Email Author Elliott Stein

2001 Stories by Elliott Stein

• Sawdust and Tinsel

  published December 25, 2001

  The most influential Swedish filmmaker of the silent period was born in Finland of Russian-Jewish parentage. When Moshe Stiller was drafted into... More >>

• Flirting With Disaster

  published December 11, 2001

  Serious Spanish cinema may be said to begin with the films of Luis Berlanga and Juan Bardem, who trained together at film school, codirected a... More >>

• Whispers in the Dark

  published November 13, 2001

  Mary Pickford once remarked that it was a shame sound film hadn't come first and silent movies later. Her observation will appeal to those who... More >>

• Berlin Babylon

  published October 30, 2001

  There is no expiration date for dread. Fritz Lang died in 1976, but the work of this most perennially modern of directors is of uncanny timeliness... More >>

• Beginner’s Luck

  published September 25, 2001

  Leonardo Favio's powerful directorial debut, Chronicle of a Lonely Child (1965), is dedicated to his mentor, Leopoldo Torre Nilsson,... More >>

• Magnificent Obsessions

  published September 4, 2001

  His detractors have claimed that Kon Ichikawa is not a real auteur because of the extreme eclecticism of his work. In the course of a career... More >>

• Once Upon a Mattress

  published May 29, 2001

  The last decade has witnessed a revival of interest in the films of "pre-Code" Hollywood, a term covering the bracing period in the early '30s... More >>

• Richard Widmark’s High-Low Country

  published May 15, 2001

  No one ever made a more haunting film debut than Richard Widmark. Just recruited from Broadway, the young actor lucked out at Fox in his first... More >>

• Score Cards

  published April 3, 2001

  April is shaping up as movie-music month, with a MOMA retro of films scored by Erich Wolfgang Korngold and a wide-ranging "Composing for Film"... More >>

• Outsider Providence

  published March 20, 2001

  Among the second generation of postwar Italian filmmakers who came to prominence during the '60s, none has proven more idiosyncratic than Ermanno... More >>

• Utopian Euphoria and Unfinished idylls

  published February 27, 2001

  Jean Renoir's works are among the major achievements of world cinema and the essential Renoir is to be found in the films from La Chienne... More >>

• The Princess and the Showgirl

  published February 13, 2001

  Although Marion Davies is best known these days as the presumed prototype of Charles Foster Kane's second wife, she was nothing like the... More >>