While his family fled to America in the wake of the revolution, Cuban intellectual Sergio has stayed behind-more due to passivity than political commitment. Unable to imagine himself a part of the new landscape, his days are spent killing time: gazing out his balcony telescope; taking lazy, aimless walks down neighborhood streets lined with both shady trees and his own clamorous memories; smoking in bed. All the while his head teems with thoughts of Cuba's cultural inferiority to Europe, self-pitying diatribes, and erotic reveries. Disgusted by his own diffidence, Sergio can't even see the irony when his scathing assessment of the teenage actress manqué he picks up on the street works equally well to describe himself. No less than the "underdeveloped" Erica, he has become alienated, filled with "the inability to relate to things, to accumulate experience, to develop. " Probably because his film's central figure is so inactive, director Tomás Gutiérrez Alea constructed his 1968 masterpiece out of a riot of influences and styles, throwing seemingly everything he could think of into the pot. There are minidocumentaries on the cruelties of Batista forces, stream-of-consciousness flashbacks and flash-forwards, delicate little photomontages, newspaper headlines, visits to Hemingway's home, even a philological debate attended by Sergio. The last does get a little tiresome; but other than the one misstep, Memories of Underdevelopment is such a vivid, consistently fresh and surprising film-intellectually and sensually vibrant from start to finish-that it's little wonder its belated foreign release single-handedly put Cuban cinema on the map. -Bruce Reid.

This sumptuous and moving 1994 film written and directed by Bernard Rose (Candyman) investigates the artistic and romantic passions of one of the greatest composers of all time. Featuring a superb performance by Gary Oldman (Sid and Nancy) as Ludwig van Beethoven, Immortal Beloved is full of uncommonly vivid, rich imagery as it charts the tumultuous life of the deaf child prodigy and his rise to the height of musical achievement. Along the way, he attempts to play mentor to his nephew, attend to his many passionate romances-the most stable one was with a countess (Isabella Rossellini)-and fight bouts of depression and madness that ruled his life and his art. The film is framed around a "Rosebud"-type letter found after the composer's death that makes up the crux of the story. Jeroen Krabbé (The Fugitive), playing Beethoven's lifelong friend, attempts to discover who Beethoven's muse really was, becoming as driven as his friend in discovering the unlikely identity of the composer's "immortal beloved. " Through this we gain an insight into the nature of obsession, romance, and the heights and sacrifices of artistic achievement. The film exhibits some extraordinary sound design, and the finale features a magical encapsulation of Beethoven's life and loves set to his "Ode to Joy. " As an exciting and passionate journey, Immortal Beloved is its own masterpiece. -Robert Lane.

Evelyn Waugh's classic novel of romantic yearning and loss became the universally acclaimed television serios that viewers on both sides of the Atlantic wished would never end. Set between the wars amid the fading glory of British Empire and great family fortunes, Brideshead is a story of youthful illusions, of exquisite earthly beauty and of divine grace. Starring Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews and featuring Diana Quick, Sir John Gielgud, Claire Bloom and the incomparable Laurence Olivier in an Emmy Award-winning performance. Fill a bowl with alpine strawberries, break out the Château Lafite (1899, of course), and bask in this benchmark 1981 British miniseries based on Evelyn Waugh's classic novel. Adapted for the screen by John Mortimer (Rumpole of the Bailey), this impeccable, nearly 11-hour production mesmerized American viewers during the course of its PBS run in 1982. In his breakthrough role, Jeremy Irons stars as Charles Ryder, a disillusioned Army captain who is moved to reflect on his "languid days" in the "enchanted castle" that was Brideshead, home of the aristocratic Marchmain family, whose acquaintance Charles made in the company of an Oxford classmate, the charming wild child Sebastian. Anthony Andrews costars as the doomed Sebastian, whose beauty is "arresting" and "whose eccentricities and behavior seemed to know no bounds. " The "entitled and enchanted" Sebastian takes Charles under his wing ("Charles, what a lot you have to learn"), but vows early on that he is "not going to let [Charles] get mixed up with [his] family. " But mixed up Charles gets. He becomes a friend and confidante, not to mention a lover, to Sebastian's sister Julia (Diana Quick). [+]

Often considered the real beginning of the French New Wave movement, this 1958 film, the first feature by Claude Chabrol, is also-strangely-underrated on its own terms. The story of a theology student (Jean-Claude Brialy) who returns to his provincial home town for convalescence and reunites with his unhappy childhood friend (Gerard Blain), the film introduces many of Chabrol's pet themes and interests, particularly the Hitchcockian relationship between two characters who transfer or implicitly share a private experience or fate. Chabrol's consideration of that idea would naturally deepen and become more complex over the years (brilliantly in 1969's La Femme Infidele and Le Boucher), but at this career flashpoint it is a little overstated and obvious in religious allusions. Still, Le Beau Serge is an engrossing film with no shortage of dramatic momentum. The final act, driven by the main character's efforts at self-sacrifice, is as affecting as ever. -Tom Keogh.