The Current
A magazine of film culture past and present, with new articles, interviews, and videos published every day
Recent Articles
Klute: Trying to See Her
Alan J. Pakula’s partnership with a newly politicized Jane Fonda turned what could have been a run-of-the-mill detective movie into a psychologically vivid portrait of a strong female character.
Gregory Manchess’s Visions in Oil
The veteran illustrator behind our covers for Jubal, 3:10 to Yuma, and A Night to Remember invites us inside his creative process.
A Neglected Reggae Classic Finally Gets Its Due
Now playing on the Criterion Channel, Franco Rosso’s underappreciated drama Babylon is one of the most essential portraits of the immigrant experience in British film history.
Agnieszka Holland’s Ironic Slant on the Unspeakable
The acclaimed Polish director explains how her international breakthrough film, Europa Europa, was inspired by a desire to tell a different, less predictable kind of Holocaust story.
A Woman’s Voice: Ingrid Bergman in Five Languages
Over the course of her five-decade career, one of cinema’s greatest globe-trotters brought her musical, richly expressive voice to an impressive array of cultural contexts.
The Dissidence of Others
Agnieszka Holland challenges romantic notions of civil unrest and revolutionary activism in her magnificently bleak period miniseries Burning Bush, which is now available to stream on the Criterion Channel.
Europa Europa: Border States
This darkly comic vision of survival and deception during the Holocaust captures a crisis of ideological fanaticism that continues to plague contemporary Europe.
A Tolstoy Adaptation That Defies Gravity
Cinematographer Anatoly Petritsky talks about the innovative camera work that made some of War and Peace’s most ambitious sequences possible.
The Truth About Punk According to Penelope Spheeris
The foremost chronicler of punk made films that captured the messy contradictions and sheer rage at the heart of the phenomenon.
From Innocence to Experience: A Conversation with Charles Williams
The director of the Palme d’Or–winning short film All These Creatures, which is now available to stream on the Criterion Channel, discusses the challenges of depicting mental illness through the eyes of a child.
The Extravagant Passions of Italian Maestro Raffaello Matarazzo
Italian cinema of the 1940s and ’50s may be most associated with the legacy of neorealism, but the tearjerking melodramas of this critically underappreciated director dominated at the box office.
Coming Attractions: The Criterion Channel’s July 2019 Lineup
Check out what’s in store next month on our streaming service!
Video
Spotlight
Songbook
Some of cinema’s most memorable moments are fueled by one perfectly chosen tune on the soundtrack. In this series, writers explore what happens when music and image meet.
