Classifying Paths of Glory as an anti-war film is the result of lazy thinking. Shot in simple black-and-white in 1957, this is the film that put director Stanley Kubrick on the map, and there’s a very good reason why. While loosely based on a true story referred Read More …
“How can you be guiltier than anyone in the eyes of all? There are murderers and brigands. What crimes have you committed to blame yourself more than everyone else?” “My dear mother, my deepest love, know that everyone is guilty in everyone’s eyes. I do Read More …
John Ford’s 1956 Western, The Searchers, ends with the camera framing a doorway, looking out into the gloriously filmed desert. As his remaining friends and family cross over the threshold into the welcoming house, John Wayne’s Ethan Edwards stays outside, watching them. Then he pauses a Read More …
John Ford’s 1956 Western, The Searchers, ends with the camera framing a doorway, looking out into the gloriously filmed desert. As his remaining friends and family cross over the threshold into the welcoming house, John Wayne’s Ethan Edwards stays outside, watching them. Then he pauses a Read More …
Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker is a film set in two worlds, but one that takes place entirely on Earth. The first act of Stalker shows us an unnamed, dilapidated city shot in washed-out sepia tones so murky and muted it is difficult to imagine anything surviving there. In this city Read More …
The great and final act of Krzysztof Kieslowski’s remarkable career was the production of a trilogy called Three Colors—Blue, White, and Red—that represents the colors of the French flag, and the values they represent: liberty, equality and fraternity. Filmed in three countries (France, Poland, Switzerland), their plots Read More …
A stuttering student is hypnotized to cure his impediment. A strong wind blows across a field. A ceiling collapses in a rainshower. A bird lands on a boy’s head. A sleeping woman levitates over her bed. A man clutches some feathers in his hand, and Read More …
With a rigorous style that is often off-putting to newcomers, Bresson eschews the usual emotional cues we’ve become conditioned to expect at the movies. His editing is, above all, efficient—refusing to emphasize one moment over another. We’re forced to pay fierce attention and draw our Read More …
“What is the true meaning of life?” Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski has asked. “Why get up in the morning? Politics doesn’t answer that.” The Decalogue, Kieslowski’s extraordinary, challenging collection of ten one-hour films made for Polish television in the dying days of the Soviet Union, doesn’t Read More …
In 2020, I earned 5 minutes on the phone with Werner Herzog (Grizzly Man, Fitzcarraldo), and I assailed the man with questions on a topic that is always on my mind: how the canon of cinema is changing and solidifying now that the art form Read More …