Nov 26, 2018 — The legendary filmmaker possessed the greatest speaking voice in American cinema, and The Magnificent Ambersons represents the summit of his work as a vocal actor.

Oct 15, 2050 — Voice-over narration has existed since the beginnings of cinema and has been an integral part of some of the great masterworks of narrative film, from The Magnificent Ambersons to Double Indemnity to Jules and Jim to Taxi Driver. It spans...

Aug 28, 2020 — “Anyone with that kind of brilliance, you just give them space . . . She was a kind of unique, extraordinary, eccentric wild animal. And some jewels came out of her mouth.” Richard Gere On Halloween 1978, a month after...

Jul 11, 2019 — When we think of Ingrid Bergman, we may immediately call up images of her “you deserve this!” smile, or the indecision on her face in Casablanca (1942). There is a rare kind of suspense in watching Bergman’s face in flux...

Mar 13, 2014 — David Gordon Green’s George Washington makes cinematic poetry out of the tricky art of voice-over narration. In this excerpt from our special edition’s commentary track, writer-director Green and actor Paul Schneider discuss the earthy beauty that fourteen-year-old Candace Evanofski brings...

Mar 19, 2013 — A distinctive trait of the films of Terrence Malick is the artful way they employ narration. Sometimes the voice-over is dreamy (Sissy Spacek’s in Badlands), sometimes it’s disarmingly concrete (Linda Manz’s in Days of Heaven), sometimes it comprises audacious, poetic...

Apr 16, 2021 — Few motifs in Indian cinema are as potent, as laden with history and meaning, as the train. In 1955’s Pather Panchali, Satyajit Ray immortalized the railways as the symbol of an alienating modernity in a newly independent India; in a...

May 27, 2020 — “A filmmaker shows what his career will be in his first 150 feet of film,” François Truffaut once wrote. He was talking about Jean Vigo at the time, but he might as well have been talking about Martin Scorsese, whose...

Apr 21, 2023 — A. V. Rockwell is an award-winning screenwriter and director. Named one of Filmmaker magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film,” she has been celebrated for addressing issues of race, identity, and systemic oppression with her distinctive voice. Rockwell’s debut feature...

Feb 23, 2017 — An elder statesman of independent filmmaking, Samuel Fuller spun his newsroom and frontline experiences into his movies, developing a unique cinematic voice that was always raw and personal.