Category: Film

The development of space as an expressive tool in cinema is traced through Gustavo Serena’s 1912 Assunta Spina, a tragic romance set in the slums of Naples that contains some early experiments with depth of field, and Buster Keaton’s 1922 Cops, a classic short comedy by one of the silent era’s great masters of mise-en-scene.

British writer-director Peter Greenaway’s 1982 film is entertaining as an avant-garde exercise cleverly adapted to commercial ends. In 17th-century England a landscape artist makes an agreement with the wife of a wealthy landowner to trade his work for her sexual favors. All goes well until mysterious objects begin to clutter the grounds (and the artist’s […]

Fritz Lang’s 1939 film about an outlaw couple on the run (Henry Fonda and Sylvia Sidney) is sometimes cited as one of the prototypes of Bonnie and Clyde. But Lang’s themes are moral and mystical whereas Penn’s are social; Lang’s film, consequently, seems more genuinely timeless despite the topicality of the story. Lang directs in […]

NR • 1 hour 31 min

Cary Grant and Constance Bennett are Thorne Smith’s continental ghosts, haranguing tired businessman Roland Young in arch screwball style. Norman Z. McLeod directed (1937).

Martin Ritt drapes his story of a cashier (Woody Allen) fronting for blacklisted television writers during the McCarthy era in the sackcloth of liberal sentimentalism, never quite getting beyond the convenient moralizing of Walter Bernstein’s screenplay to the significant ideological questions involved. Allen, in spite of his “first dramatic role” billing, provides some much-needed wit, […]

Rex Ingram’s epic 1921 production of the famous antiwar novel promoted supporting actor Rudolph Valentino to international stardom, thanks largely to his finesse in the tango scene. Reportedly, the film is a cut above the usual Valentino vehicle, but Ingram is one of those directors who’s built quite a reputation on the unavailability of his […]

2 hours 26 min

0 hour 11 min

The concluding chapter (1979) in Sergio Giral’s “Slavery Trilogy” is set in Maluala, the largest of the communities of runaway slaves that grew up in eastern Cuba. The film follows the negotiations between the Cuban government and the community’s leaders, who offer to lay down their arms in return for freedom and the title to […]