The Criterion Collection releases two restored French classics this week: René Clément’s heartbreaking "Forbidden Games" and Francois Truffaut's playful "Shoot The Piano Player."
1. Forbidden Games
René Clément’s heartbreaking "Forbidden Games" tells the story of a young orphan and her friend, who are forced to fend for themselves in World War II France. A breathtaking cinematic achievement, Clément’s film features brilliant performances from its child stars and won the 1952 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film.
2. Shoot The Piano Player
François Truffaut is drunk on the possibilities of cinema in this, his most playful, anarchic film. Part film noir, part comedy, part tragedy, Shoot the Piano Player relates the adventures of the mild-mannered piano player Charlie (Charles Aznavour, in a triumph of hangdog deadpan) as he stumbles into the criminal underworld and a whirlwind love affair.
3. Ladies In Lavender
Academy Award winners Dame Judi Dench and Dame Maggie Smith star as elderly sisters who adopt a lost young foreigner (Daniel Brühl) who washes ashore near their coastal England home in the days before World War II in Charles Dance's adaptation of William J. Locke's short story. Natasha McElhone, Miriam Margoyles and David Warner co-star.4. Tropical Malady
Apichatpong Weerasethakul's second feature film leisurely observes a budding romance between a soldier and a country boy. In the second half, "Tropical Malady" moves into the territory of the dreamy and bizarre.5. The Ninth Day
With The Ninth Day, director Volker Schlöndorff (The Tin Drum, The Legend of Rita) creates a powerful moral thriller. Ulrich Matthes (Downfall) stars as Father Henri Kremer, a dissident priest in the Dachau concentration camp, who is allowed a nine day reprieve from the camp.