Can we treasure the work of artists whose behavior we vehemently disapprove of? Our short answer is yes. But keep reading. This is a question that must be reckoned with nowadays, given the recent (and continuing) avalanche of simply horrifying revelations of sexual harassment, and often much, much worse, by prominent, powerful men. Many of…
Martin Scorsese turned seventy-five on November 17, a milestone that naturally lends itself to looking back at his remarkable career. (Though, we hasten to add, not in a valedictory way—he is currently working on one film, has another in pre-production, and plans are already taking shape for the one after that.) Given that Scorsese’s overflowing…
The release of the spectacular Trouble No More provides a fitting moment for our third Bob-post of retrospectives following Dylan receiving the 2016 Nobel Prize for literature. The first included a general overview and guidelines for following his Bob-ness; the second featured our user’s guide to (almost) all of his studio albums; here, as previously…
This weekend your intrepid correspondent was able to see Ismael’s Ghosts, the most recent offering from Arnaud Desplechin, at the New York Film Festival. An earlier, shorter cut had received mixed notices at Cannes, but we were eager to attend, both in anticipation of the screening and for the promised Q&A with the director that…
Mid Century Cinema favorite Jean-Pierre Melville would have turned 100 on October 20, and his centennial has led to countless celebratory retrospectives, as well as, it would appear, the forging of The Jean Pierre Melville Foundation. We would say it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy—but that would be wrong of us, as he was,…
Truffaut on Cinema is nothing short of a treasure for movie-lovers. François Truffaut sat for about 300 interviews between 1959 and 1984, and every last one of them is collected in this book—and presented with a rather ingenious twist. The interviews were compiled and reorganized by Anne Gillain, and as reassembled the book proceeds thematically,…
Once again it’s that time of year – the Fifty-Fifth New York Film Festival will run from September 28 through October 15 – and as usual there are more great screenings and events than one could possibly hope to attend. The entire forty-five page brochure is worth a close read, but we’ll highlight some of the…
We have added a good bit of new content here at MCC, and thought we’d take the opportunity to walk through what is new (and forthcoming) on the site. Over in “Books, Essays and More,” four new publications can be found: Our Cineaste review of Charles Taylor’s book on the “Shadow Cinema” of the 1970s,…
We recently wrote about Alfred Hitchcock in this essay for the Boston Review, and as it turns out, that experience left us wanting to talk a little bit more about the Master of Suspense. So we thought we’d give him the full Mid Century Cinema treatment, and offer a modest assessment and career overview, culminating…
Dustin Hoffman, one of the signature actors of the New Hollywood, turns eighty on August 8, 2017. Faithful readers of Mid Century Cinema might have noticed we have a certain fondness for this period, and Hoffman’s extraordinary run during this era neatly summarizes many of the reasons why. Hoffman appeared in a dozen films from…