Despair

Jul 6, 2015 — The Killers (1946) is exemplary film noir from Robert Siodmak, who, on the strength of three films—this, Phantom Lady (1944), and Criss Cross (1949)—stands beside his fellow European exiles Fritz Lang and Otto Preminger as one of noir’s crucial directors....

Jun 25, 2015 — German director Bernhard Wicki proved his uncommon cinematic skill with his heartbreaking tale of teen soldiers sent off to die near the end of World War II.

Jun 1, 2015 — A legionnaire turned fruit seller misses out on Germany’s economic miracle in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s breakthrough melodrama.

Apr 20, 2015 — "Afilm about India without elephants and tiger hunts”—this was how Jean Renoir described his objective in making The River. Guided by Rumer Godden’s autobiographical novel, he rejected the India of exotic action and spectacle to make a meditative, almost mystical...

Mar 16, 2015 — Director and star Robert Montgomery suffuses his moody 1947 New Mexico–set noir with palpable postwar anxiety and expressive fatalism.

Jan 13, 2015 — Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s characters play an endlessly layered game of dress-up in this tale of sadomasochistic love.

Jan 12, 2015 — The author remembers the late filmmaker.

Nov 10, 2014 — Monte Hellman’s existential westerns take Beckett to the desert.

Oct 2, 2014 — The following is a chapter on The Innocents from cinematographer Freddie Francis’s memoir, The Straight Story from “Moby Dick” to “Glory.” It is reproduced here courtesy of Scarecrow Press. The last picture I worked on as a cinematographer in my...

Sep 16, 2014 — The following interview is from filmmaker and writer Chris Rodley’s 1997 book Lynch on Lynch. The interviews in the book were conducted by Rodley between January 1993 and December 1996. Eraserhead took five years to complete. You must have been...