THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT (GERMANY/1972/RAINER WERNER FASSBINDER)

Perhaps the most acclaimed film in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s inimitable oeuvre, The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant deals with issues of obsession and jealousy. The titular Petra von Kant is an esteemed fashion designer who surrounds herself with objects of decadence in a house she shares with her reticent assistant Marlene. Still bearing the pain of her recent divorce, Petra takes out most of her frustration on Marlene, whom she frequently commands to continue sketching designs. When she is visited by a young dilettante named Karin, Petra finds herself unexpectedly smitten, and her obsession grows to sinister proportions when Karin is called away to Switzerland to reconnect with her husband.

Fassbinder spells out the film’s personal relevance from the very beginning by calling it a ‘case history’ and identifying an unnamed male as the inspiration for Marlene’s character. The all-female cast is perfectly selected, all faces that will be familiar to fans of Fassbinder. Margit Carstensen is marvellous as the lead – uncomfortably rakish in appearance, she portrays the predatory Petra with aplomb. Irm Hermann as Marlene is a ghostly presence throughout the film – in one scene, her teary pale face suddenly vanishes into a blur, underlining her comparative insignificance once Karin has entered the frame. The fashion motif in the film suggests a theme of deception, the two women dressing competitively in a bid to convince the other of her feelings. Though it carries the relics of a low-budget seventies production, Petra von Kant is fundamentally timeless and classic.

BLIND SHAFT (CHINA/2003/LI YANG)

Shot on location in the aggressive confines of a mineshaft, Li Yang’s debut narrative feature follows the exploits of Song and Tang, two mine labourers who con young aspirant workers in the city. The men’s scheme involves them claiming that they and their nephew have secured well-paid jobs in a coalmine, but pretending the nephew has failed to turn up. Offering the open spot to a naïve sixteen-year-old boy named Yuan Fengming, they lead him to an illegal mineshaft with the plan of killing him after a few days and making it look like an accident in order to claim compensation. Song is unexpectedly touched by the boy’s childlike appearance and demeanour, and the scheme hits a snag as the two men argue over Yuan’s fate.

Buoyed by strong performances and subtly intrusive sound design (see the opening five minutes for a fine example), Blind Shaft acts simultaneously as an exposé of a shocking practice which has become far too commonplace, and as a universal statement on financial greed. Li himself has stated that the film should not be seen specifically as an indictment on the Chinese work ethic, but its ban in China suggests that the content hits closer to home than expected. Comparisons to the films of Wang Bing, particularly his marathon documentary Tie Xi Qu, may be reductive, but both directors work towards the similar goal of offering an unabashed insight into the ‘real’ China, and as such one could never overstate the importance of Blind Shaft.

THE UNKNOWN (USA/1927/TOD BROWNING)

Taking place in a circus, like Browning’s better known Freaks, The Unknown centres around Alonzo the Armless, who uses his feet to perform incredible stunts. His earnestness and disability catch the attention of Nanon, the circus owner’s daughter, who is fed up of being pawed over by her male admirers. Unbeknownst to her, Alonzo is actually able-bodied and employs a corset tied by his friend to disguise himself. When the circus owner discovers him in his uncorseted state, Alonzo kills him, an act witnessed from a distance by Nanon. Because of his armlessness, Alonzo is above suspicion and he grows closer to Nanon, even having his arms removed surgically so as to not have to hide them from her. But just as he believes he is finally getting what he deserves, Nanon reveals her love for the circus strongman, spurring him into jealous action.

Browning’s love of the macabre makes the theme of infidelity in The Unknown so much more vivid as abnormality becomes Alonzo’s alibi for trustworthiness. Nanon’s disgust for the hands of men is a clear reference to the predatory nature of male sexuality, and Alonzo’s secret, coupled with his double thumb, make him a particular threat to Nanon, one that only the audience recognises. His decision to have his arms amputated is in effect a misguided castration, a metaphor deeply shocking even by implication. Lon Chaney does a commendable job in an unusually difficult role. Carefully designed and expertly paced, The Unknown is a hugely entertaining thriller.

SOLEIL Ô (MAURITANIA/1967/MED HONDO)

Shot and produced in France by Mauritanian expatriate filmmaker and actor Med Hondo, Soleil Ô has been variously described as the first African avant-garde film and the most significant film made about African émigrés. The abstract film essay, incorporating elements of melodrama and comedy, takes the form of a series of vignettes decrying the treatment of Africans in France. A character seeking employment is met with prejudice and derision from almost everyone, causing him to question the intrinsically French hendiatris of “liberty, equality, fraternity”. Another scene sees a circle of men seek divine forgiveness for speaking in their native tongues, suggesting they could only hope to be granted consideration by Christ once shed of their African identities.

From its bizarre animated opening to its darkly comic subversion of icons (crucifixes are converted into swords at one point), Soleil Ô makes no bones about its agenda and Hondo clarifies the importance of his message through subverting the gaze of the viewer. While the film designates itself as a pamphlet, the focus is more on the reconstruction of identity than the loss of it, and Hondo does not discriminate in his description of blackness. As Djibril Diop Mambéty was to later achieve with his surreal Touki Bouki, Hondo interprets film through the context of African oral storytelling, acknowledging that to recontextualise cinema for an African perspective is to reinterpret the medium. Satirical but fiercely humanistic, Soleil Ô is a film essay whose importance can never be overstated, and deserves a contemporary rediscovery.

