To achieve the opening shots of Aguirre, the Wrath of God, director Werner Herzog sought a location atop a mountain near Machu Picchu, in Peru. He led his cast and crew, some 450 people, along with a ...

Federico Fellini’s 8 ½ opens with a dream sequence that embodies the entire picture as few first scenes have. In the sequence, troubled filmmaker Guido Anselmi, a clear representation of Fellini himse...

Before Federico Fellini became the world-renowned fabulist of European cinema; before he was celebrated for autobiographical exhibitions into his fantasies, sexuality, religion, and memory; before his...

Born into a world of scents that today are unimaginable, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille enters this life when his mother delivers him from her womb onto the pile of refuse under her fish cart in the middle ...

In the 1960s, French president Charles de Gaulle made a vow to develop his country’s economy and reform Paris into a modern city. Knocking down older houses in urban Right Bank districts, develo...

While they sleep, San Francisco residents are being infiltrated by an other-worldly threat that replicates them into emotionless clones. All of their liberalism and culture is stripped away as they be...

Metropolis contains such magnificent visuals that all else about the film recedes, allowing its all-consuming mythical status to take over. A technical masterwork of the Silent Era by Austrian directo...

The Coen Brothers’ The Man Who Wasn’t There has a perfect film noir opening, a monologue in voiceover that captures its protagonist’s unaffected, yet exacting, observations about his métier, his famil...

Few films have followed Western traditions with as much exhilarating craftsmanship, narrative and stylistic economy, or sheer escapist delight as Howard Hawks’ Rio Bravo. The picture is a prescr...