English
Articles and Essays on British English Films
Blow-up (1966)
With Blow-up, Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni created one of the most fascinating and psychedelic art films, which tells the story of a desensitized and nihilistic London photographer who may have or not have witnessed a murder. Antonioni uses the formulaic materials for a traditional suspense thriller, without the climatic payoff. When Blow-up was released in 1966 […]
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Modern Times (1936)
To make a silent film in 1931 with City Lights four years after the first sound film The Jazz Singer, was a challenge. To make another in 1936 with Modern Times nearly a decade after audiences were now used to sound films, appeared downright perverse. Now audiences were used to the rapid dialog sound comedies of the […]
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Red Shoes, The (1948)
There is a disturbing contrast between two different type of stories in Powell and Pressburger’s masterpiece The Red Shoes. One of the stories is a traditional Hollywood romance about a young ballerina who becomes an overnight sensation and falls in love with the composer of the ballet that inspired her. Then there’s another story that seems more […]
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Brief Encounter (1945)
Its starts with the horn from the sound of an incoming train. In the dining refreshment room of the railway station there are two people sitting together without words but there facial expressions say it all. Both are happily married, in their mid-thirties and each have two children. They are waiting for the sad and final […]
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