The Gordon Willis Frame
Gordon Willis was one of cinema’s greatest artists. Regardless of genre, his style and technique were so singular he should be regarded as a cinematrograph-auteur.
Gordon Willis was one of cinema’s greatest artists. Regardless of genre, his style and technique were so singular he should be regarded as a cinematrograph-auteur.
This short video-essay compares various themes and techniques that Alfred Hitchcock developed over his career. With 40 titles, it includes every feature film Hitchcock made from 1934 through to his retirement in 1976.
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.
Bong Joon-Ho embraced every cliché of the serial killer genre to examine masculinity, institutional repression and national identity.
Michael Haneke asks audiences difficult questions yet never provides easy answers. When he calls his film Hidden, can we expect anything different?
Krzysztof Kieślowski avoids all the clichés of doppelgängers, doubles and lookalikes to deliver a meditation on freedom.
Like many other cult classics, the French thriller Diva was almost still born. Rejected by the French critics and public, it only got a second lease of life in the US.
With its progressive attitude toward gender and sexuality, is Alan J Pakula’s 1971 film more a character study than it is a psychological thriller?
Made in 1944, Gaslight is an Oscar-winning melodrama concerning madness and murder. The film itself is guilty of attempted homicide.
He was called The Master of Suspense (a title he coined himself), but for all the thrills did Alfred Hitchcock not make rom-coms wrapped inside mysteries?
Whether it be theatre, film or TV, all stories need good plots and performances. But what elevated True Detective Season 1 to the status of classic was its structure.
You can divide Hollywood rom-coms into two eras; before and after Annie Hall. The film also marked the arrival of one of America’s most individual artists.
With Steve McQueen in the title role, a legendary car-chase and a score by Lalo Schifrin, Peter Yates’ Bullitt still oozes as much cool now as it did in 1968.
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