A Hero

Jun 19, 2006 — This essay originally appeared in the fanzine PHOTON (issue #22), in 1972. Stop-motion animation has been attracting a growing number of enthusiasts for about the last ten years, and though it seems the majority of these people must out of...

Jun 13, 2005 — Ernst Lubitsch was a big-city director. The historical dramas that he made in Germany in the late 1910s and early 1920s were known around the world for their distinctively urbane approach, focusing on the private lives of public people. This...

Feb 16, 2004 — Ronald Neame’s Tunes of Glory (1960), which was widely admired when it was first released, has subsequently kept a low profile. This says more about critical attitudes and British film culture than it does about the quality of the movie....

Oct 15, 2001 — Alfred Hitchcock’s classic thriller features two of Hollywood’s greatest stars, rendering their characters' grand romance in all its passion and perversity.

Nov 19, 1990 — By facing death, Akira Kurosawa fashions an affirmation of life, characteristically clear-headed in its exploration of man’s fate.

Jan 11, 1989 — Thursday, March 2, 1944—the United States is in its third year of war with the Axis powers. More than 12 million Americans are fighting on various fronts; the German armies are being repulsed at Anzio and the newspapers have large...

Aug 20, 2018 — The star and producer of The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez made a trailblazing intervention in an iconically American genre, creating an indelible portrait of a Latino American hero.

Apr 15, 1992 — When President Kennedy announced that Ian Fleming’s novels were amongst his favorite bedside reading, the international stage was set for the entrance of a new cinematic character. His name was Bond—James Bond. In 1962, Dr. No burst onto the screen...

Feb 26, 2018 — Film scholar Meheli Sen discusses the particular qualities that made Bengali actor Uttam Kumar a star and the perfect leading man for Satyajit Ray’s The Hero.

Jul 25, 2023 — In his five collaborations with actor Randolph Scott and producer Harry Joe Brown, Boetticher presents an unsentimental vision of honor-bound men competing and banding together in a desolate landscape ruled by chance.