Satyajit Ray’s early films brim with modernist tropes and themes. This is not surprising, as Ray’s middle-class background was steeped in literature, social progressivism, and Indian traditions. Like many modernist writers and artists, Ray soaks up these influences and examines them at a time of great change. Having grown up during the Indian nationalist movement, he began making films in a newly independent India. His early films often reflect the hopes and struggles of a nation forging its postcolonial identity.…

The Saphead is better than its reputation suggests, although there isn't much to recommend it apart from Buster Keaton's performance. It was his first role in a feature film after emerging from the tutelage of Fatty Arbuckle. He had already made a couple of two-reelers for his own production company, The High Sign (shelved until 1921) and the masterpiece One Week (released the previous month).

Keaton didn't direct The Saphead, and it shows. The direction is unimaginative, the editing is…

A Hidden Life tells the story of Franz Jägerstätter, a devout Catholic farmer from Sankt Radegund, in Upper Austria, who becomes a conscientious objector and refuses to swear an oath of loyalty to Hitler. A Nazi tribunal convicts him of undermining military morale and sentences him to death. His story was largely unknown outside Austria until the 1960s and 1970s, when books about his life and death began to appear. In 2007, the Catholic Church declared Jägerstätter to be a…