One of the most inspired casting decisions of 20th century cinema pairs Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune as a United States Marine and a Japanese officer stranded together on a deserted Pacific island during World War II. The initial hostility and distrust brought on by the soldiers' unwillingness and inability to communicate eventually gives way to a fragile, tense relationship forged by their struggle to survive the harsh conditions of the island. For Boorman’s second film with Marvin after Point Blank, the actors and director drew on the Marvin's own hellish experiences in the Pacific War. The typically Boormanian trial by fire undergone by Marvin and Mifune gives way to a reflective variation on the war film, that eschews combat for deeper inner and inter-personal conflicts.

The painting “Gabrielle d’Estrées and One of Her Sisters” which hangs in the Louvre Museum, is the enigmatic inspiration for John Boorman’s sprightly excursion into erotica. The painting famously depicts two women naked in a bath, one provocatively fingering a nipple of the other. In Boorman’s allegory about the liberatory power of art, a handsome young painter introduces two sisters to the pleasures of the flesh in defiance of their tyrannical father.

 Listen to this evening's introductions and Q&A.