Ladies First

May 2, 2017 — On a trip to the Library of Congress’s Mostly Lost workshop—affectionately known as “film-geek heaven”—Imogen Sara Smith joined early-cinema aficionados in uncovering treasures from the vaults.

Apr 14, 2016 — In honor of our disc release last week of the classic John Frankenheimer thriller The Manchurian Candidate, we sat down to talk about the film with the director’s widow, actor Evans Frankenheimer.

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.

Dec 8, 2015 — In Speedy, Harold Lloyd, a comic genius who thought of himself as a quintessentially average American man, places his optimistic everyman character within the context of a society in shift, to great comedic effect.

Sep 29, 2015 — Merchant Ivory Productions’ sun-kissed romantic comedy is an effervescent tale of class and manners among the Edwardian English.

Aug 12, 2015 — Director Karel Reisz and writer Harold Pinter’s brilliant adaptation of John Fowles’s novel focuses on the experiences of women in two radically different eras.

May 11, 2015 — The poignancy of Leo McCarey's tearjerker is due as much to the director's scrupulous aesthetic choices as his unforgettable characters and story.

Jan 21, 2015 — Money can’t buy love and happiness in Preston Sturges’s classic comedy—or can it?

Oct 21, 2014 — There were plenty of advantages to living in Paris in the early 1970s, especially if one was a movie buff with time on one’s hands. The Parisian film world is relatively small, and simply being on the fringes of it...

Oct 2, 2014 — The following is a chapter on The Innocents from cinematographer Freddie Francis’s memoir, The Straight Story from “Moby Dick” to “Glory.” It is reproduced here courtesy of Scarecrow Press. The last picture I worked on as a cinematographer in my...