Force: Five

Jul 1, 2014 — The author’s recollections of the great English actor.

Jun 16, 2014 — Georges Franju evokes the surreal silent serials of Louis Feuillade while constructing his own personal cinematic paradise.

May 27, 2014 — Howard Hawks was both a skillful Hollywood craftsman and a deeply personal artist, and this western of uncommon wit and grandeur is among his greatest and quirkiest films.

May 6, 2014 — This humorous magazine piece from 1970 sheds some light on the meaning of the title of Il sorpasso, along with the way Vittorio Gassman comports himself behind the wheel in it.

Apr 22, 2014 — Carl Theodor Dreyer’s spare and modern visual style perfectly complements this comic and soulful domestic comeuppance story.

Apr 21, 2014 — A real-life prison uprising inspired this two-fisted tale directed by Don Siegel, who would go on to make many more films about men in extreme situations.

Feb 28, 2014 — Other first films exude the sparkling joy of filmmaking that one feels in Breathless, but how many can boast its sure-handedness?

Feb 24, 2014 — A film of explosive passions, Abdellatif Kechiche’s coming-of-age triumph is about much more than just physical pleasure.

Feb 4, 2014 — When François Truffaut was a twenty-three-year-old film critic, in 1955, he read an autobiographical first novel by a seventy-four-year-old writer, Henri-Pierre Roché. “The book overwhelmed me,” he later recalled, “and I wrote: If I ever succeed in making films, I...

Jan 22, 2014 — When it came time to assemble the Criterion release of It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, using Jack’s classic art was a no-brainer, and we were thrilled to find the man himself willing to revisit the film and provide...