The Citizen

Mar 26, 2020 — Deep Dives BOOM! Mahler (1974) begins auspiciously and iconoclastically, as befits its director, with a peaceful lakeside scene shattered by an abrupt conflagration. The combusting hut echoes Kiss Me Deadly and anticipates The Sacrifice and Lost Highway (Lynch: “I got...

Mar 11, 2015 — More than thirty years after his death in 1977, Roberto Rossellini is remembered by your average film buff as the father of Italian neo­realism (Rome, Open City, 1945; Paisan, 1946; Germany Year Zero, 1948) and of actress and model Isabella...

Sep 13, 2013 — Did You See This?• John Bailey on game-changing movie cameras • Venice love from Claire Denis, Abbas Kiarostami, and sixty-eight others • John Le Carré takes on the world. • The tragic tale of Citizen Kane’s Dorothy Comingore • The...

Jun 14, 2011 —   The dance along the artery The circulation of the lymph Are figured in the drift of stars —T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets   The year is 1954: a fabulous bit of film history is about to unfurl. Grips are...

Nov 26, 2018 — The Magnificent Ambersons “Plus one and minus one equal nothing. So you mean I’m nothing in particular?” —Isabel “Remember you very well indeed.” —George “George, you never saw me before in your life!” —Eugene What is this cult I signed up...

Dec 10, 2025 — To celebrate the centennial of Battleship Potemkin, the Austrian Film Museum presents a near-complete retrospective.

Feb 27, 2025 — Along with the premieres and parades, this year offers an oddity from Michael Almereyda and Courtney Stephens.

Jan 21, 2022 — When I received the email asking me to work on the cover art for the Criterion Collection edition of Citizen Kane, my emotions quickly went from pure joy to complete dread. What can be done for a film of this...

Nov 28, 2018 — In the 1940s, the nonlinear narrative began to enter the mainstream, as films like Citizen Kane and Double Indemnity boldly did away with the chronological mode that had dominated the cinematic storytelling of decades prior. While the visionary Orson Welles...

Nov 23, 2018 — The work of James Agee (1909–1955) remains one of the touchstones of American movie criticism. An extraordinarily versatile writer, he won acclaim as a novelist, a poet, and a screenwriter (his scripts for The African Queen and The Night of the...