The Sacrifice

Andrei Tarkovsky’s paints The Sacrifice with Ingmar Bergman’s palette. The location, language, actors, and themes are familiar enough to those familiar with Bergman’s work, but something is askew, the way a dream might blend Shame (1968) and The “Faith Trilogy” into a baroque stage play about an ethereal Cold Read More …

Pickpocket

At first glance, Robert Bresson seems like an incompetent director. In Pickpocket, his actors move stiffly, reciting their lines with hardly any emotion; he skips over what seem like important dramatic moments and lingers on seemingly trivial ones; background music is rarely used, and it shows Read More …

Dersu Uzala

The 1970s marked a major turning point for the life and work of Japanese director Akira Kurosawa, as the guardedly hopeful portrayals of individual and communal transformation seen in many of his postwar films culminated in his final black-and-white movie, Red Beard (1965). His next four films, Read More …