The Swissmakers

Sep 10, 2013 — Novelist John Le Carré created one of literature’s most fascinating characters in Alec Leamas, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold’s main heavy, who is on a final, fateful mission in East Germany. In Martin Ritt’s movie version, now...

Aug 19, 2013 — This moving drama about gender, race, and class in 1960s Kolkata is a pioneering work from Satyajit Ray.

Aug 13, 2013 — No filmmaker in history has been able to wrap an audience around his finger like Alfred Hitchcock. In honor of the Master of Suspense’s birthday (he would be 114 today), here’s a delightful clip from The Illustrated Hitchcock, a 1972...

Aug 6, 2013 — If you’ve seen Boogie Nights, There Will Be Blood, or virtually any other film directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, you know that he is enamored of ornate tracking shots. So it’s no surprise that he’s a fan of Max Ophuls,...

Aug 5, 2013 — For those of us who rank The Earrings of Madame de . . . at the top of our list of all-time favorite films, the mystery is why our passion isn’t universally shared. Every year, thanks to committed revival houses,...

Jul 30, 2013 — A caption for the video could go here and be however long it needed to be, within reason, of course.

Jul 29, 2013 — Guillermo del Toro’s historical thriller and supernatural horror film The Devil’s Backbone is clearly the work of a film artist with an immense imagination. But according to the writer-director, it was also inspired by a real-life experience that haunts him...

Jul 23, 2013 — Asked by French journalists in a 2001 interview what recent films he most admired, Brian De Palma named Ang Lee’s 1997 The Ice Storm. It was surprising to hear one of the leaders of a filmmaking revolution that aimed at...

Jul 9, 2013 — Today, we mostly know the great Japanese star Kinuyo Tanaka for her ability to disappear into roles in such films as The Life of Oharu, Ugetsu, and The Ballad of Narayama. But in the late 1940s, she was a personality...

Jul 8, 2013 — With its marvelous, distinctive camera work, Kenji Mizoguchi’s searing drama is as technically remarkable as it is humane.