For Love of the Game

When three women living on the edge of the American frontier are driven mad by harsh pioneer life, the task of saving them falls to the pious, independent-minded Mary Bee Cuddy. Transporting the women by covered wagon to Iowa, she soon realizes just how daunting the journey will be, and employs a low-life drifter, George Briggs, to join her. The unlikely pair and the three women head east, where a waiting minister and his wife have offered to take the women in. But the group first must traverse the harsh Nebraska Territories marked by stark beauty, psychological peril and constant threat.

The doomed love of a city girl caught in the vise of poverty is detailed in Vavra’s fluid, romantic work, one of the most elegant creations of the Czech Modernist era... The film lingers over its characters’ habitats and haunts, finding psychological truths in what each owns or desires, and countering every Hollywood-ready scene of gleaming restaurants and dazzling penthouses with realist moments of employment lines and crammed flats. Vavra’s classical camerawork and aura of romantic defeatism give Virginity a force comparable to the master of this genre, Hollywood’s Frank Borzage. (BAM/PFA)

Fathia and Reyhan are reunited as adults. However, for the sake of her adherence to religion, Fathia decided to stay away from Reyhan. However, ironically, this separation actually brought Fathia, who had memorized the Koran, to face a bitter reality. She had to accept marriage to an older man who was already married in order to help the family financially.

Held captive for 7 years in an enclosed space, a woman and her young son finally gain their freedom, allowing the boy to experience the outside world for the first time.

Kiran, a Muslim woman who is trapped in promiscuity. This happened after she found a hard-line Islamic organization that was expected to sharpen her faith, instead deprived her of it.

1941 Toho adaptation of Natsume's novel.

1955 Toho adaptation of Natsume's novel.

Geraldine Farleigh, a timid village schoolteacher, supports her family and must pay off her late father's debt to Bruce Cartwright.