Essays and ideas

Here is a selection of short essays covering an eclectic section of film topics:

• 'Kieslowski before Kieslowski' (pdf, 8 pages) and 'Timeline for Krzysztof Kieslowski' (pdf)
  
  
• Play vs opera vs film: Rossellini's Voce Humana
  
  
• Thoughtbites on Napoléon vu par Abel Gance
  
  
• The Big Combo eulogized
  
  
• Walking Too Fast (2010) from the Czech Republic
  
  
• In praise of Ryszard Bugajski's Interrogation (1982), a 'shelf movie'
  
  
• Hitchspeare? Hitchcock and Shakespeare compared
  
  
• Step aside Aung San Suu Kyi and Maggie Thatcher: make way for Vaclav Havel
  
  
• We need to talk about Kevin and Tree of Life: compare and contrast
  
  
• 'The Archbishop, the criminal and the repair of destinies': essay (pdf, 6 pages) on the idea of confession in Dostoevsky, Bresson, Graham Greene, Simenon [which links to the idea sketched in Reflections on Bresson 1: Detectives]
  
  
• Ten brief thoughts in praise of Eric Rohmer, marking his death in January 2010 (pdf, 2 pages)
  
  
• The White Ribbon's power to shock (pdf, 6 pages)
  
  
• On the Waterfront's Unanswered Question: Bernstein's music for On the Waterfront (1954) and a suggested link to Charles Ives
  
  
• Solaris: Soviet engineering, and the glories of Soviet science fiction
  
  
• A Cathedral Tale: in praise of Powell & Pressburger's A Canterbury Tale (1944) (pdf, 6 pages)
  
  
• No Country for Old Men (pdf, 7 pages) - a fine film by the Coen Brothers, and an even finer novel by Cormac McCarthy
  
  
• Perfect Storm - in praise of John Ford and against the cinema of hyperbole: this appeared in the Australian online journal, 'Senses of Cinema' in 2006. Click here for a link.

from Interrogation (1982)

Eric Rohmer

Alison in A Canterbury Tale (1944)