Actors & Personalities · Comedy · Directors · Silents
Looking at Charlie — Limelight: An Occasional Series on the Life and Work of Charlie Chaplin
“I have ideas!” If only that were true!
Category: Artists
From La Fille to Dr. Cordelier: Character and Environment in the (Mostly) Early Works of Jean Renoir
“Renoir’s static images contain a great deal of emotional intensity — like that last lyrical shot of the sun setting in La Fille — and the sheer beauty of his two-dimensional compositions generates an emotional in volvement within the viewer (like that in the viewer of a painting) and a sense of emotional treatment of the romantic material within the frame, yet preserves an awareness of the existence of a larger world beyond the borders of the frame.”
Directors · Horror · Photo Essays
“An Abomination on the Silver Sheet”: In Defence of Tod Browning’s Skill as a Director in the Sound Era (on Freaks)
“The opening scenes of Freaks demonstrate a sophisticated use of staging, framing, editing, and camera movement to suture the audience into a complex set of sympathies. It is the work of a director in full control of the medium, able to use the camera to reveal a rich subtext beneath the dialogue.”
Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals · TV & Streaming
Fred’s on TV! But You Can’t See Him, Except on YouTube
Read about what you can’t see
Cutters’ Way: The Mysterious Art of Film Editing
“The basic rules of film editing, first established in the silent era, still govern the industry today: maintain your eye lines, preserve continuity, respect planarity (the rules governing the transposition of three dimensions onto a two-dimensional plane), find a good rhythm, and, most important, always advance the story.”
Actors & Personalities · Reviews · Westerns
Carl Foreman’s and Fred Zinneman’s High Noon: Kelly versus Jurado! The Ultimate Face-Off!
O to be torn, ‘twixt love and duty
Directors · Interviews · LGBT & Queer
“Something That Is Dangerous and Arousing and Transgressive”: An Interview with Todd Haynes
“I’m just always interested in the ways in which we are not free agents, that our desires, our instincts, our anger, our determination, our survival instincts all butt against social constraints and social learning that are really deep. It’s not just a matter of changing your job or your lover.”
Directors · Documentaries · New Media
The Power of Auteurs and the Last Man Standing: Adam Curtis’ Documentary Nightmares
“The whole effect is a Rand-esque, dream-like, dystopian feel. This is very much Curtis taking an auteur approach to his documentary — his creative personality is all over it and the effect is enthralling.” — from “All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace,” review, The Telegraph, by Catherine Gee
Interviews · Writers & Critics
Political Filmmaking and America’s “Poisoned Chalice”: The Banned Gore Vidal Interview
“He fears the ‘Party of God’ because he reads their ‘cultural elite’ and ‘family values’ rhetoric as ‘code for [attacking] the media, the Jews, the homosexuals, the adulterers, people who do not believe in God, people who are better looking than you are — put it all together, you have a poisoned chalice.'”
Actors & Personalities · Directors · Essays
Love of Sophia: Lost in Translation, Transcendence, Transfiguration
“Translation is at best an echo.” – George Borrow
“Every Man and Woman Is an Island”: Modern Discontent in the Films of Wong Kar-wai
“Wong shows that certain modernized countries have been able to flourish economically because they have embraced globalization, but with powerful emotional consequences for their people.”
Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals · Reviews
Nothin’ but Legs! Fred and Cyd Go out Kicking in Cole Porter’s Silk Stockings
Sorry, folks, but this is the last dance
Actors & Personalities · Uncategorized
Tragic Cinema: The Death of Subjectivities in JCVD
“Once we are shown that JCVD is, in fact, innocent, we are likely to forget 1) that moments earlier we were calling for his blood and 2) the particular events and sequence of events, or types of evidence shown, that had us jumping the gun in the first place. What El Mechri is showing us is how painfully contingent our conclusions about the world are on the particular type of passage we are afforded, the particular unfolding we are privy to.”
Directors · Exploitation & Erotica · Noir
Life of Human Loss: Hugo Haas’s Strange Fascination
“Through his ability to improvise his own scenarios and engage others in their perambulations, Haas successfully negotiates the threat of circumstance that ensnared Pavel and, most always, wills out.”
Anthony Perkins: Forever Psycho
“Although he at first resisted, Perkins returned to Norman Bates again and again, in one form or other. Norman’s twitchy eccentricity seeped into many of Perkins’ post-Psycho performances that preceded the run of sequels.”
Mann in the Dark: The Film Noirs of Anthony Mann
“The morally complex interrelationship of hero/villain, which is partially accountable for the remarkable intensity of his films, has at its roots the film noirs of the 1940s. The darker side of human nature, the interiority of these earlier, psychologically troubled characters, is the determining force in Mann’s noirs. We see the director striving for the depth and complexity of characterization he ultimately achieved in the great films of the 1950s.”
Actors & Personalities · Essays · War
Billy Wilder’s A Foreign Affair: Marlene Dietrich’s Star Persona and American Interventionist Strategies in Postwar Berlin
“I read so much about immigrants, how they must adjust to customs and the words of foreign lands. Maybe because I was never treated like an immigrant! Nobody made excuses for me. Not then – not now. Nobody cares about my roots.”1 – Marlene Dietrich, April 15, 1985
Directors · Genres · Noir · Westerns
Going Through the Devil’s Doorway: The Early Westerns of Anthony Mann
“Mann’s 1950 threesome — The Devil’s Doorway, Winchester ’73, The Furies — was the most auspicious quantum jump by an American director since John Ford’s equivalent Americana triumvirate of 1939 (Stage Coach, Young Mr. Lincoln, Drums Along the Mohawk) lifted him into the major phase of his career. Yet Mann’s achievements seem destined to remain unappreciated and the director himself obscure.”
Composers · Directors · Music & Musicals · Noir
Clashing Harmonics: The Characteristics of Sound in Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil
“Welles familiarizes us with the geography of the town largely through source music. Los Robles is presented as a labyrinth, an inter-place where physical and moral borders are erased.”
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