The psychological thriller is one of the genres that has produced countless movies to watch absolutely, masterpieces of the history of cinema. It is a subgenre of thriller and psychological fiction. It is generally used to define the literature or movies that revolve around the mind in a thriller. A defining feature of a psychological thriller is that it emphasizes the mental states of its characters: their perceptions, thoughts, distortions, and general struggle to grasp reality.
It is often populated with psychologically disturbed personalities, portraying psychologically distorted characters and focusing on the complicated and tormented relationships between pathological and compulsive personalities. Psychological thrillers often incorporate aspects of mystery, paranoia, and action drama. Gender is closely related and sometimes overlaps with gender psychological horror, the latter generally involving more horror elements and themes, and more creepy or scary scenarios.
According to director John Madden, psychological thrillers focus on storytelling, character growth, choice and ethical dispute; both fear and anxiety drive psychological tension by unpredictable means. Psychological thrillers are full of suspense by taking advantage of the unpredictability about intentions, sincerity and the way they view the world of the characters.
James N. Frey calls psychological thrillers a style rather than a subgenre; Frey states that good thrillers focus on the psychology of their antagonists and slowly build suspense through ambiguity. Film creators and / or distributors or publishers seeking to distance themselves from the negative connotations of horror often classify their work as a psychological thriller. The same situation can occur when critics label a work as a psychological thriller in order to elevate its perceived literary value.
Mechanisms of Psychological Thriller
Twist: Films like Psycho have bet everything on twists and also asked audiences to refrain from spoilers.
The Unreliable Narrator: Andrew Taylor identifies the unreliable narrator as a common literary tool used in psychological thrillers and traces it back to Edgar Allan Poe’s impact on the genre.
MacGuffin: Alfred Hitchcock created the MacGuffin principle, a goal or thing that starts or otherwise advances history. MacGuffin is often only slightly hinted at and can be used to build suspense.
False Lead: The false lead was used by William Cobbett as a kind of misunderstanding which is a useless argument introduced to divert attention from the real conflict. A red herring is used to trick the public into making wrong assumptions and misleading their perception of the truth.
Styles of the Psychological Thriller
In recent years, many psychological thrillers have emerged, made in numerous media. Despite these very different forms of representation, general fashions have actually appeared in all of the stories. Some of these regular styles include: fatality, identification, mindset, perception, reality.
In psychological thrillers, characters often have to fight an inner struggle. Feeling novels, examples of early psychological thrillers, were considered irresponsible due to their themes of sex and violence. Peter Hutchings defines detective stories, an Italian sub-genre of psychological thrillers, as mysterious, violent murders that focus on style and spectacle rather than rationality.
The Hands of Orlac (1924)
Orlac, a famous pianist, is on a train that derails and loses his precious hands in the accident. An extreme remedy is attempted: a transplant of two new hands. Unfortunately they belong to a killer.
Once he learns who his new hands were, Orlac begins a conflicted relationship with them and refuses to use them. Complicating the situation is the murder of his father, to whom his wife had turned for a loan of money. The hands of the other is one of the last masterpieces of expressionist cinema of which Robert Wiene had made the manifesto film, Doctor Caligari’s Cabinet.
M- A City Searches for a Murderer (1931)
In Berlin, a group of children are playing in the courtyard of an apartment, someone sings a song about a child killer. A woman sets the table for lunch, waiting for her daughter to come home from school. A poster warns of a staggering array of missing children as anxious moms and dads wait outside a school.
Little Elsie Beckmann leaves school, bouncing a ball on her way home. A man offers to buy her a balloon from a blind street vendor, then talks and walks with her. Elsie’s seat at the table remains empty, her ball is shown rolling away on the grass, and her balloon gets lost in the suspended telephone lines in the city.
Beckert sends an anonymous letter to the newspapers, taking credit for the murders of the children and promising that he will commit more; police extract clues from the letter, using new fingerprinting and handwriting analysis techniques. Inspector Karl Lohmann, head of the homicide squad, instructs his men to step up research and check records of recently released psychiatric patients, focusing on those with a history of violence against children. They organize frequent raids to interrogate known criminals, thus severely disrupting the affairs of the underworld. Der Schränker (The Burglar) convenes a meeting of the city’s crime lords.
Beckert sees a girl in the reflection of a shop window and also starts following her, but stops when the girl meets her mother. He runs into another little girl and befriends her, however the blind salesman recognizes her boos. The salesman informs a friend of his, who finds Beckert and sees him inside a shop. As the two go out onto the street, the man marks a large “M” (for Mörder, “murderer” in German) on his hand and collides with Beckert, marking the back of his overcoat so other beggars can track him down. She notices the cast and cleans it up for him, but before she completes it, Beckert realizes he is being seen and runs away.
The film centers on the manhunt of the character of Lorre, the monster of Dusseldorf, carried out by both police and criminal gangs.
The screenplay for the film was written by Fritz Lang and his wife Thea von Harbor and was the director’s first sound film. It features several stunning cinematic innovations, including the use of long fluid shots, and even a musical leitmotif, “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” booed by Lorre’s character. Currently considered a absolute cult, the film was considered by Lang to be his most important work. It is widely considered to be one of the best films ever, and also an indispensable work on modern criminal crime and also on thriller fiction.
Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
Thriller by Alfred Hitchcock. Charles Oakley lives alone in a residence. One day the landlady informs him that two boys have come looking for him; he sees the two men waiting in the street in front of his palace, and decides to leave the city.
Charlotte (Charlie) Newton is a bored teenager living in the community of Santa Rosa, California. His mother’s younger brother, Charles Oakley, arrives for a visit. His uncle arrives and at first everyone is delighted with his visit, especially young Charlie. Uncle Charlie brings gifts to everyone. He offers his niece an emerald ring with someone else’s initials engraved inside. Charlie’s father, Joseph Newton, works in a financial institution, and Uncle Charlie tells him he intends to open an account and deposit $ 40,000 ($ 0.6 million today) with his financial institution.
