Breathless

Feb 23, 2016 — Without any overt topical references, Mike Nichols’s The Graduate captured the zeitgeist of the 1960s and the dawning countercultural revolution.

Nov 18, 2015 — Richard Brooks’s In Cold Blood applied cinematic specificity and flair to the literary realism of Truman Capote’s classic “nonfiction novel.”

Jul 13, 2015 — “I think that in a few years, in ten, in twenty, or thirty years, we shall know whether Hiroshima mon amour was the most important film since the war, the first modern film of sound cinema.” That was Eric Rohmer,...

Jun 17, 2015 — Taking the form of a casual conversation, Louis Malle’s film about transformative experiences is an outgrowth of its writer-stars’ experimental theater days.

May 27, 2015 — You may not know his name, but Raoul Coutard is a crucial figure in modern cinema. A war photographer turned cinematographer, he was the camera man of choice for many directors of the French New Wave, shooting an astonishing array...

Feb 3, 2015 — Jean-Luc Godard returned to the character-driven intensity of his earlier films with this satirical but serious-minded take on men, women, and money.

Oct 21, 2014 — Federico Fellini’s frantic tragicomedy is such a classic it risks being underestimated.

Jul 24, 2014 — Everyday life gets a musical makeover in Jacques Demy’s tale of chance and love, a film of exquisitely sad happiness.

Jul 21, 2014 — Anouk Aimée’s beguiling chanteuse, the title character of Jacques Demy’s romantic debut feature, is the figure from whom the director’s entire cinematic world springs.

Jan 17, 2014 — The bravura centerpiece of Jules Dassin’s model heist thriller, Rififi, is the elaborately staged burglary itself—a nearly half-hour sequence without dialogue. With surgical precision, the film’s career criminals go about their business in silence—a brilliant directorial choice that leaves us...