PITFALL (JAPAN/1962/HIROSHI TESHIGAHARA)

Set in an impoverished mining complex, Pitfall tells the story of a close-knit community torn apart by the activities of a mysterious serial killer dressed in white. The murderer’s first victim is an unemployed miner, whom he chases out to a marsh before stabbing him to death. To cover his tracks, he pays the only witness to run to the village and claim that the deed was carried out by the trade union leader of the mine’s newer pit. Naturally, the union leader is distraught and enlists the help of his counterpart from the old pit to investigate. Before long, both are also dead, along with the witness of the first murder. Throughout the film, the deceased return as ghosts, in the state they were in when they died. These ghosts roam the community in pursuit of their killer, but are naturally incapable of alerting the locals or calling for help.

Social realism sits abreast with surrealism in director Hiroshi Teshigahara’s chilling debut. Meditations on mortality quickly outgrow the murder mystery premise as the ghosts of the past literally hang over the present. Hiroshi Segawa’s inventive cinematography rhymes vividly with acclaimed composer Toru Takemitsu’s penetrative soundtrack. The film shares a lot of its themes (death, absence, identity) and atmosphere with Teshigahara’s monumental second film Woman of the Dunes, and the two work splendidly as parallel stories. Less forgiving viewers may complain about the lack of conclusion, but it is otherwise impossible to fault Pitfall, yet another Japanese New Wave classic.

HUNGER (IRELAND/2008/STEVE MCQUEEN)

Hunger, the debut feature from Turner Prize winner Steve McQueen, tells the story of Bobby Sands, the Provisional IRA volunteer who led the famous Maze prison hunger strike in 1981. We start the film as the prison takes in its newest inmate Davey. After being stripped of his clothes, Davey is thrown into a faeces-covered cell where he meets Gerry, with whom he shares a rebellious spirit. The two join the ongoing no wash protest, spearheaded by our uncooperative protagonist. Despite repeated challenges to their cause, the men refuse to be undermined, apparently growing hardier with every beating. In the film’s famous 17-minute shot, Sands speaks with his priest about his decision to initiate a hunger strike, and soon after we bear witness to the shocking effects of his self-destructive protest.

McQueen does not contrive events for effect; rather he removes them. The film eschews a political bias – the cause is all but forgotten, save for Sands’ exchange with the priest, and the occasional chant of “I-I-IRA”. Throughout the first half of the film, we are also shown the daily routine of Raymond Lohan, the guard with whom Sands clashes for forcibly cutting his hair. In one of the film’s most distressing scenes, Lohan is assassinated while visiting his elderly mother in her retirement home. The event is no less horrifying than the sight of a dishevelled Sands struggling to sit upright, typifying McQueen’s ability to balance objectivity with humanism. Visually unadulterated and magnificently acted, Hunger is an outstanding debut.

LIMITE (BRAZIL/1931/MÁRIO PEIXOTO)

The only film by elusive writer Mário Peixoto, Limite concerns four people apparently lost at sea. Little is said about their future, but each of the castaways reflects contemplatively on the events of the past. These memories are presented to the audience as visual poems, picking up the rhythm of everyday life and the preciousness of its minutiae. In contrast to the clunky, fast-paced editing of most silent films, Limite does away with title cards and quick location changes in favour of seductively slow close-ups, buttressed by hypnagogic shots of the surrounding sea. Scant writings on the film suggest that Peixoto had paced the film thusly in mimesis of the solar system, where small objects orbit larger ones.

A film that simultaneously invites and defies analysis, Limite remained for the longest time an unseen curio, even considered lost at one point, but has enjoyed a healthy renaissance thanks to plaudits from the likes of Orson Welles and Sergei Eisenstein. It has been voted “best Brazilian film of all time” on several occasions, and it’s easy to see why. Peixoto appears to have recognised the immense potential of the moving image as an art form in its own right, reflected in the fact he felt confident enough to convey a story without intertitles. The result is a soulful bricolage of personal histories, creating a blueprint of all the potential futures. Impeccably shot and scored, Limite sidesteps the boisterous giddiness of many contemporary experimental films, resembling a wordless version of Tarkovsky’s Mirror.

THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER (FRANCE/1928/JEAN EPSTEIN)

Taking its inspiration from Edgar Allan Poe's famous short story, Jean Epstein's expressionist film follows protagonist Allan as he comes to visit his older friend Roderick, an avid painter who has fallen ill with a selection of disparate symptoms. Roderick has little else to do to pass the time except paint portraits of his reticent wife Madeleine (his twin sister in the original story). During his sojourn, our hero spots Madeleine wandering around in a trance on more than one occasion. He soon learns that his companion is held in the throes of something more powerful than illness, and can do little else except bear witness to the ultimate proof of love’s destructive influence.

Assistant director Luis Buñuel is famously supposed to have quit after learning how liberal Epstein planned to be with the source material, but in its extant form, the film is still an incomparable mélange of surrealism and gothic fiction. Epstein was one for trying new cinematic techniques, and in many ways he outdoes his German Expressionist predecessors, with handheld camera work, creative framing and superimpositions of the same image onto itself. The silky soft focus distorts whatever reality is left in the house, reducing Allan’s experience in the house to an illusory nightmare. One striking sequence sees curtains and books floating languorously while the two men dine, Allan’s eyes wrenched open in fear. The film is also significant for its exploration of one individual setting, something it achieves with great success. A near-perfect paradigm of horror.