Within Us All

Dec 6, 2004 — It’s hard to believe that M was made in 1931. If we allow for the fact that it’s in black and white, it is more engaging to the eye, more incisive in its irony, more firm in its grasp of...

Jun 21, 2004 — Indefatigably productive, ingenious, exasperating, narcissistically didactic, slyly self-promoting, abject, generous, exploitative, devoted to the wretched of the earth with honest fervor and deluded romanticism: Pier Paolo Pasolini can easily exhaust the adjective-prone, as man and artist, his person and his...

Jan 5, 2004 — One of the most original—and hilarious—comedies ever made, M. Hulot’s Holiday has delighted and disarmed moviegoers the world over since its first appearance in 1953. There’s little in the way of plot or dialogue to this French-made farce about a...

Dec 30, 2003 — Akira Kurosawa was a man of his time, who participated fully in the artistic and intellectual world of Japan from the 1930s until his death in 1998. Although filmgoers may think of him in terms of the screen images he...

Aug 18, 2003 — The two versions of Vittorio De Sica’s neorealist romance offer case studies in Hollywood and European sensibilities as they existed in the early 1950s.

Mar 10, 2003 — Vilgot Sjöman’s cultural-sexual sensation sparked much critical and popular mayhem, only to be consigned to nearly instantaneous oblivion.

Jan 6, 2003 — Ernst Lubitsch set the screwball comedy standard, treating hard-on material with dignified aplomb and a combination of suaveness, hilarity, and sexiness.

Nov 19, 2001 — Alfred Hitchcock’s first film in Hollywood is his earliest definitive statement on male domination and female subjugation.

Aug 20, 2001 — Carl Dreyer considers the work of art’s soul in this excerpt from Dreyer in Double Reflection.

Jul 9, 2001 — Director Bruce Robinson reminisces about the days that inspired his uproarious black comedy.