The witch is a longstanding media archetype, one featured frequently in 20th century Disney films. In this video, I look at the delightfully evil Sanderson Sisters from the 1993 Disney film, Hocus Pocus (dir. Kenny Ortega), connecting the sisters to other Disney villains, the history of the witch, and what it means for women to defy… Read more »
My introduction to Germaine Dulac many years ago in film school revolved around the surrealists. I learned about her fraught collaboration with Antonin Artaud, which resulted in a group of surrealists rioting at the premiere of The Seashell and the Clergyman (1928). However, Germaine Dulac was so much more than an object of surrealist ire and… Read more »
The Dracula story has been told countless times on film, from F.W. Murnau’s unauthorized 1922 adaptation of Bram Stoker’s novel to a surge of re-imaginings and modernizations over the past decade. Werner Herzog’s version, inspired by F.W. Murnau’s film, has long been one of my favorites. It’s both faithful to the story in many ways,… Read more »
La Pointe Courte (1955), Agnès Varda’s first film, is often considered one of the major precursors for the French New Wave, a movement that would begin a few years later with (depending on who you ask) either Claude Chabrol’s Le Beau Serge (1958) or François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows (1959). Varda has been branded the… Read more »
Rosalind Russell’s career was somewhat different than other starlets of her era. Getting her start in her mid-20s, later than other women actors of her generation, Russell’s star persona was strongly associated with the “career woman.” When she starred in Auntie Mame (dir. Morton DaCosta, 1958), she was 51 years old, age-appropriate for the role, and… Read more »
There are many notable similarities between Alfred Hitchcock’s two films Strangers on a Train (1951) and Rope (1948). For example, Hitchcock scholars and film critics have written repeatedly about the doubling of the male relationships — particularly since Farley Granger appears in both films — and the implication that Brandon and Phillip (Rope), Bruno and even Guy… Read more »