The Big Picture Magazine
The notoriously perturbing boat scene on the lake in Leave Her to Heaven (John Stahl, 1946) is impossible to forget – thanks to Gene Tierney, of course. A truly exceptional femme fatale, she’s at her very best in the role of psychotic Ellen Berent, delivering a layered, riveting performance. Gene’s angelic beauty and her unblinking cruelty are […]
To qualify as a Big Picture ‘lost classic’ a movie usually has to have been grossly underwatched due to the lack of a video or DVD release, criminally overlooked by TV schedulers or (uncriminally?) not uploaded to video sharing websites. In the case of Thorold Dickinson’s Victorian psychological melodrama Gaslight (1940) its lost status was […]
In most accounts of the rise in mainstream popularity of American independent cinema, Wayne Wang’s culturally inquisitive neo-noir Chan Is Missing often serves as a footnote rather than as a prime example, perhaps because Wang arrived too early for the party. 1984 is usually cited as a banner year for American independent cinema, which is […]
Kiss Me Deadly—a brutal, brilliant film noir that set the high-water mark for Cold War paranoia—is finally getting the deluxe DVD reissue it deserves on June 21st courtesy of the wonderful folks at the Criterion Collection. Below is a pivotal scene from the film as featured in the World Film Locations: Los Angeles book available […]