While the spaghetti western had a brief flare of popularity in the 1960s, it was always something of a guilty pleasure – a chance for audiences to enjoy a new kind of western that pushed the bounda…

1939 was an important year in American cinema history. A number of significant films were made that would establish the direction of the medium for the next few decades. This was the year in which …

The Golem was arguably one of the first truly cinematic movies, where story, sets, camerawork and direction were all integrated together to create a fully cohesive story.  The images may seem flick…

The 1930s may well be the only decade in history when being a gold digger was something that could be regarded sympathetically. Even 1980s films such as Wall Street which had a character declare th…

If you were a famous comic act in the first half of the twentieth century, you probably made a comedy western. Charlie Chaplin (if you count The Gold Rush), Harold Lloyd, Bob Hope, Abbot and Costel…

During the 1940s and 1950s there were three novelists whose thrillers were often cinema gold when adapted for the big screen. These were Graham Greene, Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. Alan L…

There are many reasons to love Gilda – the lush photography and set designs, the beautiful costumes, the tense film noir acting, and the radiant loveliness of Rita Hayworth. I could not include the…

Buster Keaton’s movies have always been viewed in the same league as those of Charlie Chaplin, but the man himself has made less impression. Chaplin knew how to exaggerate his physical traits to dr…

The 1950s saw a welcome return to France for Jean Renoir. During the 1930s he had made his best movies, including The Rules of the Game and The Grand Illusion. Who would have thought that Renoir’s …

There can be few movie directors who managed to squander their popularity more magnificently than Tod Browning. Before making Freaks, he was riding high on the success of his adaptation of Dracula …

One of the curious things about some of horror movie’s most famous creations is how they were done best by early movie practitioners who had to work with a more limited array of effects at their di…

With hindsight, Alfred Hitchcock’s first two American movies set the tone for his career after leaving Britain. Rebecca offered up a melodrama with some of the emotional concerns typical to a Hitch…

The second film in Sergio Leone’s Dollars trilogy is about money and guns. We can hardly call them themes or motifs. Rather they are the fabric of the movie, shaping the action and motivations of t…

1950s sci-fi has its share of irresponsible and mad scientists, often leading to pompous suggestions about scientists playing god. “He tampered in God’s domain,” says a character at the end of Ed W…

A stranger rides into the little town of San Miguel, on the Mexico-United States border. It is uncertain who this drifter might be. Could he be a lawman? Is he an unemployed ranch herd? Most likely…

It has never been easy to make great art under a totalitarian regime. The government considers art to be a tool to be utilised for the promotion of the state, whereas the artist wishes to have free…

It would be natural and understandable to imagine that silent movies are a primitive form of cinema made when the basic techniques and conventions were in their infancy. Such an assumption would be…

There are two areas of Alfred Hitchcock’s career that do not remove much attention. These are his silent movies and his comedies. The only silent film by Hitchcock that is widely talked about is Th…

Anthony Mann’s five westerns that he made with James Stewart as the lead star might be called morality westerns. In each of the movies, the hero must struggle between the different pulls of his dua…

The reputation of Joel Schumacher’s 1993 thriller has been affected by the fact that the movie was greatly misunderstood, and it might be said that it was liked and disliked by the wrong people. Wh…

Few writers of short stories have interested moviemakers more than Edgar Allan Poe. At first sight, Poe’s stories might seem curious material for a feature-length film. Not only are the stories sho…

François Truffaut was one of the more admired directors of the French New Wave, but his first movie in colour (and only English-language) movie is not one of his better-loved works. Fahrenheit 451 …

If anyone wonders why Spanish surrealist director Luis Buñuel spent decades mocking the bourgeoisie and the church, The Exterminating Angel is perhaps the film that comes closest to offering an exp…

How many film directors have a secret fear that they are really Ed Wood? Not in those words perhaps, but fearing that they share his faults. How many wonder if they have compromised artistic integr…

Dunkirk is unusual among modern war movies in that it is neither a macho adventure story nor an anti-war movie, the latter option often being the only respectable way that a moviemaker can portray …