Good night, Mr. Tikhonov, wherever you are…
Vyacheslav Tikhonov, who starred as Prince Andrei Bolkonsky in Sergei Bondarchuk’s War and Peace (1967), died last Friday (12/4) at the age of 81. Tikhonov is one of a trio[…]
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. 
Bright Sights: Recent DVDs: Play Time, Gaumont Treasures, Diary for My Children, Winstanley, Marlene, Bill Douglas Trilogy
An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases
Bright Sights: Recent DVDs: Bardelys the Magnificent, Monte Cristo, Cleopatra, In the Realm of the Senses, Au Bonheur des Dames, Daisies, The Saragossa Manuscript
Bardelys the Magnificent (King Vidor, 1926); Monte Cristo (Emmett J. Flynn, 1922) Just as they deepened our appreciation of Rudolf Valentino and Douglas Fairbanks, Flicker Alley, with this magnificent release[…]
Book review: Douglas Fairbanks, by Jeffrey Vance
Douglas Fairbanks, by Jeffrey Vance, with Tony Maietta. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press and Los Angeles, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 2008. Cloth, $45.00, 368 p. ISBN: 978-0-520-25667-5.[…]
Bright Sights: Recent DVDs: Hobson’s Choice, Murnau Silents, Divorce Iranian Style, Runaway, Poil de Carotte, Celia
Hobson’s Choice (David Lean, 1954) Approaching this film — one of two comedies Lean made in his career, the other being Blithe Spirit (1945) — you expect it to be[…]
Bright Sights: Recent DVDs: The General, Douglas Fairbanks Silents, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Fighters, Real Money, Lady with the Dog
The General (Buster Keaton, 1926) Transferred from a print struck from the original camera negative, Kino’s recent two-disc presentation of The General looks shockingly new, as if Keaton had shot[…]
Griffith’s Great American Pastoral: Location and Meaning in Way Down East
“The air is saturated with their feelings for each other as they listen to ‘the distant music of the falls,’ the same falls, of course, that will threaten to kill her.”
Bright Sights: Recent DVDs: The Italian, Traffic in Souls, Privilege, Wings, The Ascent, Tropical Malady, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, J’Accuse
The Italian (Reginald Barker, 1915) and Traffic in Souls (George Loane Tucker, 1913) The Italian of producer Thomas Ince’s 1915 film is Beppo Donnetti, played by George Beban in a performance[…]
Bright Sights: Recent DVDs: La Roue, The Last Emperor, Lost in Beijing, Popeye the Sailor, Satantango, Vampyr
La Roue (Abel Gance, 1922) Abel Gance’s La Roue is a wild poem of a movie. French audiences saw the film at its 1922 premiere in four parts over three[…]
Bright Sights: Recent DVDs: Berlin Alexanderplatz, Harry Langdon, Early Kurosawa, I Am Cuba, The Dragon Painter, Wrath of the Gods, Méliès
Berlin Alexanderplatz (Phil Jutzi, 1931) Franz Biberkopf must be one of the most porous characters in all literature. In Alfred Döblin’s 1929 novel, Berlin Alexanderplatz, a modernist torrent — dialogue,[…]
Dream Documents of Civil War: Three Films by Miklós Jancsó
“Jancsó’s controlled aesthetic acts as a dissonance that vibrates expressively with scenes of violence, torture, and shame.”
Bright Sights: Recent DVDs: Our Hitler, Sawdust and Tinsel, Black Sun, Marketa Lazarova, Battleship Potemkin, Nosferatu, Automatons
An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases
Directors · Experimental & Underground
Peter Watkins and the Politics of Expression: On Edvard Munch (1974) and The Freethinker (1994)
“Watkins’ filmmaking bravely seeks an insistence on personal truth his own and the viewer’s.”
Will the Shark Bite? G. W. Pabst and The Threepenny Opera
“Macheath: I’m not asking you to put on an opera.” ~ Bertolt Brecht, The Threepenny Opera, Act 1, scene 2 Down the crooked lanes of London, gangster Mackie Messer stalks a[…]
Bright Sights: Recent DVDs
An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases The Valentino Collection (The Young Rajah, Moran of the Lady Letty, Stolen Moments, Society Sensation)[…]
Bright Sights: Recent DVDs An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases
Romeo, Juliet and Darkness (Romeo, Julia a tma) (Jiri Weiss, 1960) & The Party and the Guests (O slavnosti a hostech) (Jan Nemec, 1966) Jiri Weiss’ Holocaust drama,Romeo, Juliet and[…]
Of Sexual Hate and Lonely Death: The Mysteries of Pandora’s Box
“When what you write about is what you see/ What do you write about when it’s dark?” ~ Charles Wright 1. “You’ll have to kill me to get rid of[…]
Bright Sights: Recent DVDs: Mouchette, Siberiade, 1900, The Oyster Princess, I Don’t Want to Be a Man, King Lear, Another Sky
An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases Mouchette (Robert Bresson, 1967) Robert Bresson’s film, Mouchette, like his previous release, Au Hasard Balthasar[…]
An Immovable Feast? Another Look at Henry King’s The Sun Also Rises
“It’s sort of what we have instead of God” “. . . you talk less about good movies than about what you love in bad movies.” — Pauline Kael, Trash,[…]
Bright Sights: Recent DVDs An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases
Night Train (Jerzy Kawalerowicz, 1959) Call it Train of Fools. In Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s masterwork, a crowded night express travels overbooked with the despairing, the lovelorn, the lustful, a handful of[…]
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