French filmmaker Claude Lelouch continues to take critical heat for this 1966 international hit, which has been labeled "schmaltzy" and dismissed as overly stylized for its simple story line. While it certainly can't be mistaken for a masterpiece of the French New Wave (Lelouch was left in the dust that year by such wonders as Jean-Luc Godard's Masculin Feminin), A Man and a Woman has a jumpy impressionism that engages a viewer precisely because it cuts against conventional expectations of romance. Starring Anouk Aimée as a widowed "script girl" (working in film production) and Jean-Louis Trintignant as a racer who lost his wife to suicide, the film is really an objective sampling-almost a study-of moments between the time the two characters meet and the point at which they begin to read each other intuitively. Generous flashbacks fill in details on the pair's woeful, recent histories, while endless documentary-like glimpses of Aimée's and Trintignant's characters at work in their highly charged professions become a visual engine for the days passing between measured developments in love. Lelouch is more dryly humane than lush in his approach, though the film strains once in a while for a forced naturalism that can actually be more narcissistic than the most obvious romantic contrivance. Still, A Man and a Woman-in the best sense-is also a movie in love with itself, with its own ability to evoke and conjure and construct dozens of different ways of tracking a relationship in progress. If Lelouch doesn't exactly push open the boundaries of cinema as several of his filmmaking peers did at the time, he certainly enjoys what he's doing. -Tom Keogh.

French Cancan is quite possibly the greatest backstage movie ever. Paris, the 1880s: a natty, middle-aged nightclub impresario named Danglard (a sublime performance by French superstar Jean Gabin) is between engagements, and liaisons, at the moment. But he has a vision of reviving the cancan, the high-kicking dance that has fallen into disuse. He becomes convinced that he can lead this revival by casting a laundress (Françoise Arnoul) in his new show at a club called the Moulin Rouge. While a blissful entertainment in every way, French Cancan is also director Jean Renoir's examination of the imaginative process of turning life into art. (Renoir has some venerated film classics to his credit, including Grand Illusion and The Rules of the Game, but this one can stand right up there with them. ) Danglard is clearly an alter ego for the great director, and his opening-night speech to his reluctant star, in which he declares that nothing is more important than what happens on stage, might be Renoir's own statement on art. The final cancan sequence is an explosion of color and movement, as all of Danglard's machinations come to flower; it's been known to leave revival-house audiences teary-eyed with pleasure. Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge may be very sly, but this is the real thing. -Robert Horton.

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). Meanwhile, the self-destructive Sebastian's life spirals out of control. Brideshead Revisited boasts a distinguished ensemble, including Laurence Olivier in his Emmy Award-winning role as the exiled Lord Marchmain, Claire Bloom as Lady Marchmain, and the magnificent John Gielgud as Charles's estranged father. Grand locations and a haunting musical score make this a memorable revisit of an irretrievable bygone era. [+]

With his aptly titled Contempt, Jean-Luc Godard embraced the widescreen splendor of Hollywood while thumbing his nose at Hollywood itself. A rebel with a cause, Godard pursues an iconoclast's agenda, using the Franscope format (expertly controlled by cinematographer Raoul Coutard) to undermine the grandeur of widescreen melodramas. The story ostensibly concerns an innovative production of Homer's Odyssey and the struggle of a respected screenwriter (Michel Piccoli) to please a pugnacious producer (Jack Palance), a veteran director (Fritz Lang, essentially playing himself), and a petulant wife (Brigitte Bardot) who's grown tired of their turbulent relationship. It's all pretense, however, for Godard's mischievous (and yes, contemptuous) deconstruction of commercial Hollywood filmmaking, potently infused with film-buff in-jokes, astute observations about love, stardom, and artistry, and enough glossy style to suggest that Godard had mastered the craft he so willfully rejects. Contempt is one of his most accessibly fascinating films. -Jeff Shannon.

Presenting three of Ingmar Bergman's greatest films, The Bergman Classic Prepack includes The Virgin Spring, which brought Bergman his first Oscar®; The Seventh Seal starring Max von Sydow; and "one of the few great motion pictures of our time" (The New York Post), Wild Strawberries.

Up Down Fragile is a luminously unique romantic musical set in summertime Paris. In beautiful sun drenched streets, cafes and parks three young lives intersect and are changed by an artist, a mystery, and a gun. Three of today's most talented young French actresses (Laurence Cote, Marianne Denicourt, Nathalie Richard) sing, dance and romance their way through Paris in this cinematic triumph directed by Jacques Rivette (La Belle Noiseuse", "Out 1", "Gang of Four") Up Down Fragile is a joyful burst of true cinema from one of the greatest French filmmakers of all time.