About Time

Jul 9, 2017 — New York. “It’s Great to Be Alive may not be the nuttiest Hollywood musical of 1933—a year that brought the Marx Brothers’ Duck Soup—but it’s surely the only one to end with a production number in which the women of...

May 6, 2016 — The distinctive musician and composer discusses his instinctive approach to composition and the value of a total immersion into a film’s world.

Jan 13, 2014 — With economy and panache, Michael Mann established his existential crime drama style with this breakthrough first feature.

Aug 24, 2010 — T he Docks of New York is one of those orphaned silents, released in 1928, the very end of the era. Apparently, it was previewed the same week as Al Jolson’s The Singing Fool, his first “all-talking” picture, the follow-up...

Sep 29, 2008 — After Ozu died on his sixtieth birthday, December 12, 1963, some thirty-two diaries were discovered. They were from 1933 to 1963, and though a few years were missing, they offer a commentary on the life of the director and reveal...

Apr 24, 2006 — M ade in 1965 and still considered by many to be Marco Bellocchio’s masterpiece, Fists in the Pocket foreshadows the years of student protest in a family tragedy bordering on horror. This seminal first feature catapulted the twenty-six-year-old Bellocchio to...

May 25, 1992 — Cecil B. DeMille’s spectacle turned out to be the silent screen’s most elaborate realization of “the greatest story ever told.”

Jan 28, 2025 — We’re reading about Wes Anderson and David Cronenberg and looking forward to books on David Lynch and Pedro Almodóvar.

Jul 25, 2024 — During a tumultuous period in New York’s history, movies like Midnight Cowboy, Taxi Driver, and Shaft found excitement and squalor in one of the city’s most infamous tourist attractions.

Feb 18, 2021 — We’re reading about Visconti, Fellini, Tom Stoppard, Eartha Kitt, and Anton Walbrook.