Monthly Archives: March 2018

Heavy-handed allegory can be avoided by pretending that there is no allegory at all (there is a certain cleverness in the big lie), but it can also be hidden away and denied by a refusal to admit the sign, not the thing signified. Ingmar Bergman does just this in The Seventh Seal: he has DeathContinue reading “The Seventh Seal”

If you manage to begin this movie without knowing it is about the sinking of the Titanic, the opening scenes will cue you—and then all shall be known. The first time you watch it you will feel as though you are re-watching it, and each time you watch it thereafter it will seem fresher thanContinue reading “A Night to Remember”

On watching The Third Man I was surprised to find the most cliché of stories hitting hard. From the first scene we are introduced to one and then another of our standard detective story cast: a friendly policeman and an efficiently ruthless one, a helpful frightened servant, a sinister foreigner (somehow more foreign then allContinue reading “The Third Man”

Can there be an epic almost exclusively filmed within one house? Except for three brief scenes, Babette’s Feast is set within the confines of a remote community in Jutland, but there is no doubt it is a story greater than its surroundings. What seems to be a quiet, intimate movie revolving around two sisters, theirContinue reading “Babette’s Feast”