I don’t know how much the French priest John Vianney in the old film, The Wizard of Heaven (1949), resembles the real John Vianney, who died in 1859, but I like and respect this atypical Marcel Blistene (director)-Rene Jolivet (screenwriter) achievement.  Vianney, acted by Georges Rollin, is a devout, sanguine, legalistic clergyman trying to convert the people of Ars.  I suppose those who do convert—and they’re definitely there—give up dancing, which the priest plainly hates.

Wizard is like a more supernatural Diary of a Country Priest (the film).  Satan contemptuously speaks to Vianney, and a crippled boy is healed by God.  Philosophical idealism leaves materialism in the dust.  The movie’s theme is reformation in the interest of upholding the cause of the Divine.  Sometimes, in fact, this is self-reformation.

(In French with English subtitles.  The French title is Le Sorcier du Ciel.)

Like Scarlet Street, The Woman in the Window (1944) is an Edward G. Robinson-Joan Bennett collaboration directed by Fritz Lang.

At first I thought the film might be about what ensues from the fear of injustice, but, no, it’s just about itself.  It is film noir with a nearly jokey ending, but it’s riveting. . . I called Scarlet Street “nice-looking,” and so is this:  it’s good to see non-glossy black and white.  Bennett looked like Hedy Lamarr, so she is gorgeous.  Lang’s cast is one to relish.

The protagonists in the 1961 Italian film, La Notte (“The Night”), are a married couple—emphatically married.  Disillusionment, the weary efforts to understand and console, the fearful concern over having caused pain, the unwillingness to part—these and other realities so frequently subsisting in matrimony are beautifully depicted by director Michelangelo Antonioni.  Beyond this, the film raises the following questions:  Do Western cultures really care about marriage?  Do they care about anything?  Why does it seem as though nothing of substance takes place in our busy but non-communal cities?  (I’m thinking of the sequence in which the wife, played by Jeanne Moreau, strolls through Milan.)

The second half of this near-classic is somewhat too talky, but the movie as a whole is one of the most technically clever, resonantly made pictures I’ve seen.

(In Italian with English subtitles)

English: Michelangelo Antonioni at the premiere of “Jenseits der Wolken” “jenseits der wolken” at cinema odeon, Cologne. Deutsch: Michelangelo Antonioni bei der deutschlandpremiere des films “jenseits der wolken” am 29. oktober 1995 im kölner odeon-kino. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Ernst Lubitsch, directing the film adaptation of yet another play, gave us in 1937 Angel, more drama than comedy and wonderfully cast.  Marlene Dietrich enacts Maria Barker, who feels neglected by her good husband, Frederick (Herbert Marshall), and takes a vacation to Paris to consort with her duchess friend Anna.  There, however, she falls—in love?—with Anthony Halton (Melvyn Douglas), but pulls away from further temptation.  But Halton does not pull away from her.

It’s a semi-comedy of manners about marital offense but is free of passionate anger and fierce jealousy.  Lubitsch imbues it with the usual champagne, but he also knows there is much at stake.  It is an actor’s piece:  oh, it’s based on a play, all right, yet it is a movie.

Ernst Lubitsch, directing the film adaptation of yet another play, gave us in 1937 Angel, more drama than comedy and wonderfully cast.  Marlene Dietrich enacts Maria Barker, who feels neglected by her good husband, Frederick (Herbert Marshall), and takes a vacation to Paris to consort with her duchess friend Anna.  There, however, she falls—in love?—with Anthony Halton (Melvyn Douglas), but pulls away from further temptation.  But Halton does not pull away from her.

It’s a semi-comedy of manners about marital offense but is free of passionate anger and fierce jealousy.  Lubitsch imbues it with the usual champagne, but he also knows there is much at stake.  It is an actor’s piece:  oh, it’s based on a play, all right, yet it is a movie.