The Master

Nov 14, 2013 — Charlie Chaplin has such an easygoing, lovable on-screen persona, and his films such a graceful, effortless charm, that it’s easy to forget that the actor-director was a maniacal perfectionist. The following footage of Chaplin directing a crucial scene from his...

Feb 9, 2010 — You can’t keep a good woman, or a great movie about a good woman, down. By all accounts, goodness in the real Lola Montez reflected the vagaries of character, not talent. She was, as Cosmo Brown says of Lina Lamont...

With her mix of sultry glamour and no-nonsense wit, Jeanne Moreau has been the embodiment of intelligent French moviestardom for six decades. The Paris-born daughter of a Folies Bergère dancer and a restaurateur, Moreau started out as a stage actress...

Nov 16, 2008 — Chungking Express (1994) was the Masculin féminin of the 1990s, a pop-art movie about cool twentysomethings looking for love in the city that has replaced Paris as the center of the world-cinema imagination. What Jean-Luc Godard did for “the children...

Jul 9, 2007 — This unforgettable drama about damaged adolescents combines Jean Cocteau’s penchant for mythic poetry and Jean-Pierre Melville's knack for crafting intricate schemes.

Aug 18, 2009 — Jacques Tati’s masterpiece converts work into play so pleasurably that it turns the very acts of seeing and hearing into a form of dancing.

These ingenious early works by such masters as Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, and Yasujiro Ozu lay the foundations for screen comedy.

Jun 10, 2022 — This week: Sarah Maldoror and Wayne Wang, plus new issues and features and the return of Film Studies for Free.

May 3, 2018 — Two of the earliest films to depict the bombing of Hiroshima show how politics shapes national mourning.

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.