Farley Granger: Senso and Sensibility
In four films, two for Alfred Hitchcock (Rope {1948} and Strangers on a Train {1951}), one for Nicholas Ray (They Live by Night {1948}) and one for Luchino Visconti (Senso[…]
Author: Dan Callahan
Dan Callahan is the author of Barbara Stanwyck: The Miracle Woman (2012), Vanessa: The Life of Vanessa Redgrave (2014), The Art of American Screen Acting (2 volumes, 2018-19), The Camera Lies: Acting for Hitchcock (2020), and the novel That Was Something (2018). He has written for Film Comment, Sight & Sound, New York Magazine, The Criterion Collection, and many other publications. Through the Looking Glass: Thoughts on The Window
Ted Tetzlaff brings Bobby Driscoll to the voyeur’s front window The Window (1949) is the kind of movie probably best experienced as a child of 11 or 12, plagued by[…]
A Woman in Trouble is Rescued and Loved
David Lynch’s Inland Empire, which runs 172 minutes, keeps collapsing in on itself. This is sure to frustrate most people, even Lynch fans. (I was not a big Lynch fan[…]
Death Becomes Him: Robert Altman’s Prairie Home Companion
In which Altman doesn’t go gentle into that good night Robert Altman’s A Prairie Home Companion, based in part on Garrison Keillor’s long-running radio show, observes the last stand of[…]
Notes on Naruse: An Auteur Ascends
Pitch-black pessimism, unsparing emotional truths, and women on the verge In the eighties, an impressive full-scale retrospective of Mikio Naruse’s films traveled the world and his reputation in the West[…]
Actors & Personalities · Books
Kay Francis: Secrets of an Actress: New Books Reveal the “Wavishing” Star
“I’m not a star, I’m a woman, and I want to get fucked!” A combination clotheshorse/workhorse, Kay Francis made 67 films from 1929 to 1946. Her life and career are a splurging[…]
Actors & Personalities · Directors · Silents
Blossom in the Dust: Lillian Gish, The Wind, and Mr. Griffith
“I was never young, and if you were never young, how can you ever feel old?” Towards the end of Follow Me, Boys! (1966), a particularly obnoxious piece of Walt[…]
Actors & Personalities · Westerns
Golden Boy: The Sexy Ways of Joel McCrea
“Easy to overlook but endlessly rewarding to look over” Joel McCrea, an amiable, modest actor who turned down parts because he felt he wasn’t good enough for them, began his[…]
Talking About the Space Between Us All: On Forty Shades of Blue
Ira Sachs’ sophomore feature is charged with emotion When we first see Laura (Dina Korzun) in Ira Sachs’ knockout naturalistic melodrama Forty Shades of Blue, she is browsing in the[…]
Actors & Personalities · Reviews
Hooker with a Heart of Darkness: Jane Fonda in Klute
Bree Daniels trumps all Fonda’s real-life characters
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