It literally rains on C.C. Baxter in the park, and it freezes into snow around Christmas. A shower that reveals itself as the consummate snow job cushily ensconced at Consolidated Life is where Wilder & Diamond draw the line.

A shnook with a pad for the higher-ups lets his own girl take Seconal for the Promises, Promises and the “same back booth at the Chinese restaurant” that recedes into office lore.

The bitter steps of the stooge into absolute vacancy on…

A dramatic illustration of Hitchcock’s advice to young filmmakers, “stay out of jail.”

“A film signed Frankness. Rapidity. Art. Novelty. Cinematograph. Originality. Impertinence. Seriousness. Tragedy. Renovation. Ubu-Roi. Fantasy. Ferocity. Affection. Universality. Tenderness.” (Godard)

“I am very familiar with the French critic as protester, off to tilt at the windmills of the Gaumont Théâtre chain; the constant spoiler who breaks up the game. I know him very well; I was he, or at least one of them, from 1954 to 1958,…

Alfred Hitchcock wouldn’t sit through Autumn Sonata by Ingmar Bergman, who couldn’t stay awake during Au hasard Balthazar by Robert Bresson, who didn’t think cinema on the whole was anything but “a theatrical bastard”.

After L’Argent, Bresson (like Welles) was unable to obtain funding, and so his film of Genesis was never made, although we can dimly conceive its shape if we bear in mind that Au hasard Balthazar was originally envisioned as a depiction of the Biblical ass from…

It opens with a hand and a poppy, a manikin’s hand, descending to the surface of the street. The sequence of events is much closer to Hitchcock than to Buñuel and Dali, though there is a certain kinship with Un Chien Andalou.

Silhouette and knocker coincide. So do Cocteau, Vermeer, and Teiji Ito’s extremely adroit music.

You can’t beat Maya Deren. Hitchcock decreed that a knife must gleam (or so he says), and she contrives to get her face reflected…