Triumph of the Will

Sep 13, 2016 — Kenji Mizoguchi achieved the sublime with this structurally complex portrait of artistic ambition and female subjugation.

Mar 25, 2014 — Silent comedy superstar Harold Lloyd played big dreamers; few were more determined to succeed than the college football player Harold Lamb.

Jan 24, 2018 — One of the most memorable sequences in the silent classic People on Sunday explores the experience of being photographed and the tension between still and moving images.

Nov 11, 2013 — A boldly silent film in the talkie era, Charlie Chaplin’s masterpiece has a grace that has never been equaled.

Aug 26, 2022 — Louise Brooks, Marguerite Duras, Lucrecia Martel, and Jacquelyn Mills headline this week’s roundup.

Feb 15, 2018 — Think of The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) and pink pastels, purple uniforms, and the occasional splash of red may come to mind, offset by the ochres and faded wood grains of the scenes that frame the main story. Moonrise Kingdom...

Jun 23, 2014 — Peter Davis’s provocative, Oscar-winning Hearts and Minds, released to the American public in 1974, is that rare documentary whose truths and relevance have been underlined and amplified by the passage of time. The title is derived from President Lyndon B....

Dec 6, 2011 — The Lady Vanishes (1938) is the film that best exemplifies Alfred Htchcock’s often-asserted desire to offer audiences not a slice of life but a slice of cake. Even Claude Chabrol and Eric Rohmer, in their pioneering study of Hitchcock, for...

Dec 18, 1989 — When Tootsie opened in December, 1982, the ad copy read: “In the next 72 hours this desperate, unemployed actor will secretly audition for the female lead of a soap opera.”  That was the plot line to the movie even when...

Mar 19, 2024 — One of the first postrevolutionary Iranian films screened and celebrated internationally, Amir Naderi’s autobiographical masterpiece is a lyrical exploration of childhood that showcases the director’s gift for radical simplicity.