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European powerhouse Studiocanal has dropped a first clip and poster of its new doc “Becoming Hitchcock – The Legacy of Blackmail” by L.A.-based filmmaker Laurent Bouzereau.

The doc feature will have its world premiere at the Lumière classic film festival in France’s Lyon on Oct. 18.

Based entirely on archive material, the film explores the famous Hitchcock touch, through the making of one of his benchmark films, “Blackmail,” released in 1929 at the dawn of the Talkies.

Often referred to as the first British sound feature film, the film also exists in a silent version. Several sequences were reshot for the sound version.

By comparing the two, Bouzereau creates a novel way of exploring Hitchcock’s trademark themes such as murder, suspense, food and sexuality, providing a taste of what was to come in masterpieces like “Psycho,” “North by Northwest” and “The Birds” 30 years later.

“I wanted to mention the...

The Criterion Channel is closing the year out with a bang––they’ve announced their December lineup. Among the highlights are retrospectives on Yasujiro Ozu (featuring nearly 40 films!), Ousmane Sembène, Alfred Hitchcock (along with Kent Jones’ Hitchcock/Truffaut), and Parker Posey. Well-timed for the season is a holiday noir series that includes They Live By Night, Blast of Silence, Lady in the Lake, and more.

Other highlights are the recent restoration of Abel Gance’s La roue, an MGM Musicals series with introduction by Michael Koresky, Helena Wittmann’s riveting second feature Human Flowers of Flesh, the recent Sundance highlight The Mountains Are a Dream That Call To Me, the new restoration of The Cassandra Cat, Lynne Ramsay’s Morvern Callar, Wong Kar Wai’s The Grandmaster, and more.

See the lineup below and learn more here.

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Terry Gilliam, 1988

An American in Paris, Vincente Minnelli,...

Janet Jackson has marked the 30th anniversary of her landmark Rhythm Nation 1814 with the first-ever digital release of nine rare remix albums from the era.

Rhythm Nation 1814: The Remixes collects nearly 90 remixes spread across mini-LPs for “Alright,” “Black Cat,” “Come Back to Me,” “Escapade,” “Love Will Never Do (Without You),” “Rhythm Nation,” “Miss You Much” and “State of the World.”

Additionally, three rare B-sides from the era – “The Skin Game,” “You Need Me” and “The 1814 Megamix” are also included in the compilation, which collects various 12″ and 7″ vinyl releases and...

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options—not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and an archive of past round-ups here.

A Burning Hot Summer (Philippe Garrel)

What makes Philippe Garrel’s films so distinct is their blend of autobiographical pain and silent-film mise-en-scène–a failed relationship or revolution rendered not so much through the increasingly dialogue-heavy scripts of his films, but the placement of bodies, gestures, and, furthermore, the dreams that contain and emerge from them. Yet while A Burning Hot Summer may be the only film he’s made in the 21st century not shot in black-and-white, once the senior Maurice Garrel (in his final role) appears as an apparition in his grandson’s hospital bed-bound vision, the personal and the fantastical have formed their most natural relationship.

Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Alfred Hitchcock's The Trouble with Harry (1955) is showing from September 16 – October 16, 2018 in many countries around the world as part of the series Alfred Hitchcock: A Ticking Bomb.The illustrated opening credits of The Trouble with Harry, featuring cartoonish countryside drawings designed by Saul Steinberg, conclude on an amusingly lifeless body, a crudely sketched frame lying horizontal and rigid and looking quite at peace. When the film proper begins, shots of vibrant fall hues drench rolling Vermont hills in shades of similarly pastoral tranquility. In spots, the multicolored leaves have fallen indiscriminately to the ground. In one spot, there is the more conspicuous corpse of ill-fated Harry Worp (Philip Truex). In what might be the most overtly humorous camera angle of his career, director Alfred Hitchcock positions the image at ground level, leaving Harry’s feet thrust forward in the frame,...

Janet Jackson changed up her act Saturday night at the Panorama Music Festival in Randall's Island, New York, by starting her set with a song that not many people know but has a deep message. Janet hit the stage with "The Skin Game (Part 1)," the b side of a 30-year-old record. Before she started singing, the audience heard audio of reporters doing stories about white supremacists and terrorism. Then the names of black men killed...

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options — not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves — we’ve taken it upon ourselves to highlight the titles that have recently hit platforms. Every week, one will be able to see the cream of the crop (or perhaps some simply interesting picks) of streaming titles (new and old) across platforms such as Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, and more (note: U.S. only). Check out our rundown for this week’s selections below.

All These Sleepless Nights (Michal Marczak)

Blurring the line between documentary and fiction like few films before it, Michal Marczak‘s All These Sleepless Nights is a music-filled ode to the ever-shifting bliss and angst of youth set mostly in the wee hours of the day in Warsaw, Poland. Marczak himself, who also plays cinematographer, is wary to delineate the line between narrative and nonfiction, and part of the...

Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. The retrospective Early Hitchcock is showing August 11 - September 12, 2017 in the United States.ChampagneAround the time of his dazzling expressionistic breakthrough The Lodger (1927), and Blackmail (1929), his innovative foray into sound—and England’s first talkie—Alfred Hitchcock was testing the narrative waters of his potential filmic output. It was a terrifically productive period for the promising London-born auteur, with nearly 20 features in ten years, and looking back at these early works, the tendency is often to pinpoint instances of his trademark aesthetic to come (easy to do with something like The Lodger; less so with something like The Ring, also 1927). However, when sampling these titles, and keeping in mind the most popular Hitchcockian characteristics had yet to be regularly implemented, new and uncommon propensities emerge. Such is the case with a trilogy of films to be shown as part...

Nunnally Johnson hands us a well-written spy & hostage drama set in Cold War Berlin, with plenty of intrigue and good humor to boot. Gregory Peck is the troubled negotiator and Broderick Crawford a Yankee galoot sticking his nose where it isn’t wanted. This one has been out of reach for quite a while — and it works up some fun suspense.

Night People

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1954 / Color / 2:55 widescreen / 93 min. / Street Date July 25, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Gregory Peck, Broderick Crawford, Anita Björk, Rita Gam, Walter Abel, Buddy Ebsen, Max Showalter, Jill Esmond, Peter van Eyck, Marianne Koch, Hugh McDermott, Paul Carpenter, Lionel Murton, Ottow Reichow.

Cinematography: Charles G. Clarke

Film Editor: Dorothy Spencer

Original Music: Cyril Mockridge

Story by Jed Harris, Tom Reed

Associate Producer Gerd Oswald

Written, Directed and Produced by Nunnally Johnson

An intelligent cold war thriller about distrust and passive aggression across the East-West divide in Berlin,...

More than any other filmmaker, Alfred Hitchcock is the quintessential 20th century movie director. He began his career in the days of silent pictures and continued all the way until 1976, with Family Plot.

During his long career, he directed over 40 features and once said that any movie director could surprise his audience by setting off a bomb, but to show the audience a time bomb, ticking away under a desk as two men calmly discuss baseball, is far more elegant and terrifying.

Instead of shocking his audience with splatter and gore, he terrified us with suspense. Audience have always been overwhelmed with the desire to warn the characters of the danger which they perceive, and which the characters are not aware of, especially in his films since, well murder was usually his calling card. Now thanks to UltraCulture, we can see 36 prime examples of Hitchcock’s method to transfer the...

The Smiling Lieutenant