Play

Oct 15, 2001 — Preston Sturges’s beloved comedy provides insights into the way Hollywood formulas work on us.

Sep 3, 2001 — The Maysles Brothers’ documentary classic exposes the diurnal rituals and disappointments of American men of a certain generation.

Aug 20, 2001 — Before Lars von Trier, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Andrei Tarkovsky, Ingmar Bergman, Robert Bresson there was Carl Th. Dreyer. The first great film artist to pursue the ineffable in cinema, Dreyer gave depth to what early silent filmmakers innately understood yet took...

Aug 20, 2001 — Preston Sturges’s generous-hearted satire achieves a synthesis that is both terribly funny and deeply moving.

Aug 20, 2001 — Carl Dreyer considers the work of art’s soul in this excerpt from Dreyer in Double Reflection.

Aug 20, 2001 — Carl Dreyer’s modern tragedy eschews melodrama, striking a balance between suffering and triviality.

Aug 20, 2001 — The strangeness of Ordet is something that no number of viewings, God willing, will rub off. I want to stress this strangeness. That Ordet is a great film, one of the greatest ever made, only a rash or foolish person...

Jul 9, 2001 — John Schlesinger’s classic is an exuberant satire of a society caught between its old ways and the urge to modernize.

Jul 9, 2001 — John Schlesinger’s beloved dramedy subverts the conventions of British kitchen-sink realism.

Jul 9, 2001 — With its dunderhead millionaires, erudite bums, effulgently dysfunctional families, and beneficent providence, My Man Godfrey is the Depression comedy par excellence. It is also, superficially at least, a movie about the Depression. A suicidal millionaire regains his zest for living...