Ozu’s undisputed masterwork is a meditation on the generational gap and the trials of mortality. An elderly couple visit their children in a bustling Tokyo, where they are seen almost as a nuisance and shuffled off to a resort. Modernization is the torrent that tears through Japanese society and Ozu takes a hard look at what it has done to the family unit. Co-presented by UW Madison's Center for East Asian Studies.

In a distinctly lovable and hilarious comic performance, Laughton plays the title character, a loyal English manservant whose boss (Roland Young) loses the services of Ruggles in a poker game in Paris, 1908. Ruggles’ new employers are a rich American couple who take the valet home to Red Gap, Washington, where the residents mistake him for a British war hero. Hoping to impart lessons on manners and culture, Ruggles himself learns the meaning of equality and how to be your own person. One of the greatest of all American comedies, Ruggles of Red Gap is also director McCarey’s heartfelt love letter to immigrants. “Justly honored...it works like magic” (Pauline Kael).

Four men who call each other Mr. Blue, Mr. Green, Mr. Grey and Mr. Brown efficiently hijack a lone, passenger-filled NYC subway car. Their demands: one million dollars in one hour or a passenger is killed for each minute the money is late! It’s up to intrepid transit cop Matthau to foil the criminals’ plans. An influence on countless films from Die Hard to Reservoir Dogs, this contemporary action classic has an unforgettable sense of gallows humor that makes it one of the key films of 1970s New York, aka “Fun City.”  

Drunk, broke, prone to hallucinations, and obsessed with murdering his gay lover, controversial author Gerard Reve (Krabbé) hooks up with the kinky Christine (Soutendijk), a blonde temptress who may or may not be a murderous black widow.  For his last Dutch language film before he went to Hollywood, Verhoeven pulled out all the stops, mixing camp, kitsch, and overheated symbolism to create a delirious erotic thriller that paved the way for the director's later Basic Instinct.

The great Gabin stars as the title character, a gangster hiding out in Algiers’ Casbah in this deliriously romantic and fatalistic classic. Safe from the police, he meets a Parisian tourist and falls in love…but betrayal is at hand. A film that inspired at least two American remakes and one infamous cartoon skunk, Pépé is one of the most influential and popular movies of the 1930s.

Before he made The Warriors and 48 Hrs., established screenwriter Walter Hill (The Getaway) made his directorial debut with this lean and classy action gem set in Depression-era New Orleans. In a rare appearance without his trademark mustache, Bronson plays a drifter who, with the help of a chatty and crafty promoter (Coburn), learns to survive and make money in the world of illegal bare-knuckle brawling. “Hill's thoughtful handling of the moral issue—survival versus friendship—and his subtle, evocative camerawork make this a hundred times better than it should be” (Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader).

In Mumbai, home to over 18 million people, more than 5,000 famously efficient dabbawallas—lunchbox couriers—navigate chaotic streets to deliver lunches, lovingly prepared by housewives, to working men across the city. Ila (Kaur) is a housewife living in a middle-class neighbourhood with a husband who ignores her. Saajan (Khan) is a beaten down widower about to retire from his number-crunching job. After Ila realizes that Saajan is receiving the meals meant for her husband, the two begin sending each other letters through the lunchbox. Outside the space of their daily lives, both Ila and Saajan feel free to express themselves in new ways, leading them both to question how they might find happiness. An involving variation on the Shop Around the Corner formula, The Lunchbox was an arthouse smash in the U.S. The cast is marvelous, especially the late, great Bollywood star Khan who left us too soon in 2020. “[The Lunchbox’s] style is more Hollywood than Bollywood, and Old Hollywood at that...The comedy is more wry than uproarious, the melodrama gently poignant rather than operatic, and the sentimentality just sweet enough to be satisfying rather than bothersome” (A.O. Scott, The New York Times).

In his first performance in a Hollywood production, acclaimed French actor Gabin plays Bobo, a free-spirited wanderer who docks in a Pacific seaside town. After a night of drunken debauchery, Bobo awakens on a strange barge wearing the cap of a dead man. Afraid he has committed the crime, Bobo prepares to skip town but is delayed when he falls in love with Anna (Lupino), whom he rescues from drowning herself in the surf. Less like typical film noir and more similar to Gabin’s French poetic realism vehicles like Quai des brumes and Remorques, Moontide places emphasis on the flamboyantly romantic over pessimistic fatalism. Several sequences were overseen by legendary director Fritz Lang who, when he didn’t get along with Gabin, was replaced by Mayo.