Tail Pop

David Lean’s ‘The Bridge on The River Kwai’

Unlike many of my colleagues, I did not grow up a film nut. I was a sports nut, particularly baseball, and following my parents’ lead, a Gershwin, Sinatra and Broadway musical nut. For me, movies were fun, but nothing like watching the Yankees lose (a rare occurrence) or pretend- ing I was Frank, or Oscar Levant playing “Rhapsody in Blue” before a rapt audience at Carnegie Hall. […]

This Quarter in Film History

Hitchcock Railway

The signature Alfred Hitchcock thriller frequently involves an innocent person accused of a politically motivated murder committed by twisted villains who are terrorists, Nazis, fascists or Communists. […]

This Quarter in Film History

Blue Grit

During the transition week between the Jimmy Carter and the Ronald Reagan presidencies 30 years ago this January, Hill Street Blues premiered on the NBC net- work. […]

Tail Pop

Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960)

Viewing the shower scene for the first time, I don’t think I was aware of its status as one of the most famous sequences in cinematic history. Little did I know that my fascination (and later my career) in editing would be traced back to this moment in time. […]

Book Reviews

Wide, Wide World

In the Jean-Luc Godard film Contempt (1963), director Fritz Lang, portraying himself, acidly jokes that CinemaScope “wasn’t meant for human beings. Just for snakes and funerals.” […]

This Quarter in Film History

Brother, Can You Spare a Job?

F Scott Fitzgerald once wrote that there are no second acts to American lives––an odd statement because Americans have always sought new challenges and adventures. During the Depression, people lost their careers, their savings and their homes, and families were forced to discover new ways to survive. Three-quarters of a century later, the current generation is experiencing similar joblessness, foreclosures and bankruptcies, which have caused national anxiety. […]