Have been reading through Mark Betz’s Beyond the Subtitle: Remapping European Art Cinema, which includes a chapter entitled, “Wandering Women: Decolonization, Modernity, Recolonization.” Although the chapter only mentions Antonioni’s Red Desert,…
As Peter Bondanella argues in Italian Cinema: From Neorealism to the Present, the movement we now call “neorealism” is as bound up in its own history as it is in the…
The child scrounger is about as “neorealism” as it gets, pointing toward his counterpart in Buñuel’s Los Olvidados from a couple years later. And it’s not neorealism without a heavy dose…
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…
Black Narcissus (dir. Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1947) – Mere days before starting a seminar in film and melodrama, I’ll make the tentative claim that this film constitutes an…
Obviously this deserves a lot more attention than what’s about to follow. It’s one of the quintessential art house films, it’s what made Antonioni even cooler with the English-speaking world,…
Having never seen a pre-L’Avventura Antonioni, wasn’t sure what to expect with this one. Was determined, entering into it, not to give it any kind of privileged “Antonioni” reading. Really…
Previous advisor had this one on the syllabus of an undergrad film theory course, and for good reason (although many of us would never put it on any syllabus). It…
Like any other trilogy, the Dollars trilogy shouldn’t have to be viewed chronologically if it’s worth its salt. So, after A Fistful of Dollars and then The Good, The Bad,…
When in doubt as to where to begin, defer to your local online academic database; in this case, William McClain’s essay, “Western, Go Home! Sergio Leone and the ‘Death of…
