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Saint Joan (1957, USA, Preminger)

Like Bergman’s Seventh Seal, Saint Joan uses medieval Christianity to talk about the present, but from a wiser and less annoyingly ironic 20th century perspective. Joan is the idealist who changes the world without understanding it, while the cynics who do understand it, and the fools who rule it, are unable to make the mad leaps true change requires. Whether the change is good or evil is incidental, a matter of luck. Watched it all.

The Flesh is Weak (1957, UK)

The pimps of London go about recruiting prostitutes in a very odd way. They walk around on the streets, looking for “proper” girls the movie audience can identify with, then spend several weeks grooming them, and luring them unwittingly into the business, one cautious and devillish step at a time, until they’ve been tricked into becoming something they would never have chosen of their own free will. Seems unnecessarily complicated, considering that this profession has usually never lacked on the supply side. Watched: 16 minutes.

Tokyo Twilight (1957, Japan, Ozu)

The punishment for being a film buff is that you have to sit through entire Yasujiro Ozu movies and pretend that you’re not bored. Watched: 10 minutes. The reward is that you’ll be able to berate your less masochistic friends for not being familiar with the Genius of Ozu.