The Dead Zone (1983)

Christopher Walken as a less kind, less gentle Johnny Smith

 Despite my love for the works of David Cronenberg, for a long time 1983's The Dead Zone didn't really register on my radar.  I'd seen it when I was a kid, and had it filed away in my brain under "above average Stephen King adaptations."  Given the vast quantity of films based on King's work, that's a file that doesn't exactly beg for reevaluation.   But Cronenberg is a director, like Stanley Kubrick before him, who excels at the peculiar skill of telling other people's stories in a way that enhances rather than diminishes his own authorial voice.  (Indeed, of the twelve films Cronenberg has made from The Dead Zone through next year's Cosmopolis, only two are based on original screenplays.) And so, far from being just another Stephen King adaptation, The Dead Zone is an essential step in Cronenberg's filmography that sheds light on the obsessions and perspectives that propel his work.

Comedies and Proverbs: Pauline at the Beach (1983)

Amanda Langlet as Pauline and Arielle Dombasie as Marion

Pauline at the Beach is, by a wide margin, the sexiest film in either of Éric Rohmer's two major series.  Although there is a sexual subtext to all twelve films, as his protagonists struggle in words and thoughts to manage their love lives, the intellectualism of his characters (and Rohmer's own approach to filmmaking) gives an almost asexual appearance to their romantic shenanigans.   Sure, there were momentary blasts of eroticism throughout the moral tales: the fetishistic appeal of Claire's Knee, the tremendous temptation in My Night at Maud's, and the earthy sexuality of Chloe in Love in the Afternoon.  But each of the men in those films saw his lust as the enemy of his happiness.  Here on the beach, however, the five leads all embrace their libido and are simply looking for the best way to keep their hearts safe while satisfying their desires.

Comedies and Proverbs: A Good Marriage (1982)

Béatrice Romand as Sabine

It speaks volumes about the consistency of the Comedies and Proverbs series that I can think of solid arguments for why five of the six films might, in fact, be the best in the series (Full Moon in Paris is far from a bad film, but...well, more on that in a couple of weeks).  It seems that, to some extent, my favorite film in this rich era of Rohmer's career is whichever one I'm thinking about at the moment.

The Night of the Hunted (1980)

Brigitte Lahaie and Dominique Journet

Many of the films of Jean Rollin, especially the early vampire films and gothic masterpiece The Iron Rose, seem to take place in a present haunted by an inescapable past.  His protagonists may begin the films confident professionals, career criminals, or bored intellectuals, but once they set foot outside their comfort zones they're inevitably confronted by the same reality.  Rollin's is a world in which the countryside is dotted with decaying castles and villas, resplendent in their faded glamour.  A seductive world in which death is but a prolonged dusk and curses may haunt for generations.  And most importantly a world in which a beach of rugged beauty that promises the infinite, glimpsed in childhood, becomes a stage for transformation and rebirth.

Comedies and Proverbs: The Aviator's Wife (1981)

Two very amateur detectives

After the international success of his Six Moral Tales series,  French director Éric Rohmer took an unexpected left turn in the 1970's.  Whereas the moral tales had focused on the lives and loves of contemporary youth in France with a naturalistic veracity that bordered on neo-realism, the three features he released between 1973 and 1980 were each lushly appointed period pieces.  He would return to the style on which he made his name, however, in 1981 when he launched his second series, Comedies and Proberbs, with the film The Aviator's Wife.