Author's judgement: 
This week's film is a dutiful tribute to an icon of international cinema: Robert Redford. A tribute because, in his intentions, it should be his last acting test and, in a certain sense, the synthesis of his long and highly honored career. Old Man & the Gun is based on a true story, albeit a highly fictionalized one, and concerns the life of an elegant and refined "gentleman" robber who dedicated his life to robbing banks and, once arrested, to escaping 16 times. The plot is simple and reconstructs his criminal career up to its end. The film sometimes flows rather slowly and monotonously, gloomy and sad, but precisely in these feelings, with this look, the whole professional autumn of this legendary figure of the big screen is very well reflected.
Him (1936), and his almost contemporary Harrison Ford (1942), it was the male images, much appreciated by the female audience, which best represented and synthesized the veins of highly successful American cinema starting in the 70s. Perhaps, it is no coincidence that to end his career as an actor Redford (he still decided to continue in directing where he made interesting films such as the well-known The Horse Whisperer) has chosen a subject that inevitably brings to mind memorable titles: from Butch Cassidy to Lin Sting by George Roi Hill to The Great Gatsby, as well as Red Crow You Shall Not Have My Scalp either The three days of the condor by Sidney Pollack. All of his characters are inside, united by his gaze that even when he wants to be tough and bad, he can't hide a strong sense of humanity.
It is a film that we appreciate and offer precisely as a recognition and sign of a cinematographic world that has by now declined towards other models, other subjects. We do not offer comparisons: every era, every historical period, finds the images that best represent it. Old Man & the Gun leaves us the legacy of a face, of a cinematic mask for which we are very grateful.
These days it is out in theaters too The Cold Warwhich we wrote about premiered on FIRSTonline last June, directed by Pawel Pawlikowski, with two superb actors such as Tomasz Kot and Agata Kulesza. It has been written, from many sides, that it is a masterpiece, one of those rare cases of cinematographic story where the pure, absolute feeling of love between a man and a woman are represented in its clearest and most essential form and, for this very reason, the film is proposed in black and white. We repeat what we wrote with greater conviction than then:
To return to the present day and try to understand what is happening in Europe, what are the prevailing cinematographic sensibilities and interests, we offer you an anomalous but important film, winner of the Cannes directorial award: Cold War (Cold War). A tragic, gray and dramatic story: it is the story of Viktor and Zula in post-war Poland. Two souls, two bodies that meet on the notes of the piano and will seek each other wandering through Europe that tries to rebuild its identity overwhelmed by the rubble of the great conflict, in an atmosphere that is first scorching and then cold of closed and impenetrable political borders. All this is the film of Pawel Pawlikowski award for best director at the recent French Festival. All deserved, all fair, all balanced in awarding recognition to those who still manage to bring, in the unusual square format of 4/3, in black and white, human tragedy in all its simplicity, in all its its naturalness. The two protagonists love each other beyond any limit, any barrier, any convenience and on the edge of this love, accompanied by places and music of strong suggestion, their story will be consumed.
It is a film that takes you back to an obsolete, in some respects ancient, way of making cinema. Not only and not so much for the use of black and white which could also appear as a sophisticated and aristocratic way of storytelling through images, where the sequences don't even have a fade, everything in detachment. Not only for the total absence of frills, artifices, more or less special effects (it is curious to observe that while this film won in Cannes for direction, as we wrote earlier, it was the 50th anniversary of Kubrick's masterpiece which was the architect of the contemporary era). It is therefore a way of making cinema that is still original, as essential as it is functional (a misnomer but perhaps it gives a good idea) to tell the fundamental feelings through images, first of all that about love.
Finally, we tell you about a documentary film that was only in theaters for 4 days and, we hope, will be back soon (it is however visible on Netflix). It is The look of Orson Welles, taken from the memoirs, notes, sketches and drawings that Welles made throughout his career. He was probably the greatest director, actor and screenwriter of the last century on which rivers of ink have been written. But it has rarely happened to be able to "read" the visual sources from which he was inspired and this documentary film allows us to do it in a fascinating way. To keep in mind and not to be missed when he returns to theaters.
