April

Jan 24, 2014 — Aki Kaurismäki first read Henri Murger’s Scènes de la vie de bohème in 1976. The highly influential 1851 book—an episodic novel about a group of starving artists that also inspired Puccini’s 1896 opera La bohème—captured the Finnish filmmaker’s imagination and,...

Jan 14, 2014 — Jules Dassin’s atmospheric, genre-defining heist thriller combines American virtuosity with French cool.

Jan 7, 2014 — Satyajit Ray was ailing when he made them, but these three works from the great filmmaker’s final years show an artist at the height of his powers.

Aug 26, 2013 — From the beginning, it was clear that Rainer Werner Fassbinder was destined to shake up German cinema.

Aug 20, 2013 — Satyajit Ray’s delicate masterpiece about forbidden love in the late nineteenth century is lovingly adapted from a novella by the great Rabindranath Tagore.

Apr 4, 2013 — Repertory PicksSince last fall, Janus Films’ traveling series The Films of Pierre Etaix has been introducing American moviegoers to an amazing, until now woefully overlooked, cinematic genius. This week, the retrospective hits the Denver Film Society, starting tomorrow and running...

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

Jan 10, 2013 — Repertory Picks Starting this weekend and running through April 24, the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley will be highlighting the vast career of Alfred Hitchcock, from his early British films to his later Hollywood thrillers. This Saturday, January 12, they’re...

Jan 8, 2013 — The two movies that opened the door to “youth culture” in Hollywood, The Graduate and Easy Rider, were milestones, to be sure. But can it really be said that they were milestones in the art of cinema? “I think The...

Nov 5, 2012 — The following originally appeared as the afterword to the 2003 New American Library edition of the novel Rosemary’s Baby. Having observed that the most suspenseful part of a horror story is before, not after, the horror appears, I was struck...