Two men appear at the Newtons’ home, posing as interviewers working on a national poll. They explain that his uncle is one of two suspects who could be “Merry Widow’s killer”. Charlie refuses to believe it at first, but then watches Uncle Charlie behave strangely, mainly with a news clipping from his father’s newspaper describing a murder.
Scarlet Street (1945)
Lang reprises the cast and ambiguous triangle from “The Woman in the Portrait” and makes one of her best films, telling a story of guilt and degradation. A senior bank employee, Christopher Cross, has an insufferable wife and only one pastime: painting. One day he meets a woman, Kitty, who begins to manipulate him psychologically after she discovers that the paintings the cashier paints can be sold at a good price.
The Stranger (1946)
Orson Welles, an author who has always been against the Hollywood system, did not like this film made within the Studios, but strangely he managed to create a commercial product beyond his own expectations, managing to include his unmistakable style in it. , leaving us an amazing movie.
In the small town of Harper, lives Charles Rankin, who is about to marry the daughter of an important judge. But Charles Rankin is actually Frank Kindle, a Third Reich criminal who has created a new identity for himself. But Inspector Wilson is on his trail.
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Suddenly (1954)
The story is set in a small California town whose harmony is shattered when the US head of state’s train arrives in town, and a killer and his henchmen take control of a house to kill the president.
In postwar America, a train carrying the US head of state will stop in the village of Suddenly, California. Declaring themselves FBI agents seeking protection before the head of state arrives, three boys arrive at the Bensons’ home: Ellen, a widow, her son “Pidge” and also her father-in-law, “Pop” Benson. The house sits atop a hill near the station where the presidential train is scheduled to stop, making it a perfect location from which to shoot the head of state.
It soon becomes clear that the men are not government agents but murderers, led by the ruthless John Baron, who take over the house and hold the family hostage, planning to shoot the president from a house window that has a good view of the train station. .
Sheriff Tod Shaw arrives with Dan Carney, the intelligence agent in charge of the president’s security details. When Baron and his gangsters arrive they shoot Carney and a bullet fractures Shaw’s left arm. The baron boasts of the silver medal he won in the war for killing 16 Japanese. The baron explains that he has nothing against the president, but is paid 500,000 ₤ to kill him and money is his only motive.
Pop has damaged the TV earlier and the man who fixes the television arrives in the middle of the scene. If they don’t obey, the baby will be killed. Baron sends out Benny, one of his two henchmen, to examine the President’s typical day, but is soon killed in a police shootout. On the other hand, Jud, a television technician, has appeared at her home and becomes a hostage. Pidge goes to his grandfather’s dresser to get some medicine and finds a revolver which he replaces with his toy gun. The film stars Frank Sinatra and Sterling Hayden, in addition to James Gleason and Nancy Gates.
Diaboliques (1955)
Michel is having an affair with Nicole Horner, a teacher at the school. Rather than antagonism, the two women have a rather close relationship, based primarily on their apparent mutual hatred for Michel. He is cruel to the students, beats Nicole and teases Christina about her heart condition.
Threatening a divorce to lure Michel into Nicole’s apartment building in Niort, a town several hundred kilometers away, Christina sedates him. The two women then drown him in a bathtub and, returning to school, dump his body into the abandoned pool. There the cleaning man tells her that Michel had stayed in the room for a while, but was rarely, if ever seen, and hadn’t kept anything there.
Nicole sees in the newspaper that the police found the body. When Christina goes to the morgue, she discovers that it’s not actually Michel’s body. This stunning psychological thriller is based on the original She Who Was No More (Celle qui n’était plus) by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac. The film was the 10th highest-grossing film of the year in France, and also received the Louis Delluc Award in 1954.
Clouzot, after completing The Wages of Fear, optioned the rights to the film’s script, avoiding ad Alfred Hitchcock to make the film. This film helped motivate the making of Hitchcock’s Psycho. Robert Bloch, author of Psycho, mentioned in a meeting that his favorite horror film of all time was Les Diaboliques.
Kiss Me Deadly (1955)
Kiss Me Deadly is often seen as a cult of the fantastic film noir period that began in the early 1940s. If so, it’s also a preamble to a new generation of neurotic heroes who dominated noir films of the following decades, such as Lee Marvin’s ex-convict trying to find his elusive reward in John Boorman’s Point Blank (1967), or Hackman’s hysterical detective Gene, who ends up traveling literally in circles in Arthur Penn’s superb Night Moves (1975).
As if anticipating future characters, Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker), the hero of Aldrich’s film, is a particularly hateful incarnation of the pimp, a ferocious and unpleasant variation of one type of man which sees itself in danger and on the verge of extinction. Hammer is the creation of Mickey Spillane, whose pulp stories have taken on a particularly ferocious tone of the Cold War and postwar macho society.
Hammer laughs aloud as he strafes a pack of Communists. Mike Hammer perfectly represented his creator, a racist and also a misogynist. The Man of the Organization defined a new way of life for the postwar wage slave.
Hammer tortures a senior medical examiner who will not disclose information and slaps another old man who does not accept a bribe. He hits a senseless thug by banging his head against a wall, then, when the stunned man doesn’t give up, Hammer punches him down an endless flight of concrete steps. He is part of a group of slimy and intrusive men who like to humiliate people: no one is saved in the director’s fierce vision of 1950s America.
Vertigo (1958)
The masterpiece of Alfred Hitchcock. Scottie goes into layoffs due to the fact that an event has actually led him to contract acrophobia and dizziness. Scottie works with a partner, Gavin Elster, as a private investigator to follow Gavin’s wife, Madeleine (Kim Novak), who is acting strangely.
After a chase on a roof in which a fellow cop is about to die, San Francisco detective John “Scottie” Ferguson retires due to fear of heights and dizziness. Scottie tries to control her anxiety, but her ex-girlfriend, lingerie designer Marjorie “Midge” Wood, says further extreme psychological shock may be the only treatment.
