Cela s’appelle l’aurore

Apr 4, 2013 — 1. Director Robert Bresson originally titled his screenplay Aide-toi . . ., a reference to the French expression “Aide-toi et le ciel t’aidera” (“Heaven helps those who help themselves”). He ultimately decided instead to use the title Devigny’s journalistic account of his...

Mar 26, 2013 — Charlie Chaplin manages to make a ruthless murderer likable in his brilliant satire of middle-class morality.

Mar 25, 2013 — Robert Bresson’s prison-break story is a tale of religious faith and a work of striking purity.

Mar 18, 2013 — Using a 1958 murder spree as a narrative springboard, Terrence Malick fashioned a fractured fairy tale about American innocence lost.

Jan 16, 2013 — Both sparkling and suspenseful, Alfred Hitchcock’s benchmark thriller is the perfect getaway, and it set the scene for much of the master’s later work.

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 25, 2012 — The following piece by Sunday Bloody Sunday screenwriter Penelope Gilliatt originally appeared as the introduction to the 1971 U.S. publication of the script. A friend of mine who had started scrubbing at fourteen and went on to be a barmaid...

May 23, 2012 — Iranian master director Abbas Kiarostami voyaged to Italy to make a film that questions love, relationships, and Western art cinema.

Apr 17, 2012 — Maybe it is something to do with the sensual seductiveness of cinema: as new-millennium Americans, we care nothing for Japa­nese poetry, little for Japanese painting and fiction, and certainly too much for Japanese cartoons, and yet Yasujiro Ozu, the least...

Mar 27, 2012 — Noël Coward and David Lean created a patriotic diptych with their first two films: In Which We Serve, from 1942, about the bravery and sacrifice of British sailors and those who love them, and the 1944 This Happy Breed, on...