Film Subject Overview
The Film Section includes entries on a variety of modernist genres, periods, movements, directors, films, and critical modes aligned with modernist aims and intellectual attitudes.…
Search Results 1 - 25 of 161
Expressionism
Expressionism was one of the foremost modernist movements to emerge in Europe in the early years of the twentieth-century. It had a profound effect on…
Painlevé, Jean (1902–1989)
Jean Painlevé was a French scientist who was particularly well known for his documentary films about science and the natural world. He was the only…
Pudovkin, Vsevolod Illarionovich (1893–1953)
Vsevolod Pudovkin was a Soviet actor, director, and film theorist working during the first half of the 20th century. He studied chemistry at Moscow State…
Auteur Theory, The
The auteur theory is a way of critically analyzing a film or corpus of films through viewing its director as the film’s author and principal…
Iranian New Wave
The Iranian New Wave began when a group of young Iranian directors—following developments in the Iranian cultural arena with origins in the political and social…
Sen, Mrinal (1923--)
Mrinal Sen is an Indian film director closely associated with the Indian New Wave (alternatively known as the Parallel Cinema). Born in Faridpur, now Bangladesh,…
Kinugasa, Teinosuke (1896–1982)
Kinugasa Teinosuke (1 January 1896–26 February 1982) was a Japanese actor and film director, most famous for his experimental films of the 1920s and art-house…
Vulgar Modernism
J. Hoberman (James Lewis Hoberman) first introduced his concept of “vulgar modernism” in 1981 to describe a particular sensibility found on the “looney” fringes of…
Fantômas
The first and most famous of many films based on the eponymous villain created by writers Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre, the silent crime serial…
Cocteau, Jean (1889–1963)
Jean Cocteau (Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau) was an influential, prolific, multi-talented French artist, writer, critic and filmmaker. He wrote poetry, plays, libretti for ballets,…
Expressionism
Expressionism was one of the foremost modernist movements to emerge in Europe in the early years of the twentieth-century. It had a profound effect on…
Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980)
Anglo-American director Alfred Hitchcock was one of the most influential auteurs in cinema history, making more than fifty feature films between 1925 and 1976. He…
Buñuel, Luis (1900–1983)
Luis Buñuel is the film director most often associated with Surrealism, although his own career spanned many genres, film industries, and nations. Born to a…
Vigo, Jean (1905–1934)
Jean Vigo was an anarchist and social realist French filmmaker responsible for four short yet influential works. Famously honored as “the cinema incarnate” by Henri…
Gance, Abel (1889–1981)
Abel Gance, né Abel Perthon, was a French dramatist, actor, critic, poet, screenwriter, and director. Trying to make it as a playwright and actor from…
Sirk, Douglas (1900–1987)
Douglas Sirk was a German émigré director who was widely celebrated for his melodramas produced for Universal Studios during the 1950s, which inspired generations of…
Nakahira, Kō (1926–1978)
Nakahira Kō was a prolific and wide-ranging Japanese film director who, during his relatively short career, directed more than forty feature-length films. He began his…
Feminist Film
There is no consensus about what “feminist film” is. A simple definition would be films about women made by women that advance the feminist cause.…
Trnka, Jiŕí (1912–1969)
Jiŕí Trnka (pronounced “Yershy Trinka”) was the foremost Czech puppet animator and a major influence on all subsequent Eastern European puppet animators. He trained under…
Paisà
Paisà (Paisan. Italy 1946, b/w, 124 min. Drama). Directed and produced by Roberto Rossellini. Production: OFI, Foreign Film Production Inc., Capitani Film. Written by Federico…
L’Herbier, Marcel (1888–1979)
Marcel L’Herbier was a French pioneer avant-garde (impressionist) filmmaker and theorist who made more than forty films between the 1920s and the 1950s. During World…
New American Cinema
The New American Cinema was a movement to create independent films that expressed the countercultural moods and sensibilities of the late 1950s and early 1960s;…
Agee, James (1909–1955)
James Agee was an American film critic, journalist, and novelist, who, like his modernist contemporaries, pushed against the constraints of his genres. Born in Knoxville…
Jancsó, Miklós (1921–2014)
Hungarian director Miklós Jancsó (September 27, 1921–January 31, 2014) emerged in the 1960s with a series of films professing both an unapologetic Marxist perspective and…