Flesh+Blood
Action! If there’s one word associated with cinema, the tension of movie sets, and the focus of attention, it’s this one. Action is very often at the heart of popular cinema: Harold Lloyd hanging from the clock hands in Safety Last! (1923), Cary Grant threatened and strafed by a plane in North by Northwest (1959), Franka Potente gasping for air in Run Lola Run (1998)... Westerns, swashbuckler films, martial arts or adventure flicks, thrillers, all these genres rely on action—sometimes frenetic, sometimes meticulously measured.
From movies by Sergei Eisenstein to Gilles Carle, from John Ford to John Boorman and Werner Herzog, via Paul Verhoeven, Kathryn Bigelow, Park Chan-wook, Érik Canuel, and Nicolas Winding Refn, this series will take you through the full range of emotions, from laughter to thrills, from fear to satisfaction.
This brutal and stylistically masterful medieval film depicts the triumphs and setbacks of a group of 16th-century mercenaries, driven by a thirst for power and a penchant for debauchery. At the heart of the story is the abduction of a young woman from a wealthy family.
Paul Verhoeven
Paul Verhoeven is a Dutch director and screenwriter. He primarily trained during his military service in the audiovisual department of the Dutch Navy, where he began making promotional documentaries in 1964. He directed his first films in the Netherlands, quickly achieving success, notably with Turkish Delight (1973), which still holds the record for the most admissions in the country. However, after the release of the harsh Spetters (1980), he decided to move to the United States due to increasing censorship. There, he discovered a new world and achieved his greatest international successes: RoboCop (1987), Total Recall (1990), and Basic Instinct (1992), followed by the controversial Showgirls (1995) and Starship Troopers (1997). Gradually, the disturbing and provocative nature of his productions began to irritate the studios. This growing lack of freedom prompted him to return to Europe to film Black Book (2006). For Elle, released in 2016, he received numerous awards, including the César for Best Film. Verhoeven's filmography is marked by violence, sex, and religion, which he considers "the three main elements on Earth." He does not hesitate to shock in order to better portray his version of reality.
