The Shadow Play

Aug 23, 2022 — With one foot in naturalism and the other in dreams and poetry, Marcel Carné’s visually rousing drama is an ode to the daily vicissitudes of ordinary Parisians.

Jun 1, 2022 — With his love of dissonance and bold use of dramatic motifs, the Hungarian-born composer Miklós Rózsa popularized a whole new style of film music.

Jul 23, 2019 — He even walks in stereo. So proclaims a kid on a stoop toward the beginning of Do the Right Thing; he’s stunned by the sun but also by the sight and sound of Radio Raheem. Raheem is silent but so...

Dec 17, 2025 — Spike Lee captures the democratic spirit and the galvanizing, near-spiritual feeling of togetherness at the heart of David Byrne’s acclaimed stage production.

Jul 29, 2025 — MoMA presents new restorations of three films from Germany and four from Hollywood.

Jul 18, 2024 — A pioneer of the 1980s downtown New York arts scene, the director of Sleepwalk talks about navigating her creative life in the city and the inspiration she has taken from mythology, fairy tales, and cinéma fantastique.

Jul 19, 2022 — Our midsummer books roundup opens with one sharp critique and one celebration of American popular culture.

Dec 26, 2021 — As the holiday season begins to wind down, we’re proud to close out another year in our online magazine by looking back at a few of our favorite essays and interviews.

May 18, 2021 — The 1892 Chinese novel The Sing-Song Girls of Shanghai opens with a prologue in which the author, Han Ziyun, writes from his own perspective, providing a gateway into the book by describing a dream he has had. Referring to himself...

Mar 5, 2021 — When the photographer Mary Ellen Mark died in 2015 at age seventy-five from myelodysplastic syndrome, she left behind a vast and varied five-decade trail of portraits and documentary pictures, collected in twenty books and dozens of exhibitions, radical in their...