Diary of a Lost Girl

In 1929 – two years into cinema’s sound era – the days of silent filmmaking were numbered, but as the studios raced to capitalise on the excitement and box-office potential of this new tool, some filmmakers were still producing wonders without it. Dziga Vertov was the Man With a Movie Camera; Buñuel and Dalí collaborated for Un Chien Andalou; Fritz Lang made another pioneering sci-fi film with Woman in the Moon, and Anthony Asquith found time to comment wryly on the phenomenon of the ‘talkie’ in his gripping thriller A Cottage on Dartmoor. GW Pabst, meanwhile, was about to turn a relatively unknown actress into one of cinema’s most iconic and intriguing figures. Why on earth would he need dialogue? He had Louise Brooks.

Read the rest of my article at Mostly Film.

Interstellar

In a recent New York Times Magazine profile, Christopher Nolan recalled a development meeting he had with studio executives before making The Dark Knight, where he presented his vision of The Joker as an agent of pure anarchy. The executives were nonplussed by the idea of a villain without a clear and definable motivation, and Nolan says, “I had to explain it to them, and that’s when I realized I had to explain it to the audience.”

Read the rest of my review at The L Magazine