Gavin Elster, a college acquaintance, asks Scottie to follow his wife, Madeleine, stating that she has actually been behaving strangely and her psychological state is unusual. Scottie hesitantly accepts and follows Madeleine to a florist, then to the Mission of San Francisco de Asís and to the tomb of Carlotta Valdes, and also to the art museum of the Legion of Honor where he observes the Portrait of Charlotte. Scottie sees the woman enter the McKittrick Hotel, but upon checking out, she appears not to be there.
An expert local historian clarifies that Carlotta Valdes committed suicide: she had been the girlfriend of a wealthy family man and had given birth to her child. Gavin discovers that Carlotta is Madeleine’s great-grandmother, although Madeleine is unaware of it and does not remember the places she has visited. Scottie follows Madeleine to Fort Point and when she jumps into the bay, he saves her.
One of the great unmissable movies in the history of cinema. The story is based on Boileau-Narcejac’s 1954 exclusive D’entre les morts. The screenplay was written by Alec Coppel and Samuel A. Taylor. The film stars James Stewart as former police detective John “Scottie” Ferguson.
The film was shot in the city of San Francisco, California, as well as Mission San Juan Bautista, Big Basin Redwoods State Park, Cypress Point on 17-Mile Drive, and even in Hollywood’s Paramount Studios. It is the first opening film to use zoom combined with the trolley, a result in the camera that deforms the point of view to create disorientation, to share Scottie’s acrophobia. As a result of its use in this film, the impact is usually described as “the Vertigo impact”.
Psycho (1960)
On a Friday noon date at a Phoenix resort, property secretary Marion Crane and her boyfriend Sam Loomis review their missed marriage due to Sam’s financial obligations. Marion steals a $ 40,000 cash payment that was handed to her for a down payment, as well as drives to Sam’s home in Fairvale, California. During the trip, Marion hastily swaps her car, arousing suspicion in both the car supplier and the truck, as well as a policeman.
Marion decides to spend the night at the Bates Motel, located off the main highway, and hides the stolen money inside a newspaper. Owner Norman Bates descends from a large house overlooking the motel, registers Marion under a false name, and welcomes her by inviting her to have dinner with him. After Norman returns to his home, Marion overhears Norman arguing with her mother about Marion’s presence.
Norman apologizes for his mother’s screams and tells her about his hobby as a taxidermist, his mother’s “malaise” and also how people have a “personal situation” that they want to leave. Marion decides to return to Phoenix in the morning and return the money taken. As Marion takes a shower, a mysterious man shows up and stabs her to death. Soon after, Norman’s voice is heard from the house crying “Mother! Oh God, Mother! Blood! Blood!” Norman tidies up the crime scene, puts Marion’s body, her belongings and hidden money in her car, and even sinks her into a dam.
Marion’s sister Lila arrives in Fairvale a week later, tells Sam about the theft and asks to know where she is. She examines the guest book and finds out from her handwriting that Marion spent a night at the motel. When Arbogast learns that Marion had spoken to Norman’s mother, Arbogast asks to speak to her, but Norman refuses to allow it.
The screenplay for the film, written by Joseph Stefano, was based on the 1959 novel of the same name by Robert Bloch. The film stars Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles, John Gavin and Martin Balsam. The plot tells of a runaway woman, Marion Crane, and shy motel owner Norman Bates and his aftermath, in which a private investigator (Balsam), Marion Sam Loomis’ mistress (Gavin) and her sister Lila ( Miles) investigate the cause of his disappearance.
Psycho was seen as a departure from the previous Hitchcock film North by Northwest, as it was shot on a low-budget plan in black and white by his TV series crew Alfred Hitchcock Presents. The film was originally considered controversial and garnered mixed reviews, however the passion of the audience and also the impressive box office gains triggered a major revaluation. Psycho was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Supporting Actress for Janet Leigh and Best Director for Hitchcock.
Psycho is now considered one of the masterpieces of Hitchcock, and it is also his most popular work. It has actually been acclaimed as a leading cinematic artwork by international film critics and scholars for its lucid direction, suspense, outstanding filming work, notable score, and famous performances. Commonly ranked among the best films of the history of cinema, has established a new level of acceptability for violence, deviant behavior and sexuality in American films, and is also commonly considered the first example of the category of film slasher.
After Hitchcock’s death in 1980, Universal Pictures created other films inspired by him: 3 sequels, a remake, a television spin-off and a prequel television series set in the 2010s. In 1992, the Library of Congress released considered the film “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” and chose it for storage in the US National Film Registry.
Repulsion (1965)
Based on a short story written by Polanski and Gérard Brach, the plot follows Carol, an alienated girl who is subjected to a series of horrific experiences. The film focuses on Carol’s point of view and her hallucinations and headaches as she comes into contact with men. Ian Hendry, John Fraser, Patrick Wymark and Yvonne Furneaux appear in supporting roles.
A man, Colin, is in love with Carol and makes fervent attempts to woo her, but Carol seems disinterested. Carol is troubled by Helen’s relationship with a man named Michael, whom Carol doesn’t seem to like.
Carol is troubled by a crack in the sidewalk when she gets home from work. Colin meets her, walks her home and tries to kiss her several times, but she refuses, running upstairs and brushing her teeth hard before crying. That night Helen interrogates Carol for throwing Michael’s toothbrush and also the electric razor down the toilet. At the beauty salon, Carol becomes increasingly distracted, barely talking to her clients and colleagues.
That night, Helen and Michael leave for Italy on vacation, leaving Carol alone in the apartment. After trying on one of her sister’s dresses, Carol sees a dark figure in the mirror. Carol’s isolation begins to take its toll on her: she has been missing for three days at work.
