The Stories

Nov 18, 2010 — In Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter, terror and tenderness grapple with each other as profoundly as the words HATE and LOVE when they’re tattooed, one per hand, across the knuckles of the sadistic preacher Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum)....

Sep 28, 2010 — “The past, again and again.” —Major Jack Celliers, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence Nagisa Oshima’s filmmaking career began with the risen sun—or rather, with the promise of a sun soon to rise: Tomorrow’s Sun (1959), a dizzyingly designed faux “coming attraction”...

Aug 14, 2006 — “Some people think rohmer is in league with the devil,” wrote cinematographer Nestor Almendros in his book of autobiographical reflections on the cinema, A Man with a Camera. He was describing his working experience on My Night at Maud’s (1969)....

Jul 4, 1994 — Mike Leigh was born in the north of England in 1943. He was trained in the theater at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and in film at the London Film School. When he arrived in London in the early...

Oct 29, 2021 — A lost Iranian melodrama returns, Reverse Shot and Caligari tell us scary stories, and Robert Mitchum is the star of Noirvember.

Dec 21, 2022 — Many of the most notable films of the year tell deeply personal stories.

Aug 28, 1995 — Three Cases of Murder is of most interest to American audiences for Orson Welles’s flamboyant and bravura performance as Lord Mountdrago. However, it’s equally important as a showcase for Wendy Toye, one of Britain’s first female directors, and star Alan...

The musician selects classic love stories like I Know Where I’m Going! and The Earrings of Madame de . . ., talks about the dramatic suspense of Elevator to the Gallows, and reenacts a favorite moment from Band of Outsiders.

Rebecca Bengal is a writer born in western North Carolina and the author of the collection Strange Hours. Her stories, essays, and interviews have been published by the Paris Review, Aperture, the Guardian, the New Yorker, and Oxford American.

Feb 12, 2025 — As the magazine celebrates its centennial, Film Forum presents a series of stories drawn from its pages.