Dark Water

Aug 18, 2003 — One of the Swedish director’s most representative works, this drama’s portentousness, banked intensity, and recondite symbolism come near to embodying the popular stereotype of the Bergmanesque.

May 26, 2003 — Transcription of a speech given by long-time Derek Jarman collaborator and friend, actress Tilda Swinton

Nov 19, 2001 — Luis Buñuel’s drama is a seductive work that exemplifies, even as it studies, the perversity of human desire.

May 21, 2001 — Akira Kurosawa’s period film not only commemorated historical Japanese myths with new, vivid feeling but also created the source for many of the enduring entertainment tropes in world cinema today.

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...

Jan 11, 1999 — This epic reimagining of medieval Russia was the most historically audacious production made in the twenty-odd years after Sergei Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible.

Jan 11, 1988 — In Young and Innocent (1937) Alfred Hitchcock uses all the signs in his visual vocabulary to tell one of his favorite stories: fugitive hero unjustly accused of murder. Yet this is also a story of youth and innocence triumphant—a light...

Jan 4, 1988 — The Secret Agent (1936) came to life in the prime of Alfred Hitchcock’s British period. It arrived between the popular triumph of The 39 Steps and the box-office rejection of Sabotage, a more daringly downbeat work. Secret Agent partakes of...

Oct 15, 2050 — Voice-over narration has existed since the beginnings of cinema and has been an integral part of some of the great masterworks of narrative film, from The Magnificent Ambersons to Double Indemnity to Jules and Jim to Taxi Driver. It spans...

Oct 16, 2024 — This month, celebrate Noirvember with a dazzlingly dark lineup of hard-boiled pleasures.