W. C. Fields

Essays

Aug 28, 2000 The acclaimed humorist’s work sees the range of human folly sans romance and piety.

Summertime

Essays

Sep 8, 1998 In David Lean’s Summertime, in which Rossano Brazzi seduces Katharine Hepburn—an aging, repressed Ohio “working girl” on vacation in Venice—the Continental lover reached his pinnacle and approached his end. In the next decade, he would be embodied by Marcello Mastroianni,...

May 9, 1994 The importance of Two English Girls lies in its sheer vitality. The film is an extraordinary cinematic conjuring trick in which Truffaut draws the viewer both physically and visually into his own personal pleasures. He does this on a multitude...

May 25, 1992 If Max Ophuls hadn’t cooled his heels in Hollywood to flee the Nazis, his name might have conjured only the most unintelligible of foreign cinema—vague and inaccessible to the average American filmgoer. But in 1948 Ophuls was given an opportunity...

Dec 9, 1991 This rarely seen, overlooked gem, featuring what may be one of Marlon Brando’s most fascinating characterizations, was Gillo Pontecorvo’s worthy follow-up to his political masterpiece The Battle of Algiers. The brilliant radical Italian director achieved something unique in cinema, by...

Repulsion

Essays

Jan 7, 1991 Roman Polanski’s riposte to Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho was greeted as a brilliant, grisly potboiler that gave the thirty-two-year-old Polish filmmaker commercial entry to the West.

Apr 9, 1990 Few motion pictures have ever matched the 1938 Warner Bros. production of The Adventures of Robin Hood for sheer entertainment. Even today this film ranks high on any list of all-time favorites. Warner Bros. first considered filming The Adventures of...

Notorious

Essays

Feb 27, 1990 This 1946 Alfred Hitchcock classic ingeniously combines a romantic story with espionage and intrigue in Rio de Janeiro, mysterious wine bottles, lethal cups of coffee, and an all-important small key.

Sep 5, 1988 A wild mixture of gangster thriller, slapstick comedy, and bittersweet romance, François Truffaut’s second film was one of the signal works of the French New Wave.

This native of Houston, Texas, has influenced countless young independent filmmakers with his authentic portraits of adolescence and romantic discovery.

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