Filmed in London, it is Polanski’s first English-language film, as well as the second production of a feature film, after Knife in the Water (1962). The film premiered at the 1965 Cannes Film Festival before receiving theatrical releases internationally. Upon its release, Repulsion received considerable critical acclaim and is currently regarded as one of Polanski’s greatest works. The film was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Photography by Gilbert Taylor.
Persona (1966)
Persona, even if it’s not explicitly a psychological thriller, it could be seen and interpreted as such by many viewers. The story centers on a young nurse named Alma (Andersson) and her patient, the famous stage actress Elisabet Vogler (Ullmann), who has stopped talking. They move into a cottage, where Alma takes care of Elisabet, confides in her, and begins to have a hard time distinguishing herself from her personality.
A projector starts projecting a collection of photos, consisting of a crucifixion, a spider, and the murder of a lamb, and a little boy gets up in the hospital. He sees a large screen with a blurry image of two women. Among the women could be Alma, a young nurse appointed by a doctor to take care of Elisabet Vogler.
Elisabet is a stage star who suddenly stopped talking and even moving around, doctors have determined that it is the result of psychological illness. In the medical facility, Elisabet is distressed by the televised images of a man’s self-immolation during the Vietnam War. Alma reads her a letter from Elisabet’s husband containing a photo of their baby boy. The doctor speculates that Elisabet can recover much better in a beach house and sends her there with Alma.
At the cottage, Alma tells Elisabet that no one has ever paid attention to her in the past. She discusses her boyfriend, Karl-Henrik. Alma tells the story of how, while already in a relationship with Karl-Henrik, he sunbathed naked with Katarina, a woman he had met. Two guys appeared and Katarina started an orgy. Alma got pregnant, miscarried and began to feel really guilty.
Alma goes to the community to send their letters and notices that Elisabet’s is not sealed. The law. The letter states that Elisabet is “studying” Alma and also discusses the nurse’s orgy and abortion. Angry, Alma accuses Elisabet of using her. In the ensuing battle, she threatens to scald Elisabet with boiling water and stops when Elisabet begs her not to. This is the first time ever that Alma has spoken, even though she thought Elisabet had muttered something to her earlier when Alma was half asleep. Alma informs her that she knows that Elisabet is a despicable person; when Elisabet runs away, Alma chases her and begs for mercy. Later, Elisabet takes a look at the famous photograph of Jews arrested in the Warsaw ghetto from the Stroop Report.
The film’s exploration of duality, insanity and personal identity has been interpreted as a reflection of Jung’s theory of the person and which addresses issues related to cinema, vampirism, homosexuality, motherhood, abortion and others. subjects. The experimental style of his prologue and storytelling was also appreciated. The enigmatic film has been called the Mount Everest of cinematic psychological analysis; according to film historian Peter Cowie, “Anything that is said about Persona can be contradicted; the opposite will also be true.”
Ingmar Bergman made Persona with Ullmann and Andersson in mind for the lead roles and the intention of discovering the actresses their identities. He shot the film in Stockholm and Fårö in 1965. In production, the technicians create effects using smoke and a mirror to assemble a scene and combine the faces of the protagonists in post-production in a single shot. Andersson wanted to insert a sexually explicit monologue into the film’s script and rewrote parts of it.
Blowup (1966)
Best arthouse film, existentialist and out of the box of the cinematographic language known up to that moment, it is also a psychological thriller with a murder, investigations and suspense.’s first entirely English-language film Antonioni and stars David Hemmings as a London fashion photographer who believes he has unintentionally photographed a murder.
After spending the night in a homeless dorm, where he took photos for an art image publication, photographer Thomas is late for a photo shoot with model Veruschka in his lab, which consequently delays him for a shoot with various other models later. Bored, he leaves, leaving the models and production staff behind. As he leaves the workshop, two girls, aspiring models, ask to consult with him, but Thomas avoids them and goes to an antique shop.
A woman, Jane, is furious at being photographed and chases Thomas, asks for his film and eventually tries to snatch his camera. She joins him back in his studio desperately asking for the movie. She and Thomas have a conversation and flirt, but he deliberately passes her a different roll.
Thomas, interested in the contents of the film, makes several zooms of the black and white frames of Jane and her lover. A third person hides in the trees with a gun. Thomas calls Ron eagerly, stating that his impromptu photo shoot may have saved a man’s life. Thomas is interrupted by someone who knocks on the door: they are once again the two girls, with whom he does somersaults in his study and flirts.
Upon awakening, she discovers that they would like to be photographed, but realizes that there may be other clues in the park. Further examination of a shadowy figure under a shrub leads Thomas to assume that the man in the park may have been killed, while Thomas was talking to the woman around the corner.
The film also stars Vanessa Redgrave, Sarah Miles, John Castle, Jane Birkin, Tsai Chin, Peter Bowles and Gillian Hills, as well as 1960s model Veruschka. The film’s non-diegetic music was written by jazz pianist Herbie Hancock, while rock group Yardbirds are also featured.
In the main competition section of the Cannes Film Festival, Blowup won the Palme d’Or, the highest honor of the festival. A critical and box office success, Blowup would inspire later major films, including Dario Argento’s The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970), Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation (1974) and Blow Out (1981) by Brian De Palma. . In 2012, Blowup was ranked 144th in the Sight & Sound Critics’ Poll of the Greatest Films in the cinema history.
Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
The film depicts a pregnant young woman from Manhattan with suspicion that her older neighbors next door are participating in a satanic cult, and manipulating her into using her baby for their rituals. It is based on the 1967 book of the same name by Ira Levin.
Man Woodhouse, a stage actor, and his partner, Rosemary, move into Bramford, a large Renaissance-style apartment in New York City. They ignore the advice of their good friend Hutch regarding the Bramford’s dark past with witchcraft and murder.
Rosemary meets Terry Gionoffrio, a young drug addict in recovery whom Minnie and Roman Castevet, the Woodhouse’s elderly neighbors, have welcomed into their home. One night, Terry jumps out of the window of the 7th floor apartment of the Castevets. The couple approaches them, but Rosemary discovers that they are bothersome and annoying. Minnie offers Terry’s necklace to Rosemary as a good luck appeal, saying it contains “tannis root”.
