The Godfather Trilogy
Adapting Mario Puzo’s best-selling novel, Francis Ford Coppola drew up several themes lying dormant within its pages and augmented them in a uniquely cinematic fashion to create a masterful saga.
Tag Archives: Ingmar Bergman
401. Close Encounters of the Third Kind
For my final podcast, I look at how Steven Spielberg effectively remade his first feature, Firelight to deliver a message of hope.
397. Mulholland Dr.
Puzzling audiences ever since it premiered at Cannes in 2001, David Lynch’s dark masterpiece seems to address the abuse of women in the film industry.
396. L’Avventura
With this modernist masterpiece, Michelangelo Antonioni told a story that abandoned its initial plot. Booed at Cannes, it paved the way for a new cinematic form.
394. Amarcord
Like many Fellini films, Amarcord is a contradiction; an account of his youth yet a complete fabrication, a vivid realisation of the past, but also a dream.
382. A Separation
Asghar Farhadi’s Oscar-winning divorce drama delivers a story that is specific to a particular time and place yet also manages to resonate on a universal level.
380. Ugetsu Monogatari
Kenji Mizoguchi’s masterpiece owes a great debt of gratitude to Kazuo Miyagawa’s luminous, shimmering cinematography.
376. The Passion of Joan of Arc
In Carl Theodor Dreyer’s silent masterpiece, the story isn’t so much told through the Saint’s eyes as it is read on her face.
352. Roma
Alfonso Cuarón has long flirted with the neorealist style. His latest masterpiece, Roma illustrates cinema is not about what you show, but how you show it.
Persona – After and Before
This short video-essay position Ingmar Bergman’s Persona in terms of what came after it and what went before. It shows how Bergman visualised his central theme of identity.
344. The Double Life of Veronique
Krzysztof Kieślowski avoids all the clichés of doppelgängers, doubles and lookalikes to deliver a meditation on freedom.
330. Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Werner Herzog’s hallucinatory telling of a Conquistador’s search for El Dorado etches a landscape of greed on the human face.
322. Yi Yi
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.
320. Cries and Whispers
Cries and Whispers was Ingmar Bergman’s fourth colour film but with a palette of just black, white and red, he still painted deep emotions and vivid dreams.
319. 2001: A Space Odyssey
For all its groundbreaking effects and narrative innovation, this owes a debt to a romantic fantasy and a Soviet propaganda film.
303. Blowup
Originally titled A Girl, a Photographer and a Beautiful April Morning, Michelangelo Antonioni’s Palme d’Or winner is still as enigmatic fifty years on.
302. Festen
William Shakespeare, Sigmund Freud, Ingmar Bergman and John Cassavetes are just some of the disparate influences on view in Thomas Vinterberg’s masterpiece.
296. Un Chien Andalou
This film lasts seventeen minutes, features mutilation, insects and dismemberment. Yet it is one of the most influential ever made.
290. Babette’s Feast
In adapting Karen Blixen’s short story, Gabriel Axel chose to omit the politics and focus on the religious parable. But really, it works best as a recipe for life.
278. The Rules of the Game
Reviled and banned upon its release, then feared lost forever, Jean Renoir’s masterpiece stands today as a victory for liberalism.
267. Great Openings – Part Two
What makes for a great opening? Character? Conflict? Poetry? Hopefully, more than something we’re supposed to just look at.
264. if….
Despite being labelled fascist and an insult to Britain, if… won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1969. Almost half a century later, it still retains much of its power.
257. A.I.: Artificial Intelligence
It is incorrectly assumed that Steven Spielberg turned Stanley Kubrick’s dark story into another of his child-friendly fantasies.
249. All About My Mother
Once dismissed as The King of Kitsch, this masterpiece proved Pedro Almodovar was really a laureate of liberalism.
