The story is so simple, it hardly exists: a young girl marries a mate aboard a river barge named L'Atalante; she grows bored and frustrated with the dull life that results; when the barge docks in Paris, she runs away, only to discover that she misses her husband. But the power of L'Atalante isn't in its story-it's in the way the camera captures the world in rich, dreamy images, steeping the audience in a viewpoint both innocent and stark. The simplest things are also implacable and confusing. The characters' personalities, and the ways they conflict, have the deep frustrations of real life, and not the easily resolved plot points of most romances. The culmination will leave you aching with happiness and lingering sorrow. Director Jean Vigo-who died of lung disease after completing the film-had an astonishing ability to make the real world translucent; cinematographer Boris Kaufman said, "He used everything around him: the sun, the moon, snow, night. Instead of fighting unfavorable conditions, he made them play a part. " This film is a masterpiece, comparable to Satyajit Ray's Pather Panchali or the movies of Robert Bresson in its ability to be simultaneously effortless and devastatingly complex. -Bret Fetzer.

Kiri Te Kanawa inspires a kind of affection that is accorded to few prima donnas, for the warmth and expressiveness of her singing, for her natural ease in operatic roles, and particularly for a sunny, outgoing personality that is clearly projected in her stage presence. Both the voice and the personality come through effectively in this presentation, which preserves the best moments from two concerts she gave in 1990 and 1991, with her own introductions and comments. The first, given outdoors during a homecoming tour of her native New Zealand, shows her achieving a remarkable feat of personality to match her excellent singing; she establishes a sense of intimate communication with an audience of 75,000. First, she sings an aria from an opera that was not otherwise part of her repertoire: the intense, anguished "Pace, pace" from Verdi's La forza del destino. This program is designed to show her versatility; besides arias by Verdi and Puccini, it includes My Fair Lady's "I Could Have Danced All Night," sung in a perfectly idiomatic style that would be out of reach for many opera stars, and a couple of songs in New Zealand's Maori language. A nice touch for a homecoming concert is her performance of "Home, Sweet Home" in Maori. The second half of the program is a selection of music by Handel and Mozart, given in a sharply contrasting environment: a snowy evening in the exquisite baroque chapel, designed by Christopher Wren, at the Royal Naval College in Greenwich, England. A highlight of this segment, and a rare experience, is Mozart's Exsultate, jubilate, sung in its entirety, rather than the familiar, brilliant "Alleluia" segment that other sopranos use by itself simply to show off their technique. -Joe McLellan.

"I've never seen a woman who was more like a man," a character observes of Vienna (Joan Crawford), who has just opened a saloon that hasn't exactly endeared itself to the local townspeople. Emma (Mercedes McCambridge), the local sexually repressed, lynch-happy harpy, is particularly displeased. Vienna is wooed both by the Dancin' Kid (Scott Brady) and by Johnny Guitar (Sterling Hayden), a peripatetic tough guy-turned-troubadour with whom she has a past. When the Kid's gang (which includes Ernest Borgnine) decides to knock over the bank before heading to California, Emma wants just about everyone in sight on the business end of a rope. Nicolas Ray's 1954 epic was considered one of the downright strangest Westerns of all time-the women were far tougher than the men (Johnny watches on laconically during the bank robbery, not bothering with heroics), and some saw in the film a bizarre allegory for the McCarthy Red scare. A half-century later, it's still a curious, intriguing piece of moral ambiguity from a time when such a thing ostensibly didn't exist. Hayden is an enigmatic presence, and Crawford's commanding star turn is what you'd expect. -David Kronke.

Otis Redding's career was just taking off when he was killed in a plane crash. This DVD combines footage of Otis from Monterey Pop with black-and-white video from the Stax/Volt European tour earlier that same year. In both cases, his backup band is Booker T and the MG's (with the Mar-Keys). The European gig features Sam and Dave, as well as Booker T and the MG's doing their big hit, "Green Onions". Monterey Pop was, of course, the first big rock & roll rave-up, and it's there that Otis and the band really cut loose. The piece is short (48 minutes) and repeats a few numbers-at both concerts, Otis was sharing the bill and only had time to do his hits. His biggest hit, "Sitting on the Dock of the Bay" (which was written after Monterey and recorded only three days before Otis died) is here only as a fragment over a photo montage. Nevertheless, you can see why the man and his music still live on-it's the passion, particularly with "Try a Little Tenderness" from Stax/Volt and "I've Been Loving You" from Monterey Pop. -Geof Miller.

Mathilde va mal. Regulierement, elle vole des jouets dans les grands magasins. Parfois elle s'evanouit. Nico, son mari chirurgien, ne voit rien ou ne veut rien voir, quoiqu'elle lui montre. Ell recontre un docteur qui lui fait subir des sceances l'hypnose. Une reverie, ce >, une invention pour se sauver d'elle-meme? Biontot, elle va mieux et, vite, tres bien. Du coup, Nico, lui, va tres mal.