Author Spotlight

Peter Matthews

Peter Matthews is a senior lecturer in film and television at the London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. He is also a regular contributor to Sight & Sound.

8 Results
The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant: The Great Pretender

Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s characters play an endlessly layered game of dress-up in this tale of sadomasochistic love.

By Peter Matthews

The Moment of Truth: The Blood of Beasts
Creating an effect of pity and terror unique in Francesco Rosi’s cinema, The Moment of Truth ought by rights to be counted among his finest achievements. On its original release in 1965, Pauline Kael acclaimed “the beauty of rage, masterfully ren…

By Peter Matthews

The Battle of Algiers: Bombs and Boomerangs

Gillo Pontecorvo’s incendiary epic commemorates the popular uprising that had succeeded in ousting the French from Algeria in July 1962.

By Peter Matthews

White Mane: Natural Magic

Albert Lamorisse’s principled balancing of objective fact with childish wish fulfillment results in a new, paradoxical genre—the documentary of dreams.

By Peter Matthews

Miss Julie: The Three Bergs

When it comes to world cinema, Jonathan Rosenbaum has tartly observed, many American critics are strict isolationists. At least for national film industries judged too exotic or marginal, a rule of “one director per country” seems to apply. By th

By Peter Matthews

Forbidden Games: Death and the Maiden

René Clément’s masterpiece is dedicated to the radical Freudian proposal that living matter seeks the comfort of oblivion.

By Peter Matthews

King of Kings: Showman of Piety

In his first freestanding biblical epic, Cecil B. DeMille recognized and revered a profound quality in the American soul—its ability to leap over every contradiction through an invincible sense of its own righteousness.

By Peter Matthews

Through a Glass Darkly: Patron Saint of Angst

One of the Swedish director’s most representative works, this drama’s portentousness, banked intensity, and recondite symbolism come near to embodying the popular stereotype of the Bergmanesque.

By Peter Matthews