To Be and to Have

Mar 14, 2018 — Bette Davis struck a blow against expectations of pliant female loveliness and grace with her role as a no-nonsense teacher in The Corn Is Green.

Dec 20, 2017 — In her latest column, critic Imogen Sara Smith explains how cinematographer Henri Decaë brought a risk-taking spirit and seductive allure to some of the most iconic French crime films.

Nov 2, 2017 — Two leading figures in American independent cinema talk about the challenges of bringing their visions to life on shoestring budgets.

Aug 22, 2017 — French cinema titan Sacha Guitry brings a savage misanthropy to this exploration of a toxic marriage and the arbitrariness of the legal system.

Aug 24, 2016 — During a 2006 meeting with the author, French New Wave icon Jeanne Moreau reminisced about working with Orson Welles, Louis Malle, and François Truffaut, and her turn to acting as a means of eluding the “destiny of a regular girl.”

Apr 27, 2016 — In Phoenix, Christian Petzold sets his nuanced melodrama of postwar German-Jewish identity within a starkly realist aesthetic, making newly fascinating use of his enduring interest in the tensions between the real and the artificial.

Feb 3, 2015 — Jean-Luc Godard returned to the character-driven intensity of his earlier films with this satirical but serious-minded take on men, women, and money.

Nov 10, 2014 — Monte Hellman’s existential westerns take Beckett to the desert.

Jul 15, 2014 — Among the brainiest of all horror movies, David Cronenberg’s film goes beyond shock to investigate a disturbing world of psychic mutation.

Jun 23, 2014 — Peter Davis’s provocative, Oscar-winning Hearts and Minds, released to the American public in 1974, is that rare documentary whose truths and relevance have been underlined and amplified by the passage of time. The title is derived from President Lyndon B....