Quest for Love

May 12, 2014 — The Italian cinema expert describes the immense popularity of Dino Risi’s film in its home country, and the way it deepened the commedia all’italiana genre.

Apr 14, 2014 — Lars von Trier brought his brand of provocation to his widest audience yet with this inquiry into faith and human goodness.

Feb 28, 2014 — Other first films exude the sparkling joy of filmmaking that one feels in Breathless, but how many can boast its sure-handedness?

Jan 20, 2014 — Aki Kaurismäki pays wry tribute to the starving artist in his sad and funny update of Henri Murger’s classic book.

Apr 23, 2013 — Who is Pierre Etaix and where has he been all your life? This is the story of a filmmaker who was vanished, banished, skipped over. It’s as if one of those invisible cubicles mimes are always getting themselves shut in...

Oct 23, 2012 — After winning an Oscar, John Schlesinger used his newfound artistic freedom to make a personal film in which homosexuality is treated as groundbreakingly ordinary.

Aug 30, 2011 — “It is much less a film than it is myself,” Jean Cocteau wrote to a friend at the time he was making Orpheus (1950), “a kind of projection of the things that are important to me.” As with many of...

Oct 12, 2010 — One Every movie is two stories: the one it tells and the one that remains to be told about it by those involved in its creation. These two narratives converge in a certain current of the cinema of the past...

Apr 27, 2009 — The idea of making a film about Japan’s most famous sex crime, with a decent budget and in conditions of complete freedom, reawakened Nagisa Oshima’s desire to direct—and the prospect of circumventing Japanese censorship must have made the decision even...

Oct 22, 2007 — Through the alcohol-induced convulsive movements of Firmin, a fallen diplomat, John Huston puts what is perhaps his own fear of decline, of departure without making peace with one’s loved ones, on the screen.