Guy is cast in a major comedy after the lead actor has inexplicably gone blind. With his acting work thriving, Guy wants to have a baby with Rosemary. The night they intend to make love, Minnie brings cups of chocolate mousse for dinner. Rosemary grumbles, her mousse has a chalky “undertaste” and she can’t stop eating. Guy criticizes her as ungrateful. Rosemary eats some more to calm him down, then secretly discards the rest.
Not long after, she gets dizzy and loses consciousness. In a dream state, she dreams of being raped by a demonic entity and sees Guy, the Castevets and various other Bramford tenants. The next morning, Guy justifies the scratches covering her body by stating that he didn’t want to miss the chance and that he had sex with her while she lost consciousness.
During her first trimester of pregnancy, Rosemary suffers from severe abdominal pain and loses weight. Rosemary, unable to bear the pain, insists on seeing Dr. Hill, while Guy objects, saying Dr. Sapirstein will be offended. As they argue, the pains suddenly stop and Rosemary feels the baby move.
Although set in New York City, most of the principal filming of Rosemary’s Baby took place in Los Angeles throughout the end of 1967. It was released in June 1968 by Paramount Pictures and was also a box office success, grossing over $. 30 million in the United States. The film garnered countless accolades, including numerous Golden Globe nominations and two Oscar nominations. Ruth Gordon won both the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress and the Golden Globe.
Rosemary’s Baby deals with themes related to fear, to women’s freedom, Christianity and the occult. The film garnered global accolades from film critics and won various awards. It is widely considered to be among the best horror movies ever made. In 2014, the film was selected for conservation in the US National Film Registry by the Library of Congress, being considered “culturally, traditionally or aesthetically substantial”.
The Conformist (1970)
In the Paris of 1938, Marcello Clerici prepares to kill his former university professor, Luca Quadri, leaving his future wife Giulia in their living room. He often uses a car driven by Manganiello as they are both chasing the teacher.
A collection of memories portrays Marcello discussing with his blind friend Italo about his plans to get married, his somewhat uncomfortable efforts to join the fascist secret police and even his visits to his parents: a mother addicted to morphine in the house of the family’s decaying vacation, as well as how his father hospitalized in an asylum.
In a further flashback, Marcello is seen as a child who is humiliated by his schoolmates until he is saved by Lino, a driver. Lino offers to give him a gun and later makes sexual proposals to Marcello, to which he reacts by picking up the gun and shooting at Lino, then escapes the scene of what he thinks is a murder.
Marcello, in confession, admits to the priest that he has committed many serious sins, including homosexual intercourse and the subsequent murder of Lino, premarital sex and his absence of guilt for these sins. The priest is shocked, but quickly acquits Marcello when he learns that he currently works for the fascist secret police, called the Organization for the surveillance and repression of anti-fascism.
The film stars Jean-Louis Trintignant, Stefania Sandrelli, Gastone Moschin, Enzo Tarascio, Fosco Giachetti, José Quaglio, Dominique Sanda and Pierre Clémenti. The film was a co-production of Italian, French and even West German film companies. Bertolucci sets the film in the 1930s in the style linked to the fascist era: the attractive halls of the bourgeoisie as well as the large halls of the ruling elite.
Silent Night, Bloody Night (1972)
American Slasher from 1972 unreleased in Italy, is a cult horror precursor of the genre several years before Carpenter’s Halloween, with a complex script and first person shooting of the killer, which inspired many subsequent films. Its originality and its narration are what manage to make it a small and little known pearl of the genre.
A series of murders in a small New England town on Christmas Eve after a man inherits a family estate that was once a madhouse. Many of the cast and crew members were former Warhol superstars: Mary Woronov, Ondine, Candy Darling, Kristen Steen, Tally Brown, Lewis Love, director Jack Smith, and graduate Susan Rothenberg.
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The Conversation (1974)
Harry Caul (Gene Hackman), who runs his own company in San Francisco, is obsessed with his own personal privacy. His house is almost bare, has a triple lock door and also an anti-theft alarm. Harry uses pay phones to make calls, claims he doesn’t have a home phone, and his workplace is enclosed in a behind-the-scenes cage of a storage facility. He has no close friends, his partner Amy knows little about him and his only pastime is playing with a saxophone alone at his home.
Caul asks to be exempted from the actual material of the conversations he records or from the use his customers make of it. He is haunted by guilt over a past wiretapping activity after which three people were killed. This sense of regret is amplified by his Catholic faith.
Caul, his colleague Stan and a few freelance collaborators have been tasked with eavesdropping on a couple’s conversation as they walk through San Francisco’s busy Union Square, surrounded by a cacophony of background noise. The challenging task of recording this conversation is carried out by a number of surveillance officers stationed in different locations around the square.
When the client is not in his office, Caul refuses to leave the tape to his client’s assistant, Martin Stett (Harrison Ford). The assistant warns him not to get involved, telling him that the tapes are “dangerous”.
Coppola mentioned Michelangelo Antonioni’s thriller Blowup (1966) as a key impact. Considering that the film was released in theaters just a couple of months before Richard Nixon’s resignation as president, audiences interpreted the film as a reaction from Watergate.
The Conversation premiered at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Palme d’Or, the festival’s highest award, and was also released in theaters on April 7, 1974 by Paramount Pictures, earning just $ 4. 2 million with a production cost of $ 1.6 million. The film won three elections at the 47th Academy Awards; Best Film, Best Original Screenplay and Best Sound. In 1995, it was selected for keeping in the US National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as “culturally, traditionally, or visually significant”.
Taxi Driver (1976)
Set in a decaying New York City after the Vietnam War, the film revolves around the character of Travis Bickle (De Niro), a cab driver and veteran, and his grim mood as he lives the nights on the town. Travis Bickle is a 26-year-old honorably discharged US Marine and Vietnam War veteran who suffers from PTSD and lives alone in New York City. Travis takes a job as a night taxi driver to cope with his chronic insomnia and his own loneliness.
