The Phantom Light (1935, Michael Powell)

Is the battle for the recognition of the pre-Grindhouse “quota quickies” and B-cinema over? One would think so considering the posthumous (and richly deserved) attention paid by critics, film-makers and archivists to the works of directors such as Joseph H Lewis, Edgar G Ulmer, Jacques Tourneur, Samuel Fuller and the subsequent efforts from the Corman …

Passing Fancy (1933, Yasujiro Ozu)

There was something in the air in the 1930s; in the shadow and under the influence of the Great Depression the great, good and average film-makers dedicated themselves to a cinema that now seems the warmest, most sympathetic and charitable (yet angry and sorrowful) there has been on a wide scale. This cinema, to speak …

Bringing Up Baby (1938, Howard Hawks)

It may rarely get credited as such, but Bringing Up Baby is one of the most beautiful films in the American cinema, as well as one of its most definitive. In very few other places would the American dream of independence be so thoroughly explored and so thoroughly exalted, even with the knowledge that it …