The Class

Jul 30, 2015 — Repertory PicksTonight, the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley is welcoming the great Spanish director Víctor Erice (The Spirit of the Beehive, El sur), to talk about his career with film scholar Richard Peña. In addition to screening all of Erice’s...

Aug 17, 2009 — Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles is Chantal Akerman’s masterpiece, a mesmerizing study of stasis and containment, time and domestic anxiety. Stretching its title character’s daily household routine in long, stark takes, Akerman’s film simultaneously allows viewers to...

Mar 25, 2009 — J.Hoberman’s got a sharp and snazzy piece in the New York Times on American expat director Jules Dassin—just in time for Film Forum’s fifteen-film retrospective of his career. The blacklisted filmmaker of black-hearted crime dramas (and a couple of hot-blooded...

Feb 1, 1999 — After finishing Diabolique, heralded French director-screenwriter Henri-Georges Clouzot (1907–1977) confessed that all he had intended was to make a picture that would “amuse myself” and please a young girl who hid under the covers and asked her father to frighten...

Aug 17, 1992 — Blackmail was Alfred Hitchcock’s tenth picture in England, his second thriller and first British talkie—and it marked an important crossroads in film history. Hitchcock shot the film in 1929 as a silent picture, but when it was ready for silent...

Jul 25, 2023 — The protagonists in Budd Boetticher’s five classic Columbia westerns are paired with opponents who, venal though they may be, almost always have their reasons.

Nov 12, 2015 — The Writers Guild of America has just assembled a list of the “101 Funniest Screenplays” of all time, which pays tribute to comedy classics ranging from Buster Keaton's The General to James L. Brooks’s Broadcast News.

Aug 30, 2018 — World premieres, the best of the fests, and half a dozen classics selected by guest director Jonathan Lethem.

Mar 1, 2017 — The restoration teams at Warner Bros. and Criterion explain how they captured the silken texture of the nitrate print of Michael Curtiz’s classic noir melodrama.

Sep 9, 2013 — As outré as it is, the most subversive thing about this classic farce is its take on what’s normal.