Umbracle

Jun 21, 2004 — Indefatigably productive, ingenious, exasperating, narcissistically didactic, slyly self-promoting, abject, generous, exploitative, devoted to the wretched of the earth with honest fervor and deluded romanticism: Pier Paolo Pasolini can easily exhaust the adjective-prone, as man and artist, his person and his...

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,...

Dec 16, 1991 — Lady for a Day represented a watershed in the career of Frank Capra. The young director had been laboring at Columbia Pictures’ Poverty Row Studio, churning out 18 films in less than six years. He had moved from low-budget programmers...

The actor and director praises Midnight Cowboy as “a miracle of a movie,” calls James Stewart his favorite actor, and talks about discovering John Cassavetes’s films in his teenage years.

Aug 29, 2024 — Beetlejuice Beetlejuice has some critics rolling their eyes, while others embrace his unique and newly reinvigorated vision.

Jul 26, 2022 — A seductive brew of decadence, dada, and drag, the German director’s fantastical films embrace the possibilities of female visual pleasure.

Dan Callahan is the author of Barbara Stanwyck: The Miracle Woman (2012), Vanessa: The Life of Vanessa Redgrave (2014), two volumes of The Art of American Screen Acting (2018 and 2019), The Camera Lies: Acting for Hitchcock (2020), and the...

David Forgacs is Professor of Contemporary Italian Studies at New York University. His recent publications include a history of violence in modern Italy. His other contributions for the Criterion Collection include a filmed interview on Miracle in Milan (Vittorio De...

Apr 19, 2022 — Vittorio De Sica’s neorealist fable deploys barbed humor and surreal flourishes to depict class solidarity and human kindness in postwar Italy.

Aug 27, 2026 — She was a winning presence on the big screen, even if her movies were only a fraction of her monumental impact on popular culture.