The Message

Jan 11, 2011 — Jean-Pierre Melville’s film Army of Shadows (1969) gives a dramatic account of the extreme dangers faced by the French who resisted the German occupation of 1940–1944. The time of the story is unspecified, but it is probably 1943, late enough...

Jun 29, 2010 — Photography, the basis of cinema, is also the foundation of Jan Troell’s Everlasting Moments. The Swedish title of Troell’s feature, his fourteenth, translates as Maria Larsson’s Everlasting Moments, which alludes to the photographs taken by its lead character, images of...

Jan 26, 2010 — Roberto Rossellini’s second postwar film was released in the United States as Paisan, and one can understand why the distributors wanted to use a title familiar to many Americans as meaning “friend” or “countryman” for a work that is at...

Feb 23, 2017 — Pedro Almodóvar’s Oscar-nominated breakthrough revels in the complexities of the female psyche.

Dec 13, 2022 — A pioneering feminist artist drawn to universal themes, the Swedish director mined the complexity and humor of human behavior in films that courted controversy and cultivated a sense of detachment.

May 25, 2022 — Park returns to the competition in Cannes with a Hitchcockian murder mystery.

Sep 29, 2021 — Luchino Visconti’s scandalous antifascist melodrama envisions the liquidation of desire with expressionistic panache.

Oct 20, 2008 — Though he had been directing films since the silent era, Kenji Mizoguchi didn’t become an international sensation until after the Second World War, benefiting from a new fascination with Japan’s cinematic output.

Sep 21, 2021 — Johnnie To pays homage to Akira Kurosawa in this martial arts drama about the virtue of struggle and self-improvement.

May 11, 2020 — This week’s round comes loaded with lists: 100 novels about cinema, fifty novelizations, and dozens of Sheila O’Malley’s favorite biographies.