To Be or Not to Be

Aug 18, 2014 — The director explains the inspiration for his provocative erotic comedy, and how he dove into it even before finishing his previous movie.

Jul 22, 2014 — Jeanne Moreau’s flighty, enigmatic Jackie in Jacques Demy’s poetic drama is in the great tradition of dreamy Demy heroines.

Nov 3, 2013 — The legendary Italian director discusses La notte’s inspirations and themes in this 1961 newspaper article that coincided with the film’s French release.

Aug 19, 2013 — This moving drama about gender, race, and class in 1960s Kolkata is a pioneering work from Satyajit Ray.

Jul 22, 2013 — Gabriel Axel’s exquisite adaptation of Isak Dinesen’s short tale of grace through art provides spiritual and sensual sustenance.

Dec 5, 2012 — The following is excerpted from an interview that originally appeared in the February 1, 1981, issue of L’avant-scène: Cinéma. It was conducted by Olivier Eyquem and Jean-Claude Missiaen. Eyquem is a documentalist and former staff member at Positif; he blogs...

Nov 5, 2012 — The following originally appeared as the afterword to the 2003 New American Library edition of the novel Rosemary’s Baby. Having observed that the most suspenseful part of a horror story is before, not after, the horror appears, I was struck...

Aug 29, 2012 — Every ten years since 1952, the world-renowned film magazine Sight & Sound has polled a wide international selection of film critics and directors on what they consider to be the ten greatest works of cinema ever made, and then compiled...

Apr 17, 2012 — When it was first released in 1977, ¡Alambrista! depicted something previously unseen in American fiction films—the lives of undocumented Mexican immigrants from their point of view. Though writer-director-cinematographer Robert M. Young was not Latino and didn’t speak Spanish, his film convincingly...

Sep 26, 2011 — Toward the end of Olivier Assayas's Carlos, a young French diplomat's wife goes to answer the door of their flat in Beirut and is greeted by a huge bunch of flowers—which immediately disappears to reveal a gun that shoots her...