High Life

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...

Nov 19, 1989 — Almost as long as they’ve been able to talk, films have been able to sing and dance. Frequently high-style, often rapturously romantic, most musicals have nonetheless been content to remain light, sophisticated entertainment. Still, there has always been a minority...

Mar 15, 1989 — When Darling debuted in 1965, Bosley Crowther of the New York Times remarked that director John Schlesinger had “made a film that will set tongues to wagging and moralists wringing their hands.” There was plenty of tongue-wagging over this satirical...

Mar 4, 1989 — Alec Guinness used his new-found prominence and clout to initiate a long-cherished ambition, to bring Joyce Cary’s most famous novel to the screen.

Nov 14, 1988 — It is sometimes as important to be in touch with the truths of your own time as it is to be in touch with its metaphors. 2001: A Space Odyssey, one of the most influential films ever made, constructed a...

Sep 5, 1988 — A wild mixture of gangster thriller, slapstick comedy, and bittersweet romance, François Truffaut’s second film was one of the signal works of the French New Wave.

Dec 6, 1987 — Mike Nichols’s treatment of a young man’s initiation into the mysteries of sex at the hands of an older married woman has become a model for this common fantasy.

Oct 12, 1987 — Akira Kurosawa’s thrilling Cinemascope epic is set squarely within the traditions of the Japanese film genre known as the “Chambara.”

Dec 1, 1986 — Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) is one cult film that has also won over the cultivated buff. As Peter Morris remarks (in his Dictionary of Films): “Though one of the subtlest films of the genre, containing little...

Mar 10, 2003 — The Swedish director of I Am Curious explains how he fused the themes of eroticism, self-exploration, voyeurism, and nonviolence into a film about the new freedoms of the young. QUESTION: I Am Curious seemed to be a cinematic Tristram Shandy,...