Michele Lagny, “The feeling gaze: Jean Renoir’s La Bête humaine (1938)” – The essay traces some of the context of the film’s release, particularly the way it was somewhat ordained to…
Le Jour se lève (dir. Marcel Carné, 1939) – A nice little essay by Maureen Turim grounds aspects of the film in a theoretical and critical framework, although she doesn’t…
Pépé le Moko (dir. Julien Duvivier, 1937) – A masterpiece of setting and staging. It’s in Algiers, within the Casbah, and it treats its environs and those native to it…
Breathless (dir. Jean-Luc Godard, 1960) – Other than obligatory and ubiquitous clips, have probably only sat through Breathless twice. What can you say about it that hasn’t already been said ad…
Rope (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1948) – It’s usually just chalked up as a “great experiment,” by virtue of the precious few cuts in the film, and the disguising of most…
Une Femme Mariée (dir. Jean-Luc Godard, 1964) – Have read it said that this one empowers women, but that’s about the most superficial, narrative-prejudicial sort of reading one can imagine.…
Aria is one of the better-known omnibus films from the 80s, a strange period of film history that almost brought together the likes of Orson Welles, Federico Fellini, Jean-Luc Godard,…
Unfaithfully Yours (dir. Preston Sturges, 1948) – Another Stanford Theatre gem. Sturges tops the So-Embarrassed-I-Don’t-Know-Their-Stuff List. This was a fortuitous screening, since after viewing The Hudsucker Proxy, with all its…
This one from Godard must be famous and noteworthy in large part because it concentrates Godard’s style and themes into a very typical (for Godard) narrative (or lack thereof) without…
Alphaville appears to be the apex of Godard’s imagination and ideology, if not its synthesis. It is, along with so many of his 60s films, a cinematic excuse to spout…
Another work from Godard; this one comes after Passion, and clearly follows its style and themes. This time, however, narrative elements are stolen from Godard’s own Pierrot Le Fou, but…
Along with his fellow Cahiers du Cinema critics, Jean-Luc Godard argued that being a film “auteur” meant that your films must have the imprint of your own distinct style of…