Travis ends up obsessed with Betsy, a project volunteer for lawmaker and government candidate Charles Palantine. Travis goes to where Betsy works to ask her out for coffee. Betsy accepts the invitation and admits she has a special bond with Travis, and agrees to see him again. During their day Travis takes Betsy to a porn theater, which prompts her to leave. He tries to reconcile with her, to no avail. Enraged, he returns to the countryside workplace where she works, and berates her before he is thrown out.
Experiencing an existential crisis and seeing degradation and prostitution throughout the city, Travis confides in his fellow cab driver nicknamed the Wizard of his violent thoughts. At home, Travis practices drawing his weapons and modifies one to hide and quickly deploy it from his sleeve. One night, Travis kills a thief while attempting to rob a convenience store.
With The Wrong Man (1956) and A Bigger Splash (1973) as ideas, Martin Scorsese wanted the film to feel like a dream journey. With director of photography Michael Chapman, filming began in the summer of 1975 in New York City, with the actors giving up a portion of their salaries to ensure the film could be done on a low-budget plan of $ 1.9 million. Production ended in exactly the same year, with a score composed by Bernard Herrmann, which the musician completed only a certain number of hours before his death; the film is dedicated to him.
The film was released theatrically by Columbia Pictures on February 8, 1976, where it was a commercial and critical success, despite generating controversy for its violence in the final climax, as well as for then 12-year-old Foster in the role of a young man. prostitute. Considered one of the greatest films ever made, the film garnered countless awards including the 1976 Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or and 4 nominations at the 49th Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor (for De Niro), as well as Best Supporting Actress (for Foster).
The Shining (1980)
The protagonist of the film Stanley Kubrick as Jack Torrance (Nicholson), an ambitious, alcoholic writer who takes a job as an off-season caretaker at the historic Overlook Hotel in the Colorado Rockies, with his wife, Wendy Torrance (Duvall), with his son, Danny Torrance (Lloyd ). Danny is gifted with the shining, psychic abilities that allow him to see into the resort’s terrible past. After a winter tornado leaves the Torrances in the snow, Jack’s tranquility vanishes under the influence of the evil forces that populate the resort.
Jack Torrance hosts a winter season keeper at the remote Overlook Hotel in the Rocky Mountains, which closes each winter. After his arrival, manager Stuart Ullman tells Torrance that a previous caretaker, Charles Grady, exterminated his family at the hotel.
In Boulder, Jack’s boyfriend Danny has a weird feeling. Jack’s partner Wendy informs the doctor of a previous case when Jack dislocated Danny’s shoulder during a drunk. The event encouraged Jack to stop consuming alcohol. Before leaving for the seasonal break, head chef Dick Hallorann informs Danny of a telepathic ability the two share, which he calls “shining.” Hallorann tells Danny that the hotel is also “shining” due to unpleasant past events and warns him to avoid room 237.
Jack’s mental health deteriorates; he can no longer write, is prone to violent outbursts and dreams of killing his family. Jack encounters a ghost of a woman in the room, but blames Danny for bruising himself. Grady informs Jack that Danny has contacted Hallorann using his “talent” and says that Jack must “correct” his wife and child.
Wendy finds Jack’s manuscript with “All work and no play makes Jack a boring boy” written over and over again. When Jack attempts to kill her, Wendy knocks him unconscious with a baseball bat and locks him in the kitchen pantry, but she and Danny can’t leave because Jack previously sabotaged the two-way radio and the hotel’s snowmobile. The film is based on Stephen King’s 1977 novel of the same name as well as stars Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Scatman Crothers and Danny Lloyd.
Production took place exclusively at EMI Elstree Studios, with sets reconstructed exactly like the real locations. The new Steadicam support was used to shoot different scenes, giving the film an engaging and innovative look. There have been many theories about the movie’s meanings: variations, mysteries, and differences from the book.
Blue Velvet (1986)
The film is about a young college student who, returning home to visit his sick father, discovers a severed human ear in a field that leads him to uncover a vast criminal conspiracy and to enter into a romantic relationship with a struggling singer.
Jeffrey finds a human ear and hands it over to police detective John Williams. Williams’ daughter Sandy who tells him the ear belongs to a singer named Dorothy Vallens. Intrigued, Jeffrey enters Dorothy’s apartment posing as a thief and steals a spare key while distracted by a man in a distinctive yellow sports coat, whom Jeffrey dubbed “the yellow man”.
Jeffrey and Sandy attend Dorothy’s show, in which she sings “Blue Velvet”, and leave early so that Jeffrey can infiltrate her apartment. After Frank leaves, Jeffrey sneaks off and seeks comfort from Sandy.
After discovering that Frank kidnapped Dorothy’s husband Don and little Donnie to force her into sexual slavery, Jeffrey believes Frank cut off Don’s ear to intimidate her into submission. Jeffrey begins a sadomasochistic sexual relationship in which Dorothy pushes him to beat her. Jeffrey sees Frank go to Dorothy’s show and later watches him market drugs and a conference with the Yellow Man.
After the failure of his 1984 film Dune, David Lynch attempted to develop a “personal story” somewhat characteristic of the surrealist style shown in his first film Eraserhead (1977). The independent studio De Laurentiis Entertainment Group, then owned by Italian film producer Dino De Laurentiis, agreed to finance and produce the film.
The film earned Lynch his second Academy Award nomination for Best Director and achieved the status of cult film. Publications including Sight & Sound, Time, Entertainment Weekly and BBC Magazine have ranked it among the greatest American films ever. In 2008 it was chosen by the American Film Institute as one of the greatest detective films ever made.
Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
The film follows the sexual experiences of Dr. Bill Harford (Tom Cruise), who is surprised when his wife, Alice (Nicole Kidman), reveals that she considered having an affair with a stranger a year earlier. He then embarks on an overnight trip to the city, during which he infiltrates the orgy of a secret society.
Dr. Bill Harford and his wife, Alice Harford, live in New York with their daughter Helena. An older Hungarian guest tries to seduce Alice and two young models try to seduce Bill. The following evening, while smoking marijuana, Alice and Bill discuss their sexual temptation episodes. Bill tells Alice that he is not jealous of other men’s attraction to her because he believes women are naturally inclined to loyalty.
After leaving her, he meets a prostitute named Domino on the street. Alice phones when they start kissing, prompting Bill to change his mind. Pay Domino for the sexless experience and meet friend Nick at a jazz club. Nick describes a show where he has to play the piano blindfolded between gorgeous women. Guests need a suit, mask, and password. Bill goes to a costume shop and offers the owner, Milich, a sum of money to rent a costume. Inside the shop, Milich is outraged when he catches his teenage daughter Milich having sex with 2 guys.
Bill takes a taxi to the castle Nick mentioned. He provides the password to enter and discovers that an orgiastic ritual is taking place. A woman warns him that he is in danger. Bill is taken to a packed room and unmasked by the master of ceremonies. The woman who had actually tried to advise Bill interferes and also insists on redeeming him, at undisclosed personal expense. Bill is released with the warning not to inform anyone of the incident.
Based on Arthur Schnitzler’s 1926 novel Traumnovelle (Dream Story), the film transfers history from early 20th-century Vienna to 1990s New York. Stanley Kubrick got the legal rights to shoot Dream Story in the 1960s, considering it a great story for a film adaptation. When he hired writer Frederic Raphael to help with the adaptation, he picked up the project in the 1990s. The film, which was mainly shot in the UK, in addition to some location shots, includes outdoor scenes of Greenwich Village shot at Pinewood Studios. The 400-day film production holds the Guinness World Record for longest continuous shooting.
A Better Life (2007)
Rome: Andrea Casadei is a young investigator specializing in wiretapping who conducts investigations commissioned by husbands betrayed by their wives, or by parents worried about what their children are doing outside the home. But what interests him most is understanding the human soul, listening to casual conversations in the streets, knowing what people think.
Little Italian independent film that has become a cult in home video in the United States, it is a story that takes us to a dark and desolate Rome, a society emptied of those moral and ethical values, where individualism and corruption of the soul dominate. A film by Fabio Del Greco.
Mulholland Drive (2001)
The film tells the story of an ambitious actress named Betty Elms (Watts), who has recently arrived in Los Angeles, who meets a woman (Harring) who is recovering from an accident. The story tells numerous other situations and characters, including a Hollywood director.
A dark-haired woman is the only survivor of a car accident on Mulholland Drive, a winding road in the Hollywood Hills. Injured and in shock, she arrives in Los Angeles and slips into an apartment. Later in the morning, an ambitious actress named Betty Elms reaches the house, which is inhabited by her aunt Ruth. Betty is surprised to find the woman, who has a memory loss and calls herself “Rita” after seeing a poster of the film Gilda with Rita Hayworth. To help the woman remember her identity, Betty searches Rita’s bag, where she finds a large amount of cash and an unusual blue key.
In a restaurant called Winkie’s, a man tells another about a problem where he imagined he met a horrible figure behind the diner. When they explore the place, the monster suddenly appears, causing the man who had the nightmare to collapse in shock. Elsewhere, director Adam Kesher has his film commandeered by mobsters, who insist that he cast an unidentified actress named Camilla Rhodes as the lead. Adam returns home to find that his partner Lorraine is cheating on him with Gene. When the mobsters block his line of credit, Adam arranges to meet a strange cowboy, who cryptically urges him to choose Camilla for his film. Meanwhile, a bungling hitman attempts to steal a book full of phone numbers and even leaves three people dead.
A casting agent takes Betty to a sound stage where the film The Sylvia North Story, directed by Adam, is cast. Betty and Rita go to Diane Selwyn’s apartment, where a neighbor tells them that she has changed apartments with Diane. Worried, they return to Betty’s apartment, where Rita dresses up in a blonde wig.
The Franco-American co-production was originally conceived as a television pilot and much of the film was shot in 1999 with the plan of David Lynch to keep it open for a potential series. Lynch then provided an ending to the project, making it a feature film. The result is half pilot and half feature film, together with the characteristic surrealist style Lynch’s
Classified as a psychological thriller, Mulholland Drive earned Lynch the Prix de la mise en scène (Best Director Award) at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival, sharing the award with Joel Coen for The Man Who Wasn’t There. Lynch also earned an Academy Award for Best Director. The film significantly boosted Watts’ fame and was also the latest feature by Hollywood star Ann Miller.
Mulholland Drive is generally considered to be among Lynch’s finest works; was ranked 28th in Sight & Sound’s 2012 Film Critics Poll of the Best Films Ever Made, as well as ranking in a 2016 BBC poll of the Best Films of 2000.
Black Swan (2010)
The story centers on a production of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake ballet by the New York City Ballet company. The show features a dancer playing the innocent and delicate White Swan, for which professional dancer Nina Sayers (Portman) fits perfectly, as well as the dark and even sensual Black Swan, which are qualities best embodied by rival Lily (Kunis ). Nina is bewildered by a feeling of immense stress when she discovers that she is carrying out her duty, making her lose her sense of reality and fall into madness.
Nina Sayers is a young woman who lives with her overprotective mother, Erica, a former dancer, and dances with a New York City company. Nina auditions for the roles and performs flawlessly as Odette, but fails to play Odile. Nina asks Thomas to reevaluate his role. When he forcefully kisses her, she bites him and runs away from her workplace.
