Archive by category 'Featured'
This essay is written by a guest author, Yana Skrynnik.
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Madame de… Who is she? In the beginning of the film we see her as a high society woman, leading a rather empty, frivolous life, defined by the norms and customs of her environment. She’s attached…
The author of this essay is not a Twin Peaks fan: not only he resents the idea of fandom, but also finds Twin Peaks extremely imperfect. And yet, despite all its imperfections, Twin Peaks, without a doubt, is a great work of art, comparable in its importance with such…
Every aspect of a truly artistic film (or a work of art in any medium) should in some way contribute to the key idea expressed in it. The title is no exception. An ideal title should serve as a metaphor for such idea and be constructed in a way…
Many film connoisseurs mistakenly qualify “The Woman in the Window” as “minor Fritz Lang”, considering it more mainstream, less original and less art-like compared to Lang’s earlier “Der Müde Tod” (1921), “Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler” (1922), “Die Nibelungen” (1924), ”Metropolis” (1927) and “
Works of art in any medium, including film, may be sorted in two broad categories according to the methods chosen by their creators: art addressing intellect and art targeting emotions. Having stated that, I feel I must immediately emphasize that intellectual art obviously doesn’t preclude emotions, and neither is…
I want to begin by deciphering the meaning of the film’s iconic logo, used in its opening credits and posters. If we understand the meaning of that image, it will be a lot easier to recognize the message conveyed in this work of cinematic art. Here’s the full image,…
A note on the method: one of the key questions we must ask when analyzing any work of art is whether the artist expresses a pessimistic or optimistic point of view. It’s typically “either – or”, because the mixture of both is practically never even, and tends toward either…
There’s a certain type of predator whose function is to lure potentially enlightened people away from enlightenment. The predator, socially deprived of traditional ways to achieve dominance, is motivated by the urge to dominate and will occupy the professional position of authority related to a certain spiritual phenomenon, and…
Film storytellers who aim to make strong moral statements may choose to rely on extreme, controversial perspectives in order to get their message across. For example, Liliana Cavani in “The Night Porter” (1974), wishing to express the power of romantic love, selected a Nazi torturer and his female victim as…
My goal in writing this article is to prove that “L’Arrivee d’un train” is remarkable not merely as one of the early examples of moving image, but more importantly, as an early work of cinema as art – thanks to its profound philosophical controlling idea. I know the film in…
