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Feature Four Frames

Facing Mortality and Living Properly: Masaki Kobayashi’s The Fossil

The Fossil (Kaseki, 1975), based on a novel by Yasushi Inoue, is about the elderly businessman Itsuki (Shin Saburi), who is diagnosed with cancer while on a trip to Europe. The film was initially a television miniseries consisting of eight one-hour episodes because for Kobayashi and for many other directors, including Akira Kurosawa, the decline […]

Categories
Feature Screengem

Screengem: Telephones in Rififi (Jules Dassin, 1955)

Though not a silent film, Jules Dassin’s Rififi is most famous for the absence of audio, strikingly creating a relationship with sound and then removing it. Following a group of robbers attempting a daring diamond heist in the middle of Paris, this crime film delivers on generic expectation from the outset. After a piece of […]