Il Cinema Ritrovato - Five highlights and surprises and sometimes both

Nora Aunor, Philip Salvador, Bona

BONA (Lino Brocka, Phillipines, 1981) Little known film by the best known Philippine director. Brocka collaborated with the actress Nora Aunor who also produced the film. A young women breaks every taboo and convention in a Catholic society, hurling herself at a preening film extra who treats her like dirt. Apparently the negative had been deposited by Pierre Rissient with a French lab back in 1981 when the film played in the Quinzaine at Cannes. Nobody was alerted to its existence until 2017 and it's taken that long to get the film back.

Charles Boyer, Claudette Colbert, Tovarich

TOVARICH (Anatole Litvak, USA, 1937) I know plenty of people will tell you its hardly a discovery but if you are seeing a film starring Charles Boyer and Claudette Colbert as impoverished Russian aristocrats reduced to servant status for the first time....then it is a treat of some dimension....

Cronos

CRONOS (Guillermo Del Toro, Mexico, 1992). Only saw this once before and cant remember where but a lush new 4K is now out and about and it stands up to scrutiny very well. Del Toro was already setting himself down a career path of sophisticated fantasy...

Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, Gladys George
The Roaring Twenties

THE ROARING TWENTIES (Raoul Walsh, USA, 1939). Yet another movie from 1939. My goodness the creative juices were flowing. Not seen by me for decades but I think it may have leapfrogged a lot of other movies into pole position as the best movie Walsh ever made....

Emlyn Williams, Vivien Leigh, Kenneth More
The Deep Blue Sea

THE DEEP BLUE SEA (Anatole Litvak, UK, 1955) Virtually forgotten Litvak screened her in a less than perfect 35mm print. Vivien Leigh has run off with alcoholic test pilot Kenneth More, leaving behind a sober life as a judge's wife. Super-literate dialogue by Terence Rattigan with never an um or an ah to be heard. Leigh's first film in four years proved to be one of the great comebacks...I suspect those who saw it are now hunting down the 2011 Terence Davies version for a fresh/refresh look.

....and just to prove that Il Cinema Ritrovato does not ignore Australian cinema, or maybe it's the other way round, there were two films by Arthur and Corinne Cantrill in the very specialised selection called 'The Colours of Experimental Cinema'. The films were Warrah  (1980) and Printer Light Play (1978). The copies of the films were supplied by the Arsenal in Berlin.