Farran Smith Nehme

Before she won acclaim as a pioneering director, the Hollywood icon made her name as a powerfully vivid actor who brought grit and toughness to films by such masters as Raoul Walsh, Nicholas Ray, and Michael Curtiz.

An underrated figure of Japanese cinema’s postwar era, the director tackled a wide range of subjects over his long career, including corporate double-dealing, government espionage, and various forms of fanaticism.

The director of Freaks, The Unknown, and The Mystic tested the limits of early-Hollywood taste with his provocative visions of carnival life and society’s outcasts.

A collection of films on the Criterion Channel combine the moodiness of noir with late-nineteenth-century period detail and dark romance.

With her contralto drawl, genius for innuendo, and fierce control behind the camera, this great Hollywood provocateur pioneered a sex-positive cinema far ahead of its time.

After a career drought, Marlene Dietrich roared back to fame and acclaim with this ingenious comedy-western hybrid, made in what is widely considered one of the peak years of the studio system.

No Hollywood director brought as many memorable heroines to the screen as George Cukor, who was known throughout the industry as the quintessential “woman’s director.”

The legendary filmmaker possessed the greatest speaking voice in American cinema, and The Magnificent Ambersons represents the summit of his work as a vocal actor.

Once called “the great directorial genius of Hollywood” by Carole Lombard, Gregory La Cava struck comedy gold with this mix of madcap high jinks, irresistible romance, and social commentary.

Josef von Sternberg may have been one of cinema’s original micromanagers, but his films are testaments to longstanding collaborations with brilliant artists and technicians.

Depth, beauty, curiosity—what gave luminous French star Danielle Darrieux staying power across eight decades? Critic Farran Smith Nehme looks for the answer in two films from opposite ends of her career.

This spectacular and technically ambitious Hollywood musical is a priceless window onto American pop culture’s view of itself in the 1930s.

A haughty socialite is torn between the affections of three men in George Cukor’s blissful comedy of manners.

A feast of whip-smart banter, Howard Hawks’s protofeminist take on newsroom politics is the most grown-up of all remarriage comedies.

Alexander Hall’s 1941 film showcased Robert Montgomery’s star power and, with its premise of a death revoked, provided much-needed comic relief to war-worried audiences.

Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable’s effortless banter is pure magic, but Frank Capra’s comedy is rooted in the reality of the times.

This delicately creepy Hollywood horror movie lives up to its reputation as a classic of the genre.

Ingmar Bergman plumbs the depths of a fractured family and gives Ingrid Bergman a shocking star role.

Both sparkling and suspenseful, Alfred Hitchcock’s benchmark thriller is the perfect getaway, and it set the scene for much of the master’s later work.