Film Group screenings
A group of nuns open a makeshift convent in the foothills of the Himalayas, but soon find their vows challenged in their new exotic environment. Deborah Kerr’s Sister Clodagh has a spiritual crisis, while a fellow nun, brilliantly played by Kathleen Byron, becomes erotically obsessed with a British agent leading to an unforgettable ending. Dir: […]
A highly principled British colonel becomes obsessed with leading a band of P.O.W.s to build a bridge at the behest of their Japanese captors in WW11 Burma. Winner of seven Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director. Dir: David Lean: UK 1957 (161 mins)
Dir: Roland Jaffe: UK 1986 (125 mins) Winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes, but accorded a mixed critical reception, this is a studied, elegant and very moving drama set in 18th century South America. Jeremy Irons gives a performance of great sincerity as the head of a Jesuit mission under threat from the greed […]
Dir: François Truffaut: France/Italy 1968 (107 mins) One sun-drenched morning, Julie comes out of a church in a white dress on the arm of a boy called David whom she has loved since childhood. As the bells ring and the wedding party poses for the photographer a shot rings out. It is a stupid accident, […]
Dir: Hirokazu Kore-eda: Japan 2004 (141 mins) In 1988 what was dubbed the “Affair of the Four Abandoned Children of Niski-Sugano” scandalised Japan and inspired Hirokazu Kore-eda’s screenplay, which took 5 years to bring to the screen. The film is a deeply moving study of juvenile endurance that earned Yuya Yagira the best actor prize […]
Dir: John Huston: USA 1961 (125 mins) (Member’s Request) The last film of both Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable. It went from box-office flop to cult status within the space of a year. Written by Monroe’s then husband, Arthur Miller, the film is a grey, solemn and at times pretentious piece about three drifters who […]
Dir: Max Ophuls: France/Italy 1953 (105 mins) For many, this piercingly poignant fin-de-siécle romance with its dark but exquisitely delicate sense of irony, is the very finest of Max Ophuls’ ‘amusing tragedies’. When beset by debt the titular Countesse Louise decides to sell a pair of earrings that were a wedding gift from her husband […]
Dir: Martin Scorsese: USA 2016 (161 mins) (Member’s Request) Director Martin Scorsese’s rumination as faith and religion, based on Shusaku Endo’s 1966 novel tells the story of two 17th century missionaries who undertake a perilous journey to Japan to search for their missing mentor and to spread the gospel. This sprawling epic is a deeply […]