To Be and to Have

Mar 19, 2015 — The author recalls his encounters and correspondence with the filmmaker.

Jul 29, 2014 — Combining a tragic romance and the story of a workers’ strike, this musical melodrama is perhaps Jacques Demy’s most neglected masterpiece.

Mar 18, 2014 — In addition to technical brilliance and a humanist message, Akira Kurosawa’s adventure features one of the director’s strongest female characters.

Dec 11, 2012 — Philip Glass’s experimental operas and symphonic works of the 1960s and ’70s laid the groundwork for his hypnotic Qatsi scores.

Oct 19, 2010 — Clock­ing in at three hours and twenty-seven minutes, Seven Samurai’s lengthy runtime underscores the endurance of the samurai lifestyle, its toils and struggles.

Jun 17, 2010 — How do you make a comedy about something as serious as the Nazi threat of world domination—particularly as it is happening? Perhaps there’s something in the English character that allows them to see humor in disaster. Some sort of survival...

Jan 21, 2008 — While Agnès Varda was prescient in picking up on the new social phenomenon of France’s young female drifters, she also anticipated the culture of extreme individualism that has come to dominate Western society since the 1980s.

Sep 17, 2007 — G. W. Pabst’s adaptation of the play by Bertolt Brecht transforms the original without betraying it, softening its cynicism with humanity and integrating elements of psychoanalysis.

Feb 13, 2006 — Jean Renoir’s classic film shows the natural world and the power of technology as wedded through the closely coordinated labor—effected through glances and sign language—of two men.

Nov 9, 1987 — The stories French filmmaker Albert Lamorisse tells in these sharply crafted featurettes are simple, yet they cut straight to the heart of a child’s view of the world.