François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows is a landmark of the French New Wave movement and, in broader terms, and perhaps more importantly, the emergence of auteur filmmaking. Truffaut’s film was among the f...

Published in 1955, Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley, the first novel in a series of five, follows the charming but nihilistic Tom Ripley, an enigmatic character with all the makings of a p...

By January of 1939, Adolf Hitler’s successful Anschluss of Austria by Nazi Germany had been established for nearly a year, and Czechoslovakia’s annexation had been in place for just a month less. Pola...

Tod Browning’s Freaks endures as one of the strangest curiosities ever put to celluloid, a film that tests our initial repulsion and challenges our basic human sympathies. Released by Metro-Goldwyn-Ma...

Nicolas Roeg’s Gothic tale Don’t Look Now writhes with uncertainty, a vagueness that underlines everything revealed to intensify our unease. And yet, this feeling becomes prey to a confident, ingeniou...

As hobbies go, surveying trains and collecting detailed, personalized information about them resides in a unique class of lowly pastimes. And aside from train-bejeweled wallpaper, the activity has no ...

Gone with the Wind is a historical film in every sense of the word. The story, adapted from Margaret Mitchell’s beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning 1936 novel, delves into a romantic period of American his...

“Scorpion wants to cross a river, but he can’t swim. Goes to the frog, who can, and asks for a ride. Frog says, ‘If I give you a ride on my back, you’ll go and sting me.’ Scorpion replies, ‘It would n...

Editor’s Note: This essay has been temporarily removed from Deep Focus Review. Check back for a revised and expanded version soon.