Jacques Offenbach died with his masterpiece not quite finished, and that has made The Tales of Hoffmann a predestined victim for adapters who have dropped some numbers, inserted others, altered the plot, fiddled with the casting, and (more…)

One of the great works of 1930s poetic realist cinema, Le Jour Se Leve was Marcel Carne’s third collaboration with screenwriter and poet Jacques Prevert. A story of obsessive sexuality and murder, in which the working-class Francois (Je (more…)

Review
An archetypal Ingmar Bergman film, and one of his best. –David Kehr, CHICAGO READER

Weaving a tapestry of memory and dreams, Ingmar Bergman delves into the past of aged professor Isak Borg, en route to receive an award from (more…)

essential video
A champion of illumination and experimental shading, Kurosawa brings his unerring eye for indelible images to Shakespeare in this 1957 adaptation of Macbeth. By changing the locale from Birnam Wood to 16th-century Jap (more…)

One of France’s most respected directors of the postwar era, Rene Clement directed such searing psychological dramas as Forbidden Games and Purple Noon. And Gervaise, his vivid 1956 adaptation of Emile Zola’s 1877 masterpiece L’assommoi (more…)