The Big Street

May 3, 2013 — Did You See This?• Watch (above) or read Steven Soderbergh’s already famous state-of-the-art address. • Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig hit the streets. • Talk about micro-cinema! • Charting the course of neorealism across continents • Talking to Olivier Assayas,...

Sep 18, 2012 — Marcel Carné’s theatrical spectacle set in early nineteenth-century Paris is an operatic work about passion and artifice.

Feb 14, 2012 — For nearly three decades, Hideo Gosha (1929–1992) made some of the most explosive, artful, and original films in Japanese cinema. Along the way, he also became one of his country’s most established and acclaimed filmmakers. But his reputation in the...

Jun 20, 2011 — Genres collide in the great Hollywood movies of the mid­fifties cold-war thaw. With the truce in Korea and the red scare on the wane, ambitious directors seemed freer to mix and match and even ponder the new situation. The western...

Aug 18, 2010 — Before Marcel Camus’ Black Orpheus showed up on American and European screens in 1959, what would later be known as the “art film” came in only a few shades of glum: Bergmanesque existentialism, Japanese samurai tragedy, stories of Italian peasant...

Jul 19, 2010 — “Why do you want to dance?” “Why do you want to live?” A question followed by another question stands at the beating heart of The Red Shoes. It’s an entirely rhetorical exchange, but it underscores the power and the mystery...

Mar 26, 2007 — Across five films, the Swedish director defined his guiding themes and cinematic style.

Oct 24, 2005 — Kihachi Okamoto’s subversion of the samurai movie possesses the same gritty, stark realism with regard to imagery and body count, yet the tone is decidedly comic.

Dec 6, 2004 — It’s hard to believe that M was made in 1931. If we allow for the fact that it’s in black and white, it is more engaging to the eye, more incisive in its irony, more firm in its grasp of...

Jul 9, 2001 — John Schlesinger’s beloved dramedy subverts the conventions of British kitchen-sink realism.