The best Kenneth Riegel’s movies

Screen adapatation of Mozart's greatest opera. Don Giovanni, the infamous womanizer, makes one conquest after another until the ghost of Donna Anna's father, the Commendatore, (whom Giovanni killed) makes his appearance. He offers Giovanni one last chance to repent for his multitudinious improprieties. He will not change his ways So, he is sucked down into hell by evil spirits. High drama, hysterical comedy, magnificent music!

Zulawski tackles Modest Mussorgsky’s famous opera about the bloody battle for ascendancy to the throne of Russia in the 17th-century! With a score conducted by Mstislav Rostropovich, Zulawski adds extra layers of devilish meta-textual embellishment by composing the film’s imagery as though we are watching a theater piece of a film crew making a movie about the opera of “Boris Godounov”! As well, the picture is full of delightful anachronisms that mock the then-contemporary Russian government, alongside jabs at other 20th-century dictatorships. So incensed was Rostropovich by Zulawski’s juiced final product — one that took liberties with the narrative’s sexual thrust, amongst other things — that he (unsucessfully) took Zulawski to court for “the violation of the Russian soul”! “Impressive in its use of whirling camera movements as well as mega close-ups of the contracted faces of its singers, ‘Boris Godounov’ is one of the most original opera movies ever made”