In November 1936, at a nursing home in Nottingham, England, two middle-class women, Margaret Wheeler and Blanche Rylatt, gave birth to two daughters. Through a mix-up in the files, each woman was presented with the wrong baby afterward—a fact confirmed only in 1957 after strenuous efforts by Margaret, who had suspected something was amiss from the beginning and retained a rudimentary contact with the Rylatts as a consequence. At this point, each 20-year-old daughter—Peggy, who had grown up with the Rylatts, and Valerie, who had grown up with the Wheelers—discovered that she had a different set of parents.

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Parmi les documentaires les plus remarquables et les plus inventifs jamais réalisés, le film de Françoise Romand suit la véritable histoire de deux Anglaises qui, bébés, ont été échangées par erreur à la maternité, et découvrent, à 20 ans, qu’elles n’ont pas été élevées par leurs vrais parents. Romand embarque les survivants des deux familles dans une étrange enquête entre passé et présent, pour reconstituer les faits mais surtout revivre ces scènes clés de la vie émotionnelle des deux filles. (...) Un extraordinaire premier film. — Jonathan Rosenbaum

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Francoise Romand's 1985, 63-minute Mix-Up, as densely packed as a 500-page novel, has the French title Meli-melo, which my dictionary defines as a "jumble (of facts, etc); hotchpotch; medley (of people, etc); clutter (of furniture)"—all of which describes the film's startlingly original method as well as its fascinating, evocative subject. — Jonathan Rosenbaum

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Director Jane Campion's 1989 debut feature plumbs the dysfunctional depths of one Australian family. Thin and mousy Kay works in a factory and lives a dreary existence with her well-meaning boyfriend, Louis. One day, her sister Dawn arrives with her so-called manager, Bob. Nicknamed Sweetie, Dawn is everything Kay is not: boisterous, impulsive, and overweight. Kay is consumed with uptight phobias, while Dawn hangs on to her unrealistic childhood dreams of show business. Meanwhile, their parents, Gordon and Flo, are involved in a strange separation. Kay, Louis, and Gordon trick Dawn so they can visit Flo at a ranch in the Australian outback. Everyone gets together back at the family home where Dawn pulls an immature stunt, exposing the psychological realities of the situation.

Who was she? Sometimes she was a child skipping rope. Sometimes she was a woman with a passionate hunger. And one day the woman and the child came together...

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Rachel, Rachel is a moving, mature meditation on loneliness and existential angst, best remembered as the directorial debut of Paul Newman. Newman intentionally chose this small-scale, dramatic story to make his entrée into filmmaking. Newman's wife, Joanne Woodward, is convincing as the title character determined to change her life. Though acclaimed –the picture won New York Film Critics awards for both Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman, and an Oscar nomination for Joanne Woodward– the film suffered a quick death at the box office and is, regrettably, largely forgotten. Rachel, Rachel was released on DVD for the first time on February 2009.

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Individualistic and idealistic architect Howard Roark is expelled from college because his designs fail to fit with existing architectural thinking. He seems unemployable but finally lands a job with like-minded Henry Cameron, however within a few years Cameron drinks himself to death, warning Roark that the same fate awaits unless he compromises his ideals. Roark is determined to retain his artistic integrity at all costs.

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Although Hollywood is finally breaking new ground it doesn't make films like this anymore... and aside from The Fountainhead, truly never did. Looking back today, I found it such a refreshing and unique change. — Gary W. Tooze, DVD Beaver

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King Vidor réalise avec "Le Rebelle" (The Fountainhead) le film le plus emblématique de ses préoccupations de cinéaste. — Olivier Bitoun, DVD Classik

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Lem goes to Chicago to sell the wheat his family has grown on their farm in Minnesota. There he meets the waitress Kate. They fall in love and get married before going back to the farm. Kate is accepted by Lem's mother and kid sister but is rejected by his father, who believes she married for the money.
Long available only in soft 16-millimeter prints, City Girl now possesses a contrast and detail that suggest a pristine 35-millimeter source, and perhaps the dramatically improved image quality will contribute to the rehabilitation of what has long been Murnau’s most underrated film.

Marlene Dietrich, Herbert Marshall and Cary Grant star in Josef von Sternberg's classic social drama about a young mother who lives an unsavory life to support her family. Loving mother and devoted wife Helen Faraday works as a showgirl at a tawdry nightclub to earn her family's living. Her frail husband Edward suffers from radium poisoning, a degenerative malady that requires an expensive European cure. When Helen meets wealthy Nick Townsend, a handsome and admiring playboy, she's seduced by him. Unfortunately, their scandalous affair sets off a chain of scandalous reactions that force Helen into hiding. Running from the authorities who want to take her child, Helen confronts a society that's turned its back on her.

