with a lot of cynical opinions about the feeling of guilt. And somehow Piotr Trzaskalski managed to make a film both simple and wise, without being to pretentious. It isn't important that Henryk Gołębiewski starring in the leading role is sometimes a bit overwhelmed by the outstanding supporting performance by Jacek Braciak. It isn't important that the main character's quotes sound a bit fake. "Edi" gives a feeling that the film is honest, sincere and quite unusual for the Polish cinema. It is "artistic" but not pretentious and absolutely understandable. It is situated in one of the saddest surroundings but is not filled with depression. Even the criminals aren't presented as tough gangsters, but as little wise guys which is more closer to the truth about Polish criminal world. And whatsmore the film is optimistic and without a fakely glued happy end.

It is a road movie with a clearly male cast. This adaptation of Darryl Ponicsan's novel is delivered with good characters, the atmosphere of the happenings and the American 70's fear shown here with an original way. Two officers of the Navy - a wise guy Buddusky (Jack Nicholson) and a disciplined Afro-American Mulhall (Otis Young) - are escorting an 18-year-old recruit from the base in Norfolk (Virginia) to a prison in Portsmouth (New Hampshire). The clearly don't like the given orders. They feel quite uncomfortable being guards because they are flabbergasted by similar sentences, the authorities lying and the justice which is nowhere to be seen.

The authorities of the US Navy denied any help to the film's crew. "Well, it's not an ideal recruiting movie" Jack Nicholson commented with serious mimic expression.

Nikita Michałkow's film became an event of the European cinema season. It won an Oscar and a runner-up in Cannes. It fascinated the Russian audience and it ended up on cinema screens of tens of countries. Whatsmore it caused conflicts and arguments like no other Russian film in the 90's.

The chosen point of view is actually surprising itself. It is the summer of 1936. Terror of Stalin is gathering a plentiful harvest. Meanwhile, we fill with the taste of the idyllic country life in an old "aristocratic nest". Today it is a Moscow house of a legendary hero of the civil war - colonel of the Soviet Army Kotov (played dashingly by the director himself). The plebeian, loyal the Stalin and the tenet, lives here with a younger wife Marusia (Ingeborga Dapkunaite), her relatives from an aristocratic, professor family that melancholicly look back at the aroma of the older days before the revolution, and his beloved sic-year-old daughter Nadia (Nadia Michałkowa, the daughter of Nikita. The lazy days fly. The are filled with baths in the river, voyages with a boat, walks near the fields of grown wheat, talks and little argues at the table covered with taste. To this sanctuary hidden under the wings of the impudent comrade Kotov's authority suddenly comes Mitia (Oleg Mieńszykow). He's Marusia's old love. A talented pianist and an ex white emigrant. Suddennly the facts from the past are uncovering. Family secrets. Deeply hidden feelings. And we're almost ready to accept a love story with a classical marriage triangle. But Michałkow prepares us another, most important surprise. The comfort and calmness of this world's life turn out to be a naive illusion in that surprise's sinister light. Innocent gestures, behaviors and foolishnesses turn out to be a grim masquerade. The aura of a holiday carelessness gives place for tragedy.

The director tell all of this very suggestively, with a lot of liberty and talent, with plastically taste and taking care of every detail. He perfectly associate Czechov's auras with the grotesque of the Soviet customs and rituals. He unites the ironic distance with the lyricism of his own memories from childhood. Memories from his house where his mother, a writer and a translator tried to develop the spiritual traditions of the Russian intelligence under a shielding umbrella of his father, a story-writer and a political worker, the author of the Stalinian anthem of the Soviet Union. In Russia it was said about Kotov that he was neither Frunze nor Tuchaczewski. The origin of Mitia was assigned to Siergiej Efron who was the husband of the poet, Marina Cwietajewa. Michałkov assured that all characters are made up except for Katia Mochowa who was a reproduction of his mother's faithful servant.

The cold analysis of the film led the critics to a statement that the director idealizes Kotov by hiding his own work from the 20's. He never gives information about Kotov's dedication to the terror of which he has been one of the creators. There is a lot of truth in there, but the film is not a historical debate. He doesn't say who is good or who should be forsaken (the phrases from the film state: "we were all guilty" or "can you forsake people whose faith, hope and love were stolen?"). He tries to catch a single situation from a summer of 1936. The situation from a very well-known house. He neither gives a prologue to that situation nor he is building his characters' life backwards. Those empty spaces of the characters' life are left for the audience to think about. The symbolic meaning of the round thunder that crawls around the house being a untouchable witness of the happenings is also left for the audience's imagination.

"The Getaway" became a part of a Hollywood legend.

