Satyajit Ray's debut movie (rather auspicious, to say the least) is a delicate balance between cultural documentation of rural India and lyrical evocation of the world's infinite amazements — the forest, rainfall, trains, death — as seen through the eyes of children. It put India on the map of international …
Nicholas Ray's studious, textbook illustration of adolescent alienation as it was understood in the 1950s. The mixed-up kids (James Dean, Sal Mineo, and Natalie Wood, the last-named turning in a fine, tense, sensual sixteen-year-old performance) are treated with a social worker's tolerance, while their insensitive parents, to be repaid in …
The French Asphalt Jungle, complete with equal or greater amounts of sob-sister sentimentality and dilettantish toughness and cynicism. Equal or greater amounts, too, of tension and telling detail: as in its American forerunner, the heist itself is the film's overtowering centerpiece. Among many valuable how-to tips: the closed umbrella poked …
Sexy neighbor Marilyn Monroe fuels the extramarital fantasy of a New Yorker left to swelter while his family goes to the summer house. Directed by Billy WIlder.
The free-for-all pursuit of the perfect partner in the liberating environs of a vast country estate, with Ingmar Bergman serving as puppet master, is set at the turn of the century; but the original design for this capering comedy is located further back than that, at least as far back …
Alfred Hitchcock, slimmed down to the lightweight class (he's in best form as a light-heavy), tells a nothing tale about a debonair cat burglar who is forced out of restful retirement on the French Riviera. Hitchcock uses jewels as a sexual symbol in such a manner as to pass for …
Where to begin? Or the tougher question: where to leave off? The shorter list, certainly, would be what is not the trouble: firstly and foremostly the Vermont autumn, with its fiery Van Gogh palette. Perhaps the chief reason why this Hitchcock "black comedy" dates so badly is that the movie …
Jean Rouch first took up the movie camera as a tool to aid in his ethnographic studies of African natives; but, like Flaherty, he knew the value of shaping his raw data along strong dramatic lines. His movies, at their best, bear witness to the melancholy mission of the anthropologist …