The Swissmakers

Oct 24, 2019 — Studio Visits Arguably the greatest movie monster of all time, Godzilla has appeared on countless screens, posters, and merchandise since it first stomped its way into theaters in 1954. While working on the cover of Godzilla: The Showa-Era Films, 1954–1975—one...

Oct 1, 2019 — Charlie Chaplin’s sidesplitting The Circus, the last movie he made during the silent era, is a true testament to the man’s genius, not only as a comedian in front of the camera but also as a director behind it. The...

Sep 13, 2019 — With The Cloud-Capped Star, Bengali director Ritwik Ghatak reinvented the melodrama. The story of a refugee family’s increasing dependence on self-sacrificing eldest daughter Neeta (Supriya Choudhury), the 1960 film makes innovative use of an array of striking techniques—including elliptical editing,...

Aug 30, 2019 — In 1933, Japan withdrew from the League of Nations, after being censured for its invasion of Manchuria. Despite this, the majority of Japanese people remained avid consumers of American movies and Western fashion, which exasperated the militarists in power. A...

Aug 28, 2019 — Over the course of their legendary thirty-five year creative partnership, director Yasujiro Ozu and screenwriter Kogo Noda together conceived twenty-seven films, many of them masterpieces. Their long, close collaboration—which produced such gently profound, internationally celebrated family portraits as Late Spring...

Aug 16, 2019 — In making her nonfiction film The Inland Sea (1991), a poetic chronicle of a journey around the Japanese islands of the eponymous body of water, director Lucille Carra relied on a tried-and-true itinerary. A 1971 travelogue by Donald Richie, also...

Aug 7, 2019 — Studio Visits Brooklyn native Danielle Mastrion draws a great deal of inspiration from the city that she calls home—and also often uses it as her canvas. A socially conscious, classically trained painter who taught herself to work in aerosol, Mastrion...

Jul 29, 2019 — Three decades after its release, Spike Lee’s masterpiece Do the Right Thing stands as one of the most politically audacious, and visually captivating, films of his career. With the help of cinematographer Ernest Dickerson, Lee vividly captured a sweltering summer...

Jul 22, 2019 — As the Provençal baker at the heart of Marcel Pagnol’s wise, warm 1938 comedy The Baker’s Wife, French star Raimu moves effortlessly between comic exaggeration and touching subtlety, creating a protagonist as lovably dignified as he is incorrigibly flawed. The...

Jul 18, 2019 — With its picturesque Provençal village, florid theatrical dialogue, and cast of familiar southern-French actors, dominated by the formidable Raimu, The Baker’s Wife is classic Marcel Pagnol territory. In 1938, when the film was released, the feted author and playwright was...