The Criminal Code

Jan 11, 2017 — A revelatory restoration of Lewis Milestone’s underappreciated newsroom comedy accentuates the film’s punchy rhythms and breakneck banter.

Mar 17, 2008 — In its portrayal of the long international arm of crime families, Alberto Lattuada’s ingenious comedy offers a prescient look at globalization.

Nov 16, 2022 — After glimpsing his great-great-grandfather on-screen, a writer searches for the history of a landmark silent film.

Mar 16, 2020 — This month we’re reading about Helen Scott, a liaison between Paris and Hollywood; Anna Karina’s novels; William Faulkner’s screenplays; and more.

Jan 18, 2018 — To Save and Project: The 15th MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation opens tonight with William K. Howard’s Transatlantic (1931; image above), “a pre-Code comedy firmly set during the golden age of ocean travel,” as Caroline Golum notes at Screen...

Nov 17, 2014 — Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable’s effortless banter is pure magic, but Frank Capra’s comedy is rooted in the reality of the times.

Sep 24, 1992 — It was in 1947 that Vladimir Nabokov began writing what he described as “a short novel about a man who liked little girls.” Completed in 1954, the manuscript was rejected as pornographic by at least four New York publishers. Nabokov...

Jan 14, 2014 — Jules Dassin’s atmospheric, genre-defining heist thriller combines American virtuosity with French cool.

Jan 6, 2003 — With its casually comfortable exoticism, abstruse locale, and beautifully sympathetic anti-hero, Julien Duvivier’s film established a narrative paradigm that persists today.

Aug 30, 2021 — Next month, we’re headed to the Big Apple with a century-spanning survey of New York on-screen.