Greed and human nature — it’s a common theme in both movies and literature, but rarely has it been handled as expertly as in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948). Following his service in World War II, director John ... Read more

How do you top the untoppable? That was the problem facing Busby Berkeley and the Warner Bros. Studio back in 1933. Following the success that same year of 42nd Street and Gold Diggers of 1933, how could they make the ... Read more

Mention the topic of foreign films to some people, and you may elicit a wince or frown. They think of hard-to-decipher films such as Bergman’s Persona (1966), austere films such as Dreyer’s Gertrud (1964), or confrontational films such as Fellini’s ... Read more

What’s better than a chilling ghost story? How about four ghost stories rolled into one? Kwaidan (1965) is based on a collection of Japanese ghost stories published in 1904. The author was Lafcadio Hearn, a folklorist of Greek-Irish ancestry, who ... Read more

No matter how many classic films you’ve seen, there will always be films that escape your notice. They may no longer exist (most silent films, for example). There may be rights issues (the long version of Abel Gance’s Napoleon, for ... Read more

If you looked at the cast list for A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935), you couldn’t be blamed for passing it by. How could Shakespeare’s most beloved comedy be well served by the likes of James Cagney, Joe E. Brown, Dick ... Read more

In a letter to film historian Herman G. Weinberg, director Ernst Lubitsch cited Ninotchka (1939) as one of his three best films. Lubitsch wrote, “As to satire, I believe I probably was never sharper than in Ninotchka, and I feel ... Read more

How can a film be loathed at the time of its release, yet be recognized as great many years later? The answer varies according to each film. In the case of Jean Renoir’s The Rules of the Game (1939), it ... Read more

If the measure of a classic film is its ability to withstand the erosions of time, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) would have to be regarded as the best science fiction film of all time. Though we have moved beyond ... Read more

Only Preston Sturges could begin a movie with a frantic-paced ending to another movie that doesn’t even exist, and then weave the story so it circles back to explain the improbable beginning. The Palm Beach Story (1942) is Sturges’ funniest ... Read more

Captain Blood (1935) is the first of three exceptional swashbuckling films from an unlikely trio: director Michael Curtiz, composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold, and actor Errol Flynn. While the other two films — The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) and The ... Read more

The novels of Charles Dickens should be ripe for film adaptation. The plucky heroes, sentimental plots, and rich background characters would be instantly recognizable if translated to the screen properly. That’s the problem. What film could possibly live up to ... Read more