Caché is one example of a film whose magisterial technical skills vie with the vaguely spurious, implausible substance of the story and its characters. The result is a film that I can admire, without feeling compelled to call it “art”; despite having much that is redeemable, Caché comes up short,…
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A Man Escaped (1956)
Taken to the Montluc prison in Lyon, France, a former member of the French Resistance is sentenced to death after a protracted imprisonment. He has hatched plans of escape, and a fellow prisoner by the name of Orsini has tried—and failed—to escape using his own plans. The countdown to his…
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Night and Fog (1956)
“Who among us keeps watch over this strange watchtower to warn the arrival of our new executioners? Are their faces really different from our own?” In the placid, breezy fields of the abandoned camps that once housed millions of those soon to be dispatched to the crematoria, the filmmaker Alain…
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L’Atalante (1934)
As the congregants of a wedding walk to the riverside, accompanying newlyweds leaving by barge, a woman exclaims, “couldn’t she marry a local boy?” to which another quickly responds that “she always has to be different.” But the poignant difference is to be one of love. The marriage of Jean…
