The original Swedish title is The Face, and that’s more fitting. Diegetic conversations are all about faces, particularly the face of the the magician. Faces convey truth and deception, they bear…
See previous post on Deleuze and the crystal image as it applies to this film. The ashes in the first shot of the film shifts to sweat via dissolve. The…
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…
Wrote this a few months back for a seminar presentation. Using it now for studying purposes, posting it here for reference. If anyone who reads this could offer any support,…
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…
The Rules of the Game (dir. Jean Renoir, 1939) – It was time to revisit the great work. Christopher Faulkner makes a great analysis of the film through an ethnographic mode.…
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…
Thérèse Raquin (dir. Marcel Carné, 1953) – A step back from the poetic realism of Carné’s big-budget, big production Children of Paradise and lower-budget Port of Shadows, this is a melodrama that zooms…
At Le Beau Serge, we’re on the cusp of the nouvelle vague, so it’s natural for some to see it as the beginning and for others to insist that it’s something more…
