Essays

I was a newspaper boy in the late 60’s.  This meant that it was my responsibility to deliver a lot of bad news.  The assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, the Vietnam War, the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, these were all things I learned about as I walked from house to house. ...

I have to admit that I frequently feel sorry for my students. Is it that they’re not bright enough, or that they lack the ambition to succeed in the film business?  Emphatically not.  On this score they give me enormous hope for the future of the movies.  Where they elicit my sympathy is in having...

The Coronavirus has impacted everything.  For many Americans, the loss of two pastimes is particularly irksome:  Sports and sex.  And it’s even more acute at the moment because it is spring, the season for both baseball and nookie. We frequently turn to the movies to provide us with those things we feel are missing in...

One of the by-products of our long road to confront our racial history is the question, “What do we do with the artifacts of our past?”  From century-old minstrel shows and advertising slogans like “Dis sho’ am good!” to the recent flaps over Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemima, we seem to be in a constant...

Shortly after the Twin Towers fell on 9/11, video stores across the country reported a big spike in rentals for two older movies: Die Hard and The Towering Inferno.  It’s easy to see why:  Both movies posited a disaster in a doomed building that tested the resolve of heroes, and a day to be won by a combination...

Charisma? “I know it when I see it.” We all have that human tendency to define the inexplicable in this way, particularly if it requires a closer inspection than we may be willing to give it.  We assign terms like “undefinable” and “inexpressible” when we fear that any real exploration of the charismatic will somehow...

 “And the truth shall set you free.” This is one of the core themes of the movies, the belief that the restoration of order can only occur once truth confronts power.  While Hollywood has proselytized this notion throughout its history, it was probably never more necessary to it than it was in the decade following...

Billy Wilder created several classic films leading up to his twin masterpieces, Some Like It Hot and The Apartment. Most studies of his work stop there, referring to his post-1960 output as his slide down from the mountaintop.  Admittedly, few if any movies could stand comparison to those two, or, for that matter, to his earlier Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard and Ace...

Dramatically if not legally, Austrian-born producer-director Otto Preminger was always fascinated with criminal proceedings.  Beginning with his tutelage in Vienna under the legendary stage impresario Max Reinhardt, Preminger was drawn to plays that ended with courtroom theatrics.  When he shifted to film directing in America he frequently sought out opportunities to stage scenes overseen by...

There seems little doubt that the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is going to drive yet another reckoning in a year filled with them.  Forces on both sides lined up within an hour of her passing to stake their territory and begin what will undoubtedly be a very ugly couple of months.  It seems...