Sunset Boulevard

It begins in the gutter…but of course. A street name, Sunset Blvd., painted on the curb above the sewer drain is a convenient way to present the film’s title, but it also tells us where we’re going: down. Even the abbreviation gives it a kind of slangy, tabloid grit. The title refers to one of [...]

Sam’s Place

First published in the May-June 1996 issue of Film Comment, in time for the broadcast bow of Adam Simon’s The Typewriter, The Rifle and the Movie Camera; offered now as a new Sam Fuller DVD box set hits the streets.–Robert Horton
“Who’s Griff?”
The question has to be asked. If the subject is Samuel Fuller, and the [...]

The Manchurian Candidate

A piece I wrote on The Manchurian Candidate for a web encyclopedia, and thus meant to be an introduction to a classic. It’s one of the ten best movies of 1962, a list seen here. –Robert Horton
I love Yen Lo. Perhaps you don’t recognize the name? Well, the brain can easily play tricks on a [...]

Jules and Jim

Jules and Jim
I wrote this piece for a program note at a college film series in 1983 and subsequently published it in The Informer. I am amused now by the worldly opening phrase, since I was a kid at the time and over 25 years have passed since then. Jules and Jim is one of my [...]

L’Atalante

L’Atalante
by Robert Horton
Somewhere on the criss-crossed, free-flowing canals and waterways of world cinema, a small barge called “L’Atalante,” launched in 1934, glides along even today. It always will; the permanence of movies bestows immortality on the vessel, and on the motion picture that carries its name, and on the fevered young director who gave himself [...]

On Staring into the Camera: Aguirre and Bears

(This piece was presented as lecture to a general audience at the Seattle Art Museum following a screening of Aguirre, the Wrath of God. I left it as is, so it might feel more spoken than written, which was the original idea. It’s co-published with Parallax View.)
by Robert Horton
Near the end of Grizzly Man, Werner Herzog’s [...]

The Searchers

Here is a 1990 piece written for a film series program note, complete with contemporary references to Dances with Wolves. (Remember that? It won a lot of Oscars.) I revive it in anticipation of tomorrow’s posting: the ten best movies of 1956.
The Searchers
by Robert Horton
“You fit a lot of descriptions,” says Captain Reverend Samuel Johnson [...]

Bad Company

Bad Company
by Robert Horton
About a decade ago the early 1970s were officially enshrined as the last golden age of Hollywood, especially (probably not coincidentally) by the filmmakers and critics who came of age during that time. This view has some nostalgia attached to it, and at times it distracts people from appreciating some of the [...]

The Bitter Tea of General Yen

The Bitter Tea of General Yen
by Robert Horton
It was 1932, and Frank Capra was frustrated. True, he’d had some measure of success: nearly single-handedly, his movies were pulling punk Columbia Pictures out of the second (or maybe third) tier of Hollywood studios. The legendarily boorish mogul Harry Cohn trusted him with Columbia’s A-list productions, such [...]

The Night of the Hunter

The Night of the Hunter
by Robert Horton
“I’ll be back,” the man calls out, “when it’s dark.” Those words are the warning, and the credo, of every monster that ever slouched through fairy tale or film. Toward the end of The Night of the Hunter, they are uttered by Harry Powell, the evil preacher who burns [...]