The Fragments Project

Dec 1, 2020 — The brochure for the 1961 Lincoln Continental line makes the six-seater luxury sedans look almost dainty. They come in pretty pastels: a cream called Sultana White, a fizzy yellow known as Sunburst, an ice-cream-parlor blue-green dubbed Turquoise Mist. A gloved...

Mar 30, 2018 — This spectacular and technically ambitious Hollywood musical is a priceless window onto American pop culture’s view of itself in the 1930s.

Jan 16, 2018 — The ravages of poverty in contemporary Britain are translated with vivid authenticity in this drama from celebrated filmmaker Ken Loach.

May 2, 2017 — On a trip to the Library of Congress’s Mostly Lost workshop—affectionately known as “film-geek heaven”—Imogen Sara Smith joined early-cinema aficionados in uncovering treasures from the vaults.

Aug 24, 2010 — Josef von Sternberg’s The Last Command (1928) was first and foremost a star vehicle for Emil Jannings, the internationally known, Swiss-born actor, who had left Germany in October 1926 to work for Paramount Pictures. During his two and a half...

Nov 25, 2020 — “Yes, life is a dream, but sometimes that dream is a fatal abyss.” Wanda in The White Sheik (1952) I have a vivid memory from the first film-studies class I enrolled in, a class on Italian neorealism, where the weekly...

Jul 21, 2008 — Akira Kurosawa’s modern adaptation of an American thriller represents a departure from his usual themes and stylistic choices.

Dec 9, 2013 — The critic and WCP executive director offers a personal take on art cinema and a primer on the project’s scope and mission.

Dec 27, 2017 — It’s been a while since we gathered news of projects in the works, but even as announcements started thinning as the holidays approached, a few of them are well worth noting in a quick roundup here. For example, Josh and...

Oct 7, 2017 — “Claire Denis’s new film, Let the Sun Shine In, about a middle-aged woman’s romantic adventures, refracts personal experience in the form of a modernistic screwball comedy,” writes the New Yorker’s Richard Brody. “Juliette Binoche brings luminous intensity and wicked humor...