Gordon Thomas, Author at Bright Lights Film Journal

Author: Gordon Thomas

Gordon Thomas, trained as a painter, is a photographer living in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts with his wife. Film has fascinated and worried him ever since, as a small child, he saw Godzilla in 1954.

Historical & Epic · Reviews · Silents

What Becomes a Legend Most: Fritz Lang Adapts the Nibelungenlied

July 31, 2013

“If head and heart are united, harmony can exist even in the midst of strife. Let them come into opposition, however, and chaos enters from which there is no escape and no conclusion possible except a tragic one.” — Francis G. Gentry. “Triuwe and Vriunt in the Nibelungenlied.” Amsterdam: Rodopi: 1975. p. 45.”Perception is everything. It turns villains into heroes and victims into collaborators.” — Hilary Mantel. “A Change of Climate.” New York: Henry Holt and Company: 1997. p. 317.

DVD & Blu-ray

Bright Sights: Recent DVDs: City of Women, Tess, Tsar to Lenin, The Promised Land, Nanook of the North, The Wedding of Palo

April 30, 2013

An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases

DVD & Blu-ray

Bright Sights: Recent DVDs: The Blue Angel; The Rolling Stones: Charlie Is My Darling; Fritz Lang: The Early Works: Harakiri, The Wandering Shadow, and Four Around the Woman; Hello I Must Be Going

January 31, 2013

An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases

Books

Book review: Col. William N. Selig, by Andrew A. Erish

November 24, 2012

Col. William N. Selig: The Man Who Invented Hollywood by Andrew A. Erish. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2012. Cloth, $60.00, 303pp, illustrated. ISBN: 978-0-292-72870-7. Anyone writing about a pioneer of[…]

DVD & Blu-ray

Bright Sights: Recent DVDs: Das Weib des Pharao, Confidence, The Navigator, Casa de Lava

October 31, 2012

An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases

DVD & Blu-ray

Bright Sights: Recent DVDs: The Woodmans, The Seduction of Mimi, Love and Anarchy, All Screwed Up, Mother Joan of the Angels, We Need to Talk About Kevin

July 31, 2012

An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases

DVD & Blu-ray

Bright Sights: Recent DVDs: Four Polish Cinema Classics: Innocent Sorcerers, Goodbye, See You Tomorrow, Eroica, Night Train, A Trip to the Moon, The Spiders

April 30, 2012

An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases

Historical & Epic · Reviews

“Nun-Lust, Torture-Porn, Church-Desecration and Bad Taste”: Reconnecting with Ken Russell’s The Devils

April 30, 2012

“Sex mingles easily with religion, and their blending has one of those slightly repulsive and yet exquisite and poignant flavors, which startle the palate like a revelation — of what? That, precisely, is the question.” – Aldous Huxley, The Devils of Loudun “The Devils is Arthur Miller’s The Crucible with open sores, open bonfires, court intrigue, the King shooting Protestants for sport, the callous and ludicrous behaviour of the Inquisition, the two-facedness of the King’s soldiers and sex-deprived nuns. It’s about the corruption of a whole town and the man at the centre who defies it. — Ken Russell, quoted in the London Times, March 13, 2012

DVD & Blu-ray

Bright Sights: Recent DVDs: Birth of a Nation, Way Down East, Medea, Bellflower, Touch of Evil

January 31, 2012

An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases

DVD & Blu-ray · Silents

Bright Sights: Recent DVDs: Strike, Red Psalm, The Phantom Carriage, Meek’s Cutoff, Go West, Battling Butler

October 31, 2011

An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases

DVD & Blu-ray

Bright Sights: Recent DVDs: Laila, Alice, People on Sunday, Buster Keaton: The Short Films Collection, 1920-1923, Szindbád, Coeur Fidèle

July 31, 2011

An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases

DVD & Blu-ray

Bright Sights: Recent DVDs: A Blonde in Love, The Lighthouse, The Clowns, Senso, Our Hospitality, William S. Burroughs: The Man Within

April 30, 2011

An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases

DVD & Blu-ray · Reviews

Bright Sights: Recent DVDs: The Black Pirate, Night of the Hunter, Exit Through the Gift Shop, Howl, The Elia Kazan Collection

January 31, 2011

An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases

DVD & Blu-ray · Silents

Metropolis, the Reconstructed Original Cut: Does It Make Sense? Does It Need To?

January 31, 2011

“The resurrection of Fritz Lang’s original cut has revealed how well this film functions with its associative network of image layered onto an adventure/SF thriller, but the reasons for its mysterious pull coalesce into an x-factor that resists analysis.”

DVD & Blu-ray

Bright Sights: Recent DVDs: Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, Adelheid, The War Lord, The Exploding Girl, The Law, L’Enfance Nue, Chaplin at Keystone

October 31, 2010

An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases

Directors · Essays · Writers & Critics

Memos from a Chinese Laundry: Reading Josef von Sternberg

October 31, 2010

“I would very much like to attract others into my world, but my world is not the world of crowds, though the crowds have often lined up before my world.”1