On Falling

Oct 24, 2005 — Mirroring changes in awareness, politics, and lifestyle occurring across the globe, the chanbara (or Japanese swordplay film) underwent a significant metamorphosis in the early 1960s, acquiring a decidedly more radical spirit. Seemingly without warning, groundbreaking cinematic styles from beyond the...

Jun 27, 2005 — Like his earlier adaptations of Terence Rattigan plays, Anthony Asquith’s late work is bereft of heavy-handed directorial flourishes.

Sep 29, 2003 — Rainer Werner Fassbinder dedicated his final energies to bringing the lost, gray years of postwar Germany back to life.

Sep 23, 2002 — The theatricality of Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller makes the point that psychoanalysis is a sister to cinema rather than a rival.

Apr 19, 1994 — Rivaled only by Fritz Lang and G. W. Pabst as Germany’s greatest director of the silent age, Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau was a tireless formal innovator exhilaratingly difficult to pin down. If his 1922 horror epic Nosferatu represented an apex of...

Aug 12, 1991 — It is 1945. For the first time in four years, the Southern Pacific stops in Black Rock.  A one-armed man named John J. MacReedy (Spencer Tracy) steps off the train. This brooding stranger makes the few residents who inhabit the...

Nov 19, 1990 — By facing death, Akira Kurosawa fashions an affirmation of life, characteristically clear-headed in its exploration of man’s fate.

Jun 24, 1990 — Some films have become famous simply because they’ve sold a lot of tickets. Others have major studio publicity machines behind them, the better to hog the spotlight. Still others earn their fame the hard way through genuine critical acclaim. But...

Nov 11, 2025 — “It’s the end of the world, but keep dancing,” says Laxe.

Jun 9, 2021 — Lois Weber was Hollywood’s leading female director in the 1910s and 1920s. But also: she was one of the great directors of the silent era regardless of gender, a filmmaker of remarkable vision who exerted an exceptional degree of creative...