Le Tonnerre de Jupiter

Feb 16, 2004 — Henri-Georges Clouzot took the standard ingredients of the Continental-Films detective movies and used them to make something darker and more complex—to make, in fact, the first classic French film noir.

Apr 15, 2002 — Jean-Pierre Melville’s first-class crime picture may be the most elegantly rigorous movie ever made about a cockeyed heist.

May 15, 2000 — In René Clair’s ebullient early talkie, an unsentimental love of humanity permeates every frame.

May 19, 2026 — “Last night, I was in the Kingdom of Shadows,” proclaimed Maxim Gorky, writing about an 1896 projection of films by Auguste and Louis Lumière in the Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod. “Suddenly a strange flicker passes through the screen and...

Sep 9, 2019 — In his thought-provoking latest book, the critic and frequent Criterion contributor traces the complex ways European filmmakers have grappled with the influences of Christianity and modernity.

Jun 14, 2011 —

Jul 11, 2005 — Luchino Visconti’s adaptation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s short story balances realism and fantasy.

Mark Le Fanu teaches film at University College London. He has written extensively about Russian and Japanese cinema. His most recent book, Believing in Film: Christianity and Classic European Cinema (Bloomsbury, 2018), has just been issued in paperback.

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...

Jul 18, 2017 — During a period of personal turmoil, Andrei Tarkovsky created this enigmatic masterpiece, which explores spiritual and metaphysical mysteries through the prism of a science-fiction epic.