Actors & Personalities · Comedy · Comics · Eastern European · Hollywood
S. Z. Sakall’s ultra-rare 1954 memoir, The Story of Cuddles, attests that there was more to the comic actor than adorable fretfulness and jiggly jowls * * * He was[…]
André De Toth knew from the very beginning that he had to create a larger-than-life persona for him to be trusted with directing a picture. So he played the European[…]
Comedy · Communism and Socialism · Directors · Drama · Eastern European · Russia · War · Writers & Critics
Billy Wilder turned to these two plays because they offered the situations, structure, and characters that would allow his imagination to flower and create contemporary stories – a patriotic military[…]
Comedy · Directors · Eastern European · Romance · Writers & Critics
Lubitsch biographers and critics have accepted the lore that the Hungarian plays he used for his films were inferior. That widely held perception has come about because Lubitsch’s admirers want[…]
Activist & Political · Biopic · Documentaries · Drama · Eastern European · Middle East
Like Assayas’s Carlos, Ujică’s Autobiography mostly remains an investigation of a public figure in its public functions. And both films subtly decenter their Big Man of History protagonists. Both document[…]
Drama · Eastern European · Festivals & Awards · Russia
There would be nothing wrong with taking sides in such a heated ideological debate if any of the five films screened this year in the prestigious Romanian Days section of[…]
Absurdism · Comedy · Drama · Eastern European · Horror
The Cremator, only Juraj Herz’s second film, was adapted from a novel by Ladislav Fuks. It was well received, won a few awards, and was promptly banned for two decades[…]
Eastern European · Festivals & Awards
Note: We’re publishing this to coincide with New York’s Scandinavia House’s important second festival devoted to Baltic cinema. * * * Introduction The second New York Baltic Film Festival will[…]
