The Woman Who Ran

Jan 18, 2011 — In his Life Studies poem “To Speak of Woe That Is in Marriage,” Robert Lowell wrote of “free-lancing out along the razor’s edge,” a lean, glamorous, tense phrasing that invokes the Samuel Fuller of the early sixties—a director suddenly without...

Mar 27, 2012 — The mysterious letter was signed “Joe.” David Lean’s lawyer had sent me a batch of old correspondence. Struggling with a biography of Lean, I was desperate for any leads, and this one seemed worth following up. But how does one...

Apr 21, 2017 — George Stevens’s Oscar-winning comedy captures the first sparks of attraction that ignited one of the great on- and offscreen romances in Hollywood history.

Jan 5, 2026 — One of France’s biggest stars took the world by storm before her reputation took a turn.

Aug 3, 2020 — The British director of sprightly musicals, wrenching family dramas, and gripping political thrillers was seventy-six.

Feb 23, 2016 — Without any overt topical references, Mike Nichols’s The Graduate captured the zeitgeist of the 1960s and the dawning countercultural revolution.

Dec 4, 2020 — Forty years after her death, people still imitate Mae West’s voice: that slinky contralto drawl that hit each Brooklyn-inflected vowel like a cab driver leaning on his horn. The voice would be memorable even if she had by some wild...

Feb 28, 2018 — A few days ago, we ran an essay here by Pico Iyer on Satyajit Ray’s The Hero (1966), followed by Meheli Sen’s comments on Uttam Kumar’s performance within the context of his stardom. Iyer has more to say and, writing...

Oct 1, 2017 — “Noah Baumbach has always been a writer-director of no formal distinction, but he's possessed with a keen eye and ear for the intricacies of pettiness, humiliation, and schadenfreude,” begins Steve Macfarlane at Slant. “His new film, The Meyerowitz Stories (New...

Jan 4, 2024 — Critics and filmmakers remember a subtle giant of the stage and screen.