Author Martyn Bamber

Seeing the murder mystery thriller Gumnaam (The Unknown, Raja Nawathe, 1965) for the first time this year, the film’s opening song and dance number is a standout pop music sequence. Gumnaam starts with two murd...

While the Western is primarily known as an American cinematic institution, this has not stopped other countries from enthusiastically embracing the genre, the most notable being Italy with the ‘Spaghetti’ Weste...

Writing about Les Enfants Terribles in mid-2020 during a global pandemic, it is tempting to draw parallels between the seclusion of real-world citizens in their homes and the self-imposed isolation of the film’...

“A repetition of identical days, the only variant of which is the cinephile menu”. – Ne croyez surtout pas que je hurle (Just Don't Think I'll Scream, Frank Beauvais, 2019) “Si les temps sont durs et mauvais...

Skewering celebrity vanity, the allure of success and the obsession with fame, Kiss Me, Stupid (1964) takes a long, hard look at these subjects and is simultaneously fascinated and appalled, amused and aghast a...

The subject of The Servant (1963) is the English class system and its tensions in swinging sixties London. The battleground for this class struggle is mainly confined to a single location, a house owned by Tony...

How has cinema changed over the last 10 years? This question is not about the art or business of cinema; it refers to the cinemagoing experience itself. Arguably, the movement that has had – and continues to ha...

The autobiographical films of Terence Davies are not simply nostalgic journeys into the director’s past; they are piercing insights into the filmmaker’s turbulent early life. While Distant Voices, Still Lives (...

Elaine May’s film directing debut, A New Leaf (1971) is a pitch-black comedy centred on Henry Graham (Walter Matthau), an affluent, self-absorbed bachelor, who finds his expensive lifestyle in jeopardy due to h...

Sōshun (Early Spring, 1956) follows Yasujirō Ozu’s classic Tōkyō monogatari (Tokyo Story, 1953) in continuing to develop the director’s characteristic themes, including the demands of family life, the maintenan...

Emerging from a troubled production history, Moontide seems overlooked in the annals of film history in general, and the story of 20th Century-Fox in particular. For instance, the entry on Moontide in The Films...

Made during the period of François Truffaut’s fascination with Alfred Hitchcock, the French auteur’s La mariée était en noir (The Bride Wore Black, 1968) looks to the master of suspense for inspiration whilst s...