Zora Neale Hurston, a prominent novelist of the Harlem Renaissance, was also something of an amateur filmmaker, documenting everyday life and work in the American South as part of anthropological […]
In addition to a pair of silent film adaptations and a 1959 Julien Duvivier film starring Brigitte Bardot, the two most notable cinematic takes on the 1898 Pierre Louÿs novel La […]
“Sometimes there’s a man — well, he’s the man for his time and place. He fits right in there.” Thus the voiceover narration in the Coen brothers’ The Big Lebowski […]
There are several interesting ways of contrasting these two landmark films about cybernetic organisms, or cyborgs. One could play up the dystopian angle, thinking of RoboCop as the Brazil (or […]
Eleanor Gates began writing novels just after the turn of the century, then turned to writing plays before starting a film production company in 1915. This same trajectory was taken […]
In outline form, The Heartbreak Kid (1972) and Modern Romance (1981) would best be described as romantic comedies. They have the right structure, working their way through humorous incidents to the ultimate […]
Most notably in film noir, but also detectable in drama and fantasy, Hollywood films immediately after World War II often circled around moods of despair and loss. The war had […]
It’s almost immaterial that one of these films is derived from a novel and the other from a memoir. An experiment: Watch Me and Orson Welles and My Week with Marilyn back-to-back […]
There are two cases on the record of filmmakers producing trilogies that spanned their careers. Fritz Lang began directing films in 1919, but a landmark from his early output is […]
A straight stretch of train tracks extend into oblivion, their iron rumbling with a whispered threat. In the gentle town nearby, two solemn and innocent ceremonies take place at the […]
