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.
The Moment of Truth: The Blood of Beasts
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.
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.
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
…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.
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.
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.