Red Desert (1964)

Michelangelo Antonioni is a divisive auteur and I can understand why some people don’t like him – wealthy people being bored in slow narratives where nothing much happens. But I really like L’Eclisse and The Passenger as absorbing portraits of alienation. Red Desert (1964; Il deserto rosso) was advertised as Antonioni’s first film in colour, […]

The Spy Who Came In From The Cold (1965)

Richard Burton is perfectly dour and weary in the title role of the John Le Carre adaptation, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold (1965). Shot in black and white by cinematographer Oswald Morris and directed by Martin Ritt (who made Hud and Hombre), the film is set during the Cold War and follows […]

La Caza (1966)

I took another chance on a film screening on The Cinephobe TV website. La Caza (1966) aka The Hunt was directed by Carlos Saura, a major Spanish director whose work I was generally not familiar with except for seeing one of his late-1980s flamenco movies (El Amor Brujo), which are gorgeously visual with bold colours. […]

Hour Of The Wolf (1968)

Ingmar Bergman had always been a blind spot in my film knowledge. To be honest, I was compelled to finally watch more of his work due to an A24 podcast conversation between Ari Aster and Robert Eggers where they talked at length about his influence on their work in horror. That and the availability of […]

Winter Light (1963)

Continuing my education into the work of director Ingmar Bergman, I picked Winter Light (1963; Nattvardsgästerna) to watch next. Mostly on the basis that it’s one of the big inspirations for Paul Schrader’s First Reformed. In that movie, it was a struggling priest dealing with a suicidal parishoner obsessed with climate change apocalypse – here, […]