The Thing

Aug 19, 2002 — René Clair’s musical comedy comprises a window on a particular lost black and white neverworld—bouncy with melody, soaked in spring light, wistful about the conflicted relationship between serendipity and love.

Nov 19, 2001 — Luis Buñuel’s drama is a seductive work that exemplifies, even as it studies, the perversity of human desire.

Aug 20, 2001 — Carl Dreyer considers the work of art’s soul in this excerpt from Dreyer in Double Reflection.

Jan 29, 2001 — Masahiro Shinoda’s historical drama uses traditional elements of Japanese theater to explore the tension between ethics and eroticism.

Sep 18, 2000 — Serving as codirector with Anthony Asquith, Leslie Howard found one of the finest roles of his career in this witty adaptation written by George Bernard Shaw.

Jul 17, 2000 — Designed to steam viewers’ glasses, Roger Vadim’s directorial debut boldly announced the arrival of Brigitte Bardot.

Sep 19, 1994 — The French do not have to take crash courses in order to deal with the man/woman thing. It is in their blood and in their civilization. Hence, they do not have to compensate for a habitual sexism with extravagant portraits...

Apr 19, 1994 — Rivaled only by Fritz Lang and G. W. Pabst as Germany’s greatest director of the silent age, Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau was a tireless formal innovator exhilaratingly difficult to pin down. If his 1922 horror epic Nosferatu represented an apex of...

Mar 31, 1991 — In Jacques Tati’s final work, the physical borders of spectacle and audience are broken down through a variety of means.

Jan 28, 1991 — The following review, one of the most renowned in the history of film criticism, appeared in The New Yorker magazine on October 28, 1972. It is reprinted with the permission of the author, Pauline Kael. Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in...