First of all, thanks to its stars - Steve McQueen and Ali McGraw. As an on-screen couple they had together such a warm feeling that they got married off-stage. Second of all, it is because a great romance has been written in a specific for the director's poetic of violence. San Peckinpah awaken the ghost of traditional Hollywood in a movie closer to "the new American cinema" than to the black cinema of the 40's and 50's. That is where are the origins of "The Getaway". Third aspect is that Sam Peckinpah was approximately the first director of the new direction of Hollywood. He openly tried to use the abolition of Hays' code. His movies were filled with a load of violence unparalleled before. "The Getaway" refers to that rule as well. It supposed to be a kind of a crook tale, where interactions with violence were treated as an element of fun.

An experienced thief is released from prison. He must pay for his freedom by getting involved into another heist. Despite the many complications, the bank gets robbed and the main character has nothing left to do, but taking care of disloyal partners and the police. And his must forgive his wife an affair. However, it was her submission that set him free. Then he can drive away giving satisfaction to himself and the audience who are getting to like the characters.

The film is one of the head accomplishments of young and angry British cinema of the 50's and 60's. It is based on a play with the same title that was written by an 18-year-old Shelagh Delaney. In occasion of the theatrical premiere of the play it was written that Delaney, who comes from Ireland, knows well what to condemn and what to scoff of.

The main character of the play is Jo, who is an unattractive teenager. She is a daughter of a lonely mother who has't got time for the girl's adolescent problems. Rejected by her and her contemporaries she get pregnant to later settle down with a young gay who seems to be an ideal keeper for the yet to be born baby...

Richardson succeeded in creating what makes the values of the whole young and angry British' cult. I mean psychological realism placed in the social background of that period.

"L'Auberge Espagnole" collected the audience wherever it was shown. It gathered audience awards on many film festivals all over the world. And it is not strange. We have the ability to watch a cheerful and an astonishing piece of art. And it is wise by the way. "L'Auberge Espagnole" is a very funny comedy about youth and growing up. But most of all it is about the lights and shadows of living in the European Union.

The main character of the film is a French student of economy Xavier. For his future carrier his is sent for one year of studying to Barcelona. In Spain it turns out that the lectures are being given in Catalonian language. That probably doesn't help the increasement of knowledge. But it helps in tightening the relationships inside the group of foreign exchange students. Especially if they rent a big flat together. There are 3 girls: English, Belgian and Spanish, as well as three boys: German, Danish and Italian. Our French guy will also get there. A year is a very long time. Long enough to get close and make friends. And get to know some European stereotypes while trying to break them apart.

Klapisch treats this special case of a process of uniting Europe with humor and without pecky didactism. He comes out of the idea that young people are everywhere just the same. They like jokes. They like to make irresponsible relationships. But they don't neglect their aspirations. The most interesting is the sum of experience of this little community. They live together in the fire of everyday tasks fighting with the surrounding reality. They are full of unusual ideas for life. Young Europeans come back to their countries to take up a life of an adult on their own. They are Europe's hope to fight the many problems of the Union. For example, the terrifying administration system. In the end they proof that not only can they communicate and make friends despite the many differences. But they also now how to live the full of life. And they won't allow taking that full of life away from them.

The first day of war in 1914, an austeria - which is an inn - near one of the Galician roads. Jewish runaways from the nearby town seek shelter in here. There are the bourgeoisie and the poor, radicals and religious Hasids. Somewhere near there are fights going on, fires starting, Cossacks preparing for battle, but in the inn passions and feelings blossom. There are arguments and the uncalm looks cross. There are also ritual dances of the Hasids, who are unaware of the danger. The old innkeeper Tag, a wise and experienced man, realizes the vague of the situation and decided to fulfill his moral duty to the end.

The movie, based on a novel (1966) by Julian Stryjkowski (1905-1996), is a nostalgic, poetic and cruel vision of the history and culture of the Polish Jews with their believings, traditions, legends and original humor.

"We wanted" said Jerzy Kawalerowicz "the film to be a movie of great metaphor, similar to a passionate, dynamic painting, which shows the world of Jews a moment before the tragical doom." "Austeria" was announced to be one of the best movies of the director - the movie won the Gold Lions at the festival in Gdańsk.

The film is said to be one of the best westerns of the 70s.

Two legends meet in this movie - the myth of the Wild West, captured here in its ending phase and the legend of John Wayne. The sick, 69-year-old actor appeared on the screen for the last time (he died three years later of lung cancer). He kind of plays himself here - an old, tired gunner John Bernard Brooks, who, after the years of his male adventures, finds out that he has cancer and wants to peacefully live till the end of his days in a town in Nevada. However he is being chased by his own fame: young cowboys look for opportunities to face the yet unbeaten King of the West. Action takes place in the year 1901, but the sad story by Glendon Swarthout goes even further, back to the year 1871. The past moments from Brooks's life are illustrated by John Wayne's older westerns: "Red River", "Hondo", "Rio Bravo", "El Dorado".

The critics emphasized the beauty of the cinematography by Bruce Surtees and the acting - especially John Wayne's.