In an earlier discussion of the New Hollywood landmark Klute (produced and directed by Alan J. Pakula, shot by “Prince of Darkness” Gordon Willis, and starring Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland), we argued that the theme of “control” was the central issue for Bree Daniels (Fonda). Which in turn makes it the central theme of Klute,…
This weeks’ film was Robert Altman’s masterpiece Nashville, which we have previously discussed here. This semester we’re honing in on specific moments from our films-of-the-week, and there are two particular sequences from Nashville that have always impressed us mightily—each an exquisite manifestation of the distinct and intoxicating possibilities of cinematic storytelling. The first is an…
The public relations department here at Mid Century Cinema is delighted to announce that When the Movies Mattered: The New Hollywood Revisited, will be published by Cornell University Press this June. It features a veritable dream team of contributors (you can click on the links below for author IDs). From the Jacket Copy: In When…
We’re still ruminating on the question of great directors and the distinct (and distinguished) attribute of voice, following our recent discussion here that put forth a preliminary working-list-in-progress of twenty-nine directors canonized on this score. Any such list is arbitrary (that is, to some extent influenced by taste), fluid (cue Andre and Wally on this…
Thanks to the internet (which has likely destroyed enlightened civilization but admittedly has its upside), we have at long last been able to screen the one film by Krzysztof Kieslowski that had previously eluded us. (Our post from 2017, Kieslowski for Completists, has been updated accordingly.) Finally seeing the very fine and very representative Life…
Once again the crack staff here at Mid Century Cinema is getting ready to teach “The Politics of the Seventies Film,” (new bat time, new bat channel). Long time listeners will recall that we’ve followed along with the class in previous incarnations, with posts under the headings of “A Semester of Seventies Films” and then…
It’s that time of year – the season of “best of” lists – and our now-emerging tradition is to play along with a selection of our favorite home video releases. A reminder of the ground rules: this is an appreciation of favorite home video releases, not favorite movies, so there is an emphasis on discs…
Days apart in the last week of November, filmmakers Nicholas Roeg and Bernardo Bertolucci left us. The turn–the-page pairing of two representative-of-something artists sounded echoes of July 1997, when Robert Mitchum and Jimmy Stewart died on the first and the second of the month—quite the “they don’t make them like that anymore” farewell to the…
So, we don’t really write negative reviews here at Mid Century Cinema, for two reasons. First, we’re not in the review game. In fact, we’re a little wary of that enterprise, in which creative people work long and hard to produce something they value, and then someone else wanders by and passes summary judgement on…
On a number of occasions here we have invoked something we dubbed the “three screenings rule”—that it is hard to fully come to grips with a movie until you have seen it three times. Thus although we will often, even with great enthusiasm, share a few words about a movie seen only once, we nevertheless…