Adapted from a short story by Stephen Vincent Benét, William Dieterle’s film, starring Edward Arnold as the titular statesman and Walter Huston as his diabolical opponent Mr. Scratch, creates additional backstory for farmer Jabez Stone (James Craig) and his relationship with Daniel Webster before Stone Read More …
“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.” Hood’s adaptation of the brutal South African crime novel Tsotsi by eminent South African novelist and playwright Athol Fugard (who also wrote the film’s screenplay) is about a seemingly soulless young thug (Presley Chweneyagae) whose predatory lifestyle is Read More …
Love & Mercy stands out among biopics for its unusual approach in portraying the life of its subject, Brian Wilson. Effortlessly jumping back and forth between Wilson’s tortured youth in the midst of musical triumphs (a brilliant Paul Dano) and his later years of abusive treatment Read More …
In December 1914, an unofficial truce occurred in the trenches of World War I between German, French, and Scottish soldiers. A German soldier who was present for the truce writes these words in his journal: “When the Christmas bells sounded in the villages of the Read More …
The Kid gives particularly charming expression to the compassionate humanism that runs throughout Chaplin’s cinema. The Kid was Chaplin’s first full-length feature film as director, and if it lacks the finesse of Chaplin’s subsequent films, it makes up for that in heart. Chaplin’s immense talent for physical performance Read More …
Brian Desmond Hurst’s adaptation of Charles Dicken’s classic Christmas story not only makes claim to being the best film version of the much adapted story, but a significant film about mercy bestowed upon a wayward soul. On Christmas Eve, the miserly and miserable Ebenezer Scrooge—played Read More …
Ronald Colman’s Sydney Carton is an alcoholic barrister who, despite his natural intelligence and legal talent, has allowed his personal life to empty of both love and meaning. Then, despite his dissolute and failed lifestyle, he is offered only the mercy of mere friendship by Read More …
The Dardenne brothers craft cinematic parables that evoke an ethical imagination within the viewer through subverting expectations. At first glance, The Son may feel like a typical revenge thriller as a carpenter (Olivier Gourmet) takes a young man as an apprentice with the knowledge that this troubled Read More …
The Elephant Man dramatizes the true story of Joseph Merrick, named John in the film, a man suffering from a to-this-day undiagnosed combination of shocking physical deformities. Lynch’s film, his second feature following Eraserhead, tells of Merrick’s (John Hurt) discovery in a freak show by Dr. Frederick Read More …
Influenced by Dreyer, Boleslawski’s cinematic version of Victor Hugo’s classic possesses both whole-hearted sincerity and unabashed Christianity. The lost life of the justifiably bitter and disillusioned Jean Valjean (Frederic March) is transformed by the mercy offered him by Bishop Myriel (Sir Cedric Hardwicke). Meanwhile, Javert Read More …