A brilliant exploration of the power of movies, "Close-Up" reconstructs the true story of a cinephile’s attempt to become a filmmaker he admires. Hossein Sabzian introduces himself as celebrated Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf and, under the pretext of working on a film project, enters the private life of a well-to-do Teheran family and eventually faces fraud charges. The film blends documentary and drama by featuring the actual people involved and has a final scene that is described by Geoff Andrew as "one of the sharpest, funniest deconstructions of film form ever shot".

Mary, a poor farm girl, meets Tim just as word comes that war has been declared. Tim enlists in the army and goes to the battlefields of Europe, where he is wounded and loses the use of his legs. Home again, Tim is visited by Mary, and they are powerfully attracted to each other; but his physical handicap prevents him from declaring his love for her. Deeper complications set in when Martin, Tim's former sergeant and a bully, takes a shine to Mary.

LUCKY STAR'S remarkable emotional power clearly implies that Frank Borzage knew it to be his last chance at a silent - a testament, as it were, to the vast possibilities of the medium that he had fallen in love with. This is one of the most perfectly crafted of all silent masterpieces, and a further evidence that sound was unnecessary to produce such poignant and moving images.

Lazybones, a melancholy tale of thwarted lives in a sleepy small town, is one of Frank Borzage's most deeply felt films. It toys with melodrama at times, but it's directed and acted with such quiet emotion that it earns its tears honestly. Borzage was working near the height of his powers, and his restrained handling of the actors and staging of the scenes make this comedy-drama far less dated than most of its contemporaries. He seems to really believe in the material, and so will you.

For his final film, the Danish master, Carl Theodor Dreyer, opted to adapt a play (written by Hjalmar Söderberg) about a woman who is drawn to great men but then finds that they are incapable of offering her the depth of love that she requires. A writer, a politician and a musician comprise her past, present and (she hopes) future lovers respectively. As she carries on with an affair under her husband’s nose, word arrives that the writer will soon return to town to be honored for his influence and artistry at a special ceremony. The convergence of these three figures in Gertrud’s life put her into a state of deep self-reflection as she realizes that she is at a critical crossroads in her life. Not content to be proverbial ‘good woman’ standing behind the ‘great man’, Gertrud seeks a path that will lead towards personal fulfillment and, above all, true love.

Rare footage from the sets of several Ingmar Bergman movies : Sawdust and Tinsel (1953), The Seventh Seal (1957), Through a Glass Darkly (1961). Taken from the bonus DVD of Taschen's monumental book : The Ingmar Bergman Archives.

Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira celebrates his 100th birthday this month. This centenarian, who has been making movies since 1931 and is little known in this country, is still one of the most vital and unorthodox artists working in the world today. In 1993, at the age of 85, de Oliveira directed what a number of European critics describe as his chef-d'oeuvre: "Valley of Abraham" ("Vale Abraao"), a contemporary variation on Gustave Flaubert's "Madame Bovary," inspired by Agustina Bessa-Luis's Portuguese novel also titled "Valley of Abraham."

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French master Max Ophuls’s most cherished work, "The Earrings of Madame de..." is an emotionally profound, cinematographically adventurous tale of false opulence and tragic romance. When the aristocratic woman known only as Madame de (the extraordinary Danielle Darrieux) sells her earrings, unbeknownst to her husband (Charles Boyer), in order to pay personal debts, she sets off a chain reaction, the financial and carnal consequences of which can only end in despair. Ophuls adapts Louise de Vilmorin’s incisive fin de siècle novel with virtuosic camera work so elegant and precise it’s been called the equal to that of Orson Welles. Criterion Collection

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The best film from the three Max Ophuls classics Criterion is "Madame de..." (1953), one of the greatest films ever made, and one of the most written about. Dave Kehr, New York Times

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The General is perhaps Buster Keaton's finest film and shows the great comic of the silent era at the height of his powers. Keaton's talent lay in his slapstick ability and his famous stoney face expression which he gave at moments of great confusion. Currently much of his work is being re-appreciated at the true extent of his comic genius re-evalued. Unfortunately for Keaton's career, after the introduction of sound, no one was interested in his comic abilities anymore.