Post-war, movies take notice—not for the first time, or last, but with the conviction that bearing witness can be an assault—of crowds and the weight of history. The two are intertwined, everyday concerns
Above: The Bride of Glomdale (1926). Image courtesy of The Danish Film Institute/Stills & Posters Archive. Almost all early Carl Th. Dreyer films show life to be one big ceremony, each generation
The Fearless Vampire Colours When Emma Thompson's dad, Eric, was given the job of translating a French kids' show for the BBC, he projected the films, without sound, on his kitchen door and made up
Above: Kinuyo Tanaka (left) letting the worries of the world creep into her vacation in Ornamental Hairpin. Image Courtesy of the Criterion Collection. The most famous of the Japanese masters
The Brooklyn Academy of Music will be running a Carl Th. Dreyer retrospective, appropriately and monolithically titled DREYER, from March 13 - March 31. Here you will find my quick notes as I plunge in
The immaculate dissolve above occurs very near the end of Sirk's 1958 masterpiece, his penultimate Hollywood film. The film's hero, Ernst Graeber (John Gavin), a German soldier who we first see as part
"Junkopia" (1981). Directed by Chris Marker. Thanks to Tom Luddy for the heads-up!
Of my cinematic blind spots, Hans-Jürgen Syberberg is the most salient. The critical acclaim and gargantuan volume of the German filmmaker’s output suggest a mountain still to be discovered, so I recently
The Brooklyn Academy of Music will be running a Carl Th. Dreyer retrospective, appropriately and monolithically titled DREYER, from March 13 - March 31. Here you will find my quick notes as I plunge in
Claire Denis' cinema of elision typically works around an event, or an issue, to best conjure a concept or a tone or a metaphor or a theme or, even, an affect. In her newest narrative film, 35 Rhums
The Brooklyn Academy of Music will be running the Carl Th. Dreyer retrospective, appropriately and monolithically titled DREYER, from March 13 - March 31. *** "What she learns is that love simply exists
The Brooklyn Academy of Music will be running the Carl Th. Dreyer retrospective, appropriately and monolithically titled DREYER, from March 13 - March 31. *** "There were to be no horror scenes at all