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Public Enemies ***
Surveillance **1/2
Whatever Works ***
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Sno Cone, Inc.
Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li
Tokyo!
12 Rounds
Tunnel Rats
Two Lovers
Zane Grey Theater: Complete Season One
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Film Features

Kathryn Bigelow
Willem Dafoe: The 2009 CineVegas Interview
David Carradine
A 2002 Interview with Edward Asner
Vinessa Shaw
Henry Selick
2008: The Year's Ten Best Films
The San Francisco Film Critics Circle Awards 2008
The 25 Best DVDs of 2008
Bruce Campbell
Darren Aronofsky and Marisa Tomei
Josh Brolin
A Tribute to Paul Newman
Steve Coogan on Hamlet 2
Manny Farber (1917-2008)
Bernie Mac (1957-2008)
Emily Mortimer
Brad Anderson
Don Cheadle at CineVegas
Abel Ferrara at CineVegas
Tina Sinatra
My Top 100 Films [Updated]
My Top 60 Directors [Updated]
The Top 50 Movies of the Past Ten Years (1997-2006)
Terry Zwigoff on the new Bad Santa Director's Cut
Alfonso Cuarón Interview
Guillermo Del Toro Interview
Christmas Movies
Combustible Celluloid's Big Guide to Halloween & Horror Movies
Cult Movies
Actress Interview Gallery
The Top 100
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Film Books

Not Quite a Memoir: Of Films, Books, the World, by Judy Stone
James Agee: The Library of America Collection, by James Agee
Just Making Movies, by Ronald L. Davis
Guide to Essential Movies, by Joe Leydon
Cecil B. DeMille's Hollywood, by Robert S. Birchard
Profoundly Disturbing, by Joe Bob Briggs
A Third Face, by Samuel Fuller
Dark Lover, by Emily Leider
Agee on Film, by James Agee
Lulu in Hollywood, by Louise Brooks
Negative Space, by Manny Farber
5001 Nights at the Movies, by Pauline Kael
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The online film magazine Combustible Celluloid offers new movie reviews, DVD reviews, film reviews, actor interviews, actress interviews, director interviews, film books and all things cinema related for the thoughtful and passionate. Online for ten years! Over 3000 reviews!

 
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© 1997-2009 Combustible Celluloid




[A Word from Film posters.com]
It can be difficult to find vintage film posters, like one for "Tartuffe." The web is a great place to find movie posters of all kinds. Framed vintage posters are a great way to decorate any room in your home!

Tartuffe (1925)

Rating: 4 Stars (out of 4)

Heroes of Hipocrisy

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Buy Tartuffe on DVD.

Most critics of this 1925 silent feature squawked that F.W. Muranu "butchered" Moliere's original work, but let's face it, the play -- a warning against hypocrisy -- isn't exactly the most subtle classic in the world. Unlike his later Faust, Murnau obviously needed to imagine Tartuffe in a way to make it relevant to modern day, and so he invented the bookend sequences, making it -- along with Keaton's Sherlock Jr. -- one of the first post-modern films (in which characters watch and are aware of films). In the wraparound sequence, a young man tries to save his grandfather who is about to lose his fortune to a greedy, crooked housekeeper. Since the young man is an actor, he disguises himself and plays a traveling motion picture man, setting up a screening of Tartuffe in hopes of convincing the housekeeper that she's wrong. Of course, this actual Tartuffe is the film's strongest section, with the great Emil Jannings in the title role, stiffly walking around -- he sometimes resembles Murnau's Nosferatu -- and leering just over the top of the Good Book. Tartuffe manages to convince a weak-willed dupe that pleasures of the flesh are wrong, while indulging in many of those self-same pleasures himself. All in all, it's a relatively minor Murnau, but some sequences contain his beautifully twisted touches.

DVD Details: The Tartuffe disc includes a new 35-minute documentary on the life of Murnau. But best of all, Tartuffe comes packaged in an extraordinary new box set, The F.W. Murnau Collection, which contains Kino's Nosferatu (1922), The Last Laugh (1924) and Faust (1926) as well as Image Entertainment's Tabu (1931). For more info, visit Kino's website or call toll-free at (800) 562-3330.

Starring: Emil Jannings, Hermann Picha, Rosa Valetti, André Mattoni, Werner Krauss, Lil Dagover, Lucie Höflich
Written by: Carl Mayer, based on a play by Molière
Directed by: F.W. Murnau
MPAA Rating: Unrated
Running Time: 63 minutes
Date: November 2, 2003

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