Of Time and the City

Nov 22, 2009 — “The most concrete emblem of every economic cycle is the dump,” writes Naples native and best-selling Italian muckraker Roberto Saviano somewhere near the conclusion of his extraordinary 2006 “nonfiction novel” Gomorrah, a seethingly cogent and literarily constructed indictment of the...

Mar 25, 2009 — J.Hoberman’s got a sharp and snazzy piece in the New York Times on American expat director Jules Dassin—just in time for Film Forum’s fifteen-film retrospective of his career. The blacklisted filmmaker of black-hearted crime dramas (and a couple of hot-blooded...

Dec 17, 2008 — ANew Year’s treat from the Film Society of Lincoln Center: Jacques Tati’s supersized comic odyssey Playtime will be shown in its original, rarely screened 70 mm format at the Walter Reade Theater. If you haven’t seen this visionary work, which...

Mar 17, 2008 — During the Second World War, when Hiroshi Teshigahara was a schoolboy, Japan’s cities—above all his hometown, Tokyo—were mercilessly firebombed. He, and his future associates in countless artistic undertakings, returned to a landscape of bleak ruins. The adolescent Hiroshi was particularly...

Jan 31, 2005 — Like the movie’s rattletrap trucks lurching down the highway as they carry way-too-heavy loads, the characters in Jules Dassin’s brilliantly volatile Thieves’ Highway struggle under psychological and moral baggage until they can lay their burdens down. Working from a novel...

Sep 23, 2002 — In 1940 and 1941, David O. Selznick won back-to-back Academy Awards for Best Picture. In 1942, unsurprisingly, he was depressed. His wife, Irene, persuaded him to seek help, and, less than one year later, hale and hardy, he was eager...

May 15, 2000 — Agnes Varda’s Cléo from 5 to 7, the first fully-achieved feature by the woman who would become the premiere female director of her generation, dazzled when it opened, and looks even more timely today in its tackling of the fashionable...

Aug 12, 2019 — Carlos Reygadas is a Mexican film director, writer, and producer. He studied law in Mexico City and later, in London, specialized in armed conflict law and the use of force. After quitting the Mexican foreign service he made four short...

Nov 16, 2006 — At the Museum of the Moving Image tonight, Peter Cowie is presenting his new book on Louise Brooks, Lulu Forever, and they are digitally screening our new Pandora's Box restoration with the Gillian Anderson score. I don’t think I’ve ever...

The director of Maria talks about why Berlin Alexanderplatz is a masterclass on character and capturing a city, praises Maria Callas’s performance in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Medea, and shares how Boyhood is proof that cinema can evoke the feeling of...