Of what use is a film or video, a work that gives us more of the images that we have seen—of cruelty—on the television news; of more of the questions that poets and professors have tried to speak to many of us for decades; of more of the history we have known, forgotten, known, and forgotten again? Privatemakes it possible for us to believe we are seeing individuals, that we are being given true emotions and thoughts.
Tag: movies
Luchino Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers: Poverty and Possibility, Heroism and Decadence in Italy
How one family supports and exploits its members is shown—their connection to each other is strained, it breaks: the family is revealed as a primitive tribe, a complex but primitive tribe, part of a society that replicates (and inspires) the family’s impulses. Visconti, an aristocrat, treats these peasants and workers with a respect that is hard to imagine their equals in American film, especially those who are African-American or Latino, receiving even at this time: Rocco and his brothers are allowed moments of transcendence.
World War II’s mass murder still casts shadow: Alain Resnais’s Night and Fog and other films
With luck, criticism becomes celebration. I cannot celebrate the history described by Alain Resnais’s film Night and Fog, a film of dignified honesty, forceful discipline, and a passion so resolute and true it does not have to remark on itself, a great film, but I can celebrate the gift of art and intelligence that it is.
A Review of the film Black Beauty (from the novel by Anna Sewell)
“Black Beauty” is quite a good family film. As a mother, I enjoy watching films with my daughter where I’m not compelled to flee the room after 10 minutes. The scenery is breathtaking, the horses gorgeous, the majority of the…
A Review of Queen of the Damned (From the Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice)
A Review of Queen of the Damned (From the Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice) Queen of the Damned possesses none of the originality of Interview With the Vampire. In Interview, death scenes were handled with taste and delicacy. In Queen…