The specular career of MCC favorite Ingmar Bergman stretched across seven decades; in anticipation of Bergman’s centennial (July 14), an earlier post offered a career overview and user’s guide to (almost) every one of his feature films. Here we hone in on the eight films written and directed by Bergman from 1966 to 1973: Persona,…
Now available at a bookstore (or website) near you: Tough Ain’t Enough: New Perspectives on the Films of Clint Eastwood, edited by Lester Friedman and David Desser. We have a chapter in this volume – “A Man’s Got to Know His Limitations”: The Cop Films from Nixon through Reagan – which considers eight of Eastwood’s…
Petulia, a relatively overlooked New Hollywood gem, had its premiere on June 10, 1968. Shot on location in San Francisco, the film, diving into the sexual revolution, could be mistaken today for a period piece/counterculture curio. And certainly it is of that time and place: the production features performances by Bay Area locals Janis Joplin…
Agnes Varda, one of the most distinct voices of postwar French cinema, turns ninety on May 30. Associated with the French New Wave, Varda’s career exemplifies, more than any other filmmaker, the New Wave ambition to blur the distinction between “documentary” and “fiction” films. (The argument in brief: documentaries follow narrative threads, reflect the choices…
The 1968 Cannes Film Festival opened on May 10 for what was supposed to be a two week run, with twenty-eight films screening in competition. It only made it through eight days and eleven of those entries, before shutting down on May 18. Jury President Louis Malle, along with François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard (with…
William Holden would have turned one hundred on April 17 2018, and we thought a few words were in order to mark his centennial. Holden, a product of the studio system, is one of the few actors who made enduring contributions to both the Old Hollywood and the New. And in a handful of those…
Claude Chabrol’s first “comeback” film, Les Biches, opened on March 22, 1968. One of our favorite directors here at Mid Century Cinema (dedicated subscribers will recall that we’ve written about him repeatedly, with our top ten list, some words about The Line of Demarcation (a notable obscurity), an essay about that astonishing run of films…
The ever-dedicated staff here at Mid Century Cinema has been revisiting some of the films of Claude Chabrol for a forthcoming essay about his “second wave” of films—a remarkable dozen releases between 1968 and 1975. One of our favorite directors, and, although of course (following the Dylan rules), we didn’t know him, we nevertheless have an…
As faithful readers can attest, we have something of a Nixon obsession here at Mid Century Cinema. And, kind of like one of Jerry’s girlfriends speaking of George—we don’t like him. (Don’t care much for that Henry Kissinger, either, but that’s another matter.) Thus the following “programing note”—we have an article in the new (Spring…
In a recent essay in The New York Times A. O. Scott asks the question, “Is Woody Allen a Great Filmmaker?” Scott is a critic for whom we at Mid Century Cinema have enormous appreciation—his reviews are thoughtful and well written; his longer-form thought pieces and video essays are almost invariably valuable and insightful. We…