The Dark Side of the Screen
Although it can be traced to German Expressionism and French Poetic-Realism, Film Noir is quintessentially an American idiom. Not a genre but a mood, it centres on fatalistic dread.
Although it can be traced to German Expressionism and French Poetic-Realism, Film Noir is quintessentially an American idiom. Not a genre but a mood, it centres on fatalistic dread.
For my final podcast, I look at how Steven Spielberg effectively remade his first feature, Firelight to deliver a message of hope.
The Palme d’Or winner in 1949, Carol Reed’s masterpiece drew on covert sources and unexpected styles and techniques to deliver a melancholic mystery.
How do you make a film about a sociopath who murders his entire extended family and still get the audience to root for him?
Sofia Coppola’s off-beat romance deftly explores isolation, miscommunication and the superficiality of modern media.
As the title to Edward Yang’s masterpiece indicates, Yi Yi is a series of doubles; narrative, thematic, visual and aural, that deliver a subtle family portrait.
Sergei Eisenstein devised montage for black and white and silent film. How have sound, colour and digital extended his theories?
Long thought to be a satire on bourgeoise marriage, Luis Buñuel’s masterpiece is really a study of the traumas suffered by a sexual assault victim.
All boring films are alike; every great film is great in its own way. Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk belongs not just to the latter but amongst the greatest ever made.
David Lean’s enduring masterpiece is a rare breed; an epic but also a portrait that refuses to explain its enigmatic subject.
Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon is celebrated for asking what is truth. Which is more than a little ironic, because that’s not what it is really about.
Orson Welles is celebrated for Citizen Kane but it was this adaptation of Booth Tarkington’s novel that defined his career.
Guillermo del Toro says he is “in love with monsters.” In Pan’s Labyrinth, set in the Spanish Civil War, he uses them to navigate history and the world.
Thirty-five years old, Spielberg’s classic was inspired by more than just the Saturday matinee serials he watched as a child.
In his Poetics, Aristotle wrote that drama needs a unity of space, time and action. How does cinema deal with such restrictions?
Mixing social history, European art film and a British melodrama, Wong Kar-wai delivered a masterpiece of aching beauty.
Once dismissed as parochial and passé, the influence of David Lean’s classic can be seen in such unlikely places as The Third Man, The Godfather and Carol.
Adapting James Grady’s straight forward thriller, Sydney Pollack delivered a commentary on dehumanising institutions.
With this Oscar winning classic, David Lean stopped being an ‘English filmmaker’ and became an ‘international star director’.
The Searchers is both a cinematic monument and an extremely unsettling depiction of the racism that lies at the heart of America’s own mythology.
Sergio Leone’s masterpiece doesn’t only reference American westerns. He also drew inspiration from an English film.
This video-essay addresses the abuse inflicted by men against women in cinema. The films are critically acclaimed, Oscar winners and box-office hits. WARNING: It features scenes of extreme graphic violence.
This extended video-essay charts the development and possible future of the America movie trailer. Beginning in 1912, taking in the coming of television and suggesting where it might go in the age of the internet.
This extended video-essay examines the innovations at the heart of cinema, focusing on how cinema is coping with the move from Hollywood to Silicon Valley.
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