The First World War

Apr 21, 2022 — In 1948, leftist filmmaker Leo Hurwitz directed a documentary whose title summed up the uncertainty of its moment: for America’s antifascists, the end of the Second World War was a Strange Victory indeed. Using newsreels from the war’s front lines,...

Aug 24, 2021 — Andrzej Wajda’s masterful portrait of postwar Poland pits Communist ideals against the bitter realities of a new order.

Jul 6, 2021 — The fourth of Andrei Tarkovsky’s seven features is his most oneiric and resistant to interpretation, drawing from the director’s own childhood memories to create a fluid sense of history.

Jun 30, 2021 — First Person The first thing I’d like to note is that long before I was briefly an usher in a movie theater, my father was briefly an usher in a movie theater. That might not be so much in my...

Jun 17, 2021 — On our minds this week: Lizzie Borden, Jenni Olson, Dorothy Arzner, Marguerite Duras, Jacques Rivette, and female detectives on television.

Apr 22, 2021 — Monte Hellman In 1965, Monte Hellman took a cast and crew to a desert in Utah and shot two westerns back to back. With The Shooting and Ride in the Whirlwind, Hellman introduced an existential dread and a Beckettian sense...

Dec 3, 2020 — One of cinema’s preeminent directors is currently at work on two new projects.

Oct 7, 2020 — Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project No. 3 Spanning almost fifty years and four continents, Criterion’s recently released third collection of films restored by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project is a treasure trove of discoveries, each illuminated by a unique...

Sep 29, 2020 — Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project No. 3 What can it mean for cinema to be revolutionary? Answering a version of this question in a 1977 interview, the Cuban filmmaker Humberto Solás stressed the importance of real-world context. In a capitalist...

Jun 30, 2020 — Come and See (1985) is one of those films whose authority is established from its opening moments. Out in the open air, an elderly peasant dressed in a soft-peaked beret is volleying a mixture of threats and imprecations into some...