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Enoch Arden 1911
The poetic dissonance of the last two shots: Annie Lee and Philip Ray move toward the light of an open window on the left edge of the frame, their union finally consummated after years of delay (1); Enoch Arden dies alone in the back of a tavern, a stranger praying over his bedside. The stranger kneels toward an open window located in the same area of the frame (2). In linking these shots together and applying variation on a mirrored…
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They Died with Their Boots On 1941
At first, I thought this might resemble Preminger's The Cardinal or Visconti's Ludwig, films which show a man ascending and then eerily dissolving into the vast recesses of history, or vanishing into an image, thereby undermining the form of the biographical epic. But the film's conception of Custer could more accurately be described as one of absorption rather than dissolution. As Custer makes contact with the various spaces (temporal containers) of Walsh's cinema, he transforms and regenerates, absorbing the film's…
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Sergeant Rutledge 1960
a cinema of protest: if Ford’s art represents a dialectical plea for tolerance and understanding, this is among its most scorchingly articulate entries. one reason this filmmaker’s work has meant so much to me is that it is always full of monsters; figures of bigotry and troubled patriarchs are always present at the founding of communities. in this way, Ford’s rigorous examinations of institutions and structures are always celebratory and scathing in equal measure. like Dreyer, he makes horror films…
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Marnie 1964
after my recent rewatch of Rebecca, it occurred to me that the film is essentially a work of sensation fiction — about how it feels for a woman to move through spaces which are scarred by psychic trauma. in that film, psychological distress is contained at the narrative level; it pervades elusively in the background, haunting the interiority of the film in a deeply literary way. Marnie is not a literary film, it’s a film without an interior; everything it…
