The Black Ghiandola

Nov 27, 2008 — An enormous welter of insoluble problems is on display in Luis Buñuel’s classic—the ending solves nothing; the story just begins again.

Oct 6, 2008 — Jean-Pierre Melville’s ninth and to that point most commercially successful feature in France, was an important watershed in the director’s career.

Jul 21, 2008 — A dreamy alternative to the standard notion of horror, Carl Theodor Dreyer’s phantasmal film reimagined the figure of the vampire.

Jun 18, 2007 — Yasujiro Ozu had already directed forty-five features by the time he started work on Early Spring, in 1955, but the artistic and commercial success of his previous film, Tokyo Story (1953), had rejuvenated him.

Sep 18, 2006 — Released in 1973, in the dying days of General Franco’s forty-year dictatorship, The Spirit of the Beehive soon established itself as the consummate masterpiece of Spanish cinema. Yet, strangely, many of the gifted artists who collaborated on Víctor Erice’s first...

Sep 29, 2003 — “Gray literature” is the term German film historians use to describe the material written purely for publicity purposes and made available to the press, but not meant for official publication. Often this gray literature, which is only accessible to film...

Jun 3, 1991 — Jean Marais on the set of Beauty and the Beast An excerpt from Cocteau: A Biography (1970) by Francis Steegmuller Beauty and the Beast, the first film of Cocteau’s own since The Blood of a Poet, and his finest poem since...

Jun 12, 2026 — We’re hunkering down with an oral history of Steven Spielberg and reading about Mary Harron, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Radu Jude, and Pier Paolo Pasolini.

Apr 28, 2026 — As the 1950s began, Kinuyo Tanaka found herself at a turning point. She had been acting in films since she was fourteen, becoming one of Japan’s most beloved, admired, and prolific women stars. Now in her early forties, she saw...

Feb 3, 2026 — This year’s winners tell stories of trauma and triumph.