Wife

Apr 17, 2006 — Another movie, another cause célèbre: this mysterious film by Orson Welles has been dismissed as a disaster and hailed as a masterpiece.

Mar 27, 2006 — Louis Malle’s coming-of-age drama offers an unusually full and individualized characterization of a boy whose yearnings, sensitivities, and fantasies outstrip his personality.

Feb 13, 2006 — Jean Renoir’s classic film shows the natural world and the power of technology as wedded through the closely coordinated labor—effected through glances and sign language—of two men.

Jan 23, 2006 — Ingmar Bergman was enjoying one of the happiest spells of his life while making The Virgin Spring (1960). On a personal level, he was felicitously ensconced in his fourth marriage, to the concert pianist Käbi Laretei. And, professionally, he was...

Jan 11, 2006 — The typical midlife crisis, to which we all fall victim in some major or minor degree, came to Fellini with a slight delay. On the twentieth of January, 1960, the day of his fortieth birthday, he was, in fact, too...

Jan 5, 2006 — A gray flannel ghost story in which the living haunt the dead, the least appreciated of Akira Kurosawa’s midperiod collaborations with Toshiro Mifune throws open the windows of Japanese corporate corruption.

Jan 5, 2006 — Akira Kurosawa appreciated Shake­speare’s knack for linking the private and the political, threading a tale of corruption and revenge through a tangle of blood ties.

Nov 21, 2005 — Akira Kurosawa’s late masterpiece is a tragedy fed by Shakespeare, Noh, and the samurai epic; it shows human brutality, warfare, and suffering as if from the eye of a dispassionate God.

Nov 7, 2005 — Often appearing on lists of the ten greatest films of all time, called one of the most beautiful films ever made, or the most masterful work of Japanese cinema, Ugetsu comes to us awash in superlatives. No less acclaimed has...

Oct 24, 2005 — When Samurai Rebellion premiered, on May 27, 1967, the original Japanese title was Joiuchi—hairyo tsuma shimatsu, which means something like Rebellion—Receive the Wife. This title indicates the two concerns of the film: the social impact of an unheard-of act of...