Daney, Serge (1944–1992)
Serge Daney was regarded as one of the greatest film critics in French intellectual culture. For Jean-Luc Godard, his untimely demise signalled the end of…
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Godard, Jean-Luc (1930–)
One of the most important filmmakers in the latter half of the 20th century, Jean-Luc Godard’s reputation remains enduringly linked with the French nouvelle vague…
Breathless (1960)
Jean Luc Godard’s Breathless captures French New Wave’s rejection of traditional cinematic form, and its style has influenced alternative, political, and documentary filmmakers.
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…
French New Wave
The French New Wave is a term associated with a group of French filmmakers and the films they directed from the late 1950s until the…
Montage
As an aesthetic principle, montage, defined as the assemblage of disparate elements into a composite whole often by way of juxtaposition, is most often associated…
Bazin, André (1918–1958)
André Bazin (born April 18, 1918, Angers, France–died November 11, 1958, Nogent-sur-Marne, France) was an influential French film critic who was active during the development…
Modernist Film Criticism
Criticism is one of the fundamental concepts in Modernism and is defined by “the intensification, almost exacerbation, of [a] self-critical tendency” that began with Kant,…
Slapstick Comedy
The term “slapstick comedy” refers to film comedies in which the humor relies upon physical gags and stunts. The slapstick—a wooden paddle to which a…
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…
Lang, Fritz (1890–1976)
Fritz Lang was a film director central to the development of German expressionist cinema and American film noir. Born Friedrich Christian Anton Lang in Vienna,…
Bergman, Ernst Ingmar (July 14, 1918–July 30, 2007)
Perhaps the exemplification of the European art-film director throughout the late 1950s and the 1960s, Ingmar Bergman developed what would become an almost instantly recognizable…
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…
Rossellini, Roberto (1906–1977)
Roberto Rossellini (Roberto Gastone Zeffiro Rossellini, Rome, May 8, 1906—June 3, 1977) was an Italian film director, screenwriter, and producer. His early work appeared at…
Céline, Louis-Ferdinand (1894–1964)
Louis-Ferdinand Céline was one of the most controversial and innovative authors of the twentieth century. Known for his use of insults, slang, and ellipses in…
Politics and Cinema
The relationship between politics and the cinema is probably one of the most vexatious questions to have occupied the academic discipline of film studies, and…