David Farnor | On 29, Apr 2017

Heard of BFI Player? Well, there’s also BFI Player+, a subscription service that offers an all-you-can-eat selection of hand-picked classics.

Every Friday, Mark Kermode highlights one of the collection’s titles with a video introduction. This week, it’s Immoral Tales. Walerian Borowczyk’s 1974 film presents four stories of sexual taboos throughout the ages, in his highly controversial classic of 1970s erotic cinema.

What else is new? Here are the latest titles on BFI Player+ this week, as the subscription service continues its wide-ranging Fassbinder retrospective:

Inferno

Dario Argento’s baroque, operatic horror follows a student who discovers a powerful witch living in a New York City apartment block.

The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant

The BFI continues its Fassbinder retrospective with this 1972 drama about the eponymous successful fashion designer. She’s in a fairly satisfactory S&M relationship with her assistant Marlene, but when the arrogant Petra develops an obsession with fashion model Karin, things become far more complicated in this tale of intermingled love and hate.

Symptoms

The official British Palme d’Or entry at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival, Symptoms is a sophisticated modern gothic horror film exploring the themes of sexual repression and psychosis.

Fox and His Friends

Fassbinder steps in front of the camera for 1975’s drama about Franz Biberkopf, a poor gay man who performs in a traveling circus, until he wins half a million in a lottery.

Chinese Roulette

Psychodrama with a vengeance: Fassbinder’s first international co-production, drenched in gothic atmosphere, is another deadly assault on the institution of marriage.

The Bad Sleep Well

The first film made by Akira Kurosawa’s own production company is a dark tale of greed, corporate corruption and revenge.

Henry V

From the bravura opening, which seamlessly takes us from a theatre stage to a fullscreen landscape, to the ambitious scale of the battle scenes, Laurence Olivier’s star-studded adaptation of Shakespeare’s classic history play is an epic, soaring piece of film-making. Olivier not only carries the role of the young king but helms the whole thing to boot.

 

A BFI Player+ subscription costs £4.99 a month with a 30-day free trial. For more information, visit http://player.bfi.org.uk.
 

Add to Watchlist