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I saw this film when it showed at the San Francisco International Film Festival in 1999. It was a long time ago, but many of the beautiful images are still burned on my retinas. The close ups of the scenes in Prague made the City another character in the film, and an engaging one at that! The romance that is the major focus of the second half of the film was incredibly appealing. The acting was convincing and not overly melodramatic -- just a moment of love.

I looked up the summary of the film that was printed on the program: Far less well known than Ecstasy, although it's also one of Gustav Machaty's major achievements, From Saturday to Sunday is marked by a gentle romanticism. Two secretaries go out on a double date, but the inexperienced Mary flees when offered money for sexual favors. She takes refuge in a cafe and encounters a plebeian Prince Charming. The film recounts the simple progress of their romance after they go home together. If the tale is not unusual, the telling is superb. The characters are sharply observed, with a strong sense of social context. Machaty's first talkie is a masterpiece of early sound cinema; his use of off-screen sound, in particular, is as sophisticated as that of René Clair and Rouben Mamoulian. And the Prague studios were as technically sophisticated as any other of the time: The opening sequence, a long low-angle tracking shot through the heroine's workplace, defines the space with breathtaking virtuosity. The film's credits provide ample proof that in pre-war Czechoslovakia, the avant garde made significant contributions to mainstream production: Jaroslav Jezek, the founder of Czech jazz, wrote the excellent score; the movie was coscripted by Surrealist poet Vitezslav Nezval; its art director was experimental filmmaker Alexander Hammid.

-Elliott Stein

The film is a brilliant mesh of dramatic stay-on-the-edge-of-your-seat storyline with important documentary footage about the horrors suffered by animals of factory farms. The film is so high quality -- artful direction, skillful acting, compelling plot, beautiful cinematography and critical and pointed delivery of the message on behalf of the deplorable state of farm animals. I hope it reaches wide delivery.

The movie is so realistic that for the first several minutes I thought it was a documentary until I recognized the intense actor who plays the father. The dynamic of conflict between the son and the father is at the core of the story. However, the true heart of the movie is the plight of farm animals and the risks that activists take when they fight to improve the lives of those animals. The documentary footage is painful to watch, but it brings home the moral fiber of the message.

Highest recommendation!

The military dictatorship of Argentina 1976-1983 is indeed, horrifying, and deserves to be condemned and not forgotten; the stated purpose of this movie. The problem with this film is that scene after scene of unending brutality, including the torture and murder of a child, is unbearable. The torture, rape and murder sequences are too graphic and too long. It is possible to make a film that publicizes and condemns the crimes of a military dictatorship without having the bulk of the film consist of torture scenes. Also, the plot itself leaves the viewer with more questions than answers. Two better films on the subject of the abuses of military dictatorships in South America are Kiss of the Spider Woman and Missing.