The American President

Apr 27, 2017 — 1. As I began work on The Kennedy Films of Robert Drew and Associates, I knew that 1960’s Primary was really the birth of what we think of as the modern documentary: observational photography based on access to an interesting subject, presenting...

Jan 11, 2017 — A revelatory restoration of Lewis Milestone’s underappreciated newsroom comedy accentuates the film’s punchy rhythms and breakneck banter.

Apr 26, 2016 — “It is not an exaggeration to say that before Primary, documentary as we know it today—the art of candid observation—didn’t exist,” writes Thom Powers.

Mar 15, 2016 — Set during the height of McCarthy-era paranoia and arriving in 1962, in the middle of the Cuban Missile Crisis, John Frankenheimer’s high-anxiety Communist conspiracy thriller tapped into the darkest fears of Cold War America.

Mar 25, 2015 — Long unheralded and at last rediscovered, actor-director Robert Montgomery’s Ride the Pink Horse is one of the key Hollywood features of 1947, the year film noir flooded the screen like a ruptured reservoir of India ink. Adapted from the popular...

Mar 19, 2015 — The author recalls his encounters and correspondence with the filmmaker.

Mar 16, 2015 — Director and star Robert Montgomery suffuses his moody 1947 New Mexico–set noir with palpable postwar anxiety and expressive fatalism.

Aug 31, 2012 — He was a doctor, explorer, and anthropologist in addition to being a director. Learn more about the fascinating man who made Lonesome.

Jul 11, 2025 — This week: A new Paul Vecchiali restoration, late revisions from P. Adams Sitney, and Charli XCX on Jacques Rivette.

Jun 10, 2025 — At MoMA, curator David Schwartz celebrates seventeen landmark New York screening venues.