Later that day, Nina sees the cast checklist and is surprised to find that she has been given the lead roles. At a gala celebrating the new show, a drunken Beth accuses her of providing Thomas sexual favors in exchange for the role. Thomas believes Beth was attempting suicide. Nina sees Beth after an accident in the hospital and also sees that her legs have been badly injured, which implies that she will definitely no longer have the ability to perform as a dancer.
During training sessions, Thomas tells Nina to observe a rookie, Lily, who bears a physical resemblance to Nina, but similarly Nina has no spontaneity. Nina suffers from hallucinations. One night, despite Erica’s objection, Nina accepts Lily’s invitation to go out for a drink. Under his influence, Nina flirts with the men at the bar and Lily. After arguing with her mother, Nina barricades herself in her room and has sex with Lily.
After arriving at Lincoln Center, Nina sees Lily dancing as Odile and talks to her about their night together. Lily refuses to move in with Nina and ridicules Nina for having a sexual fantasy about her. Nina is convinced that Lily plans to take her place, particularly after learning that Thomas has made Lily his replacement.
Nina’s hallucinations expand and her wounds increase, reaching the hallucination of transforming herself into Odile. On the night of the inauguration, he shouts to his mother: “I am the queen of the swans, you are the one who never left the body!”, And leaves. Since Nina is late, Lily is ready to replace her. Nina meets Thomas, who is so pleased with her newfound confidence that he allows her to reprise her roles.
The screenplay was written by Mark Heyman, John McLaughlin and Andres Heinz, based on an early story by Heinz. The film stars Natalie Portman, Vincent Cassel, Mila Kunis, Barbara Hershey and also Winona Ryder.
The director considered Black Swan an accompaniment piece to his 2008 film The Wrestler, with both films featuring challenging performances for different types of art. Portman and Kunis trained in ballet for several months before filming began.
Babycall (2011)
Anna and her 8-year-old son Anders flee a tragic family past: the child’s father is a violent and dangerous man. They move into a secret house and Anna buys a babycall to keep Anders in check while he sleeps. One night Anna wakes up with a start: noises come from Anders’ room, it seems a murder is taking place.
Noomi Rapace brilliantly plays a restless and obsessed with control character. A woman who never smiles, shady, trying to save her fragile mental balance. Story of love, motherhood and violence, between gray city exteriors and claustrophobic interiors.
My Son (2017)
Julien is always on the road for work. His constant absences from home and inability to care for his son Mathys destroyed his marriage to Marie. While in France, he receives a disturbing call from his ex-wife: their child, now seven, has disappeared while camping in the Alps.
Starting with a well-established narrative cue in the thriller genre, French director’s My Son. Christian Carion is a film not to be missed especially for the style in which it was shot. Conceived from the outset as a project to be realized almost in real time, over 6 days of shooting, the director uses a radical improvisation method with his lead actor Guillaume Canet: he does not let him read any script and asks him to experience the tension, suspense and unexpected events of fiction as if they were real events, moment by moment.
Custody (2017)
Miriam Besson and Antoine Besson are a divorced couple. They have a daughter who is about to turn eighteen, Joséphine, and an eleven-year-old son, Julien. Miriam wants to keep her youngest son away from her father, whom she accuses of being a violent man. He asks for exclusive custody of Julien: the child is traumatized and does not want to see his father again.
In Foster care – a story of violence Xavier Legrand tells the characters with great humanity. A dramatic story in which little Julien is destined to lose the ingenuity of his childhood in a battle for survival. The film, shot with a sober and intimate style, highlights a bitter and hopeless vision of human nature, with men who, in order to escape loneliness and failure, become violent and murderous persecutors.
Parasite (2019)
The film, starring Song Kang-ho, Lee Sun -kyun, Cho Yeo-jeong, Choi Woo-shik, Park So-dam, Jang Hye-jin and Lee Jung-eun, follows a poor family who plans to be used by wealthy family members and break into their home by pretending competent and highly qualified individuals.
The Kim family, father Ki-taek, mother Chung-sook, daughter Ki-jung and son Ki-woo, live in a small basement apartment in Seoul, have a low-paying temporary job folding pizza boxes and they struggle to make ends meet. Setting out to study abroad and knowing that his friend needs the money, a friend suggests to Ki-woo that he pretend to be a college student to take on his job as an English tutor for the daughter of the wealthy Park family, Da- hye.
The Kim family plans to find a job for each family member by posing as self-employed and highly skilled workers to become servants of the Parks. Ki-jung pretends to be “Jessica” and, using Ki-Woo as a reference, becomes an art therapist for the Park’s young son, Da-song.
When the Parks leave for a camping trip, the Kims revel in the luxuries of the residence before Moon-gwang abruptly appears at the door, telling Chung-sook that he left something in the basement. Moon-gwang films them on his phone and threatens to expose their ruse to the Parks.
An extreme storm soon brings the Parks home, so the Kims rush to tidy up the house and imprison Moon-gwang and Geun-sae before their return. The Kims hide Geun-sae and Moon-gwang in the basement. Ms. Park exposes to Chung-sook that Da-song had a traumatic experience which resulted in him having convulsions at a previous birthday party, when she saw a “ghost” – actually Geun-sae – emerge from the basement at night. . Before the Kims decide to come out, they hear Mr. Park’s hasty comments about the smell of Ki-taek. The Kims find their home flooded with water from the sewer system due to the severe storm and are forced to take refuge in a gymnasium with several other evacuees.
Parasite premiered at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival on May 21, 2019, where it was the first South Korean film to win the Palme d’Or. The film is considered by many critics as the best film of 2019 and also among the best films of the 21st century. He made over $ 263 million worldwide on a budget of $ 15.5 million. Among its many accolades, Parasite won 4 awards at the 92nd Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best International Film, becoming the first non-English language film to win the Oscar for Best Picture .
Parasite is the first South Korean film to achieve Oscar recognition and one of 3 films to win both the Palme d’Or and the Oscar for Best Picture. It won the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film and also the BAFTA Award for Best Non-English Language Film, and also became the first non-English language film to win the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a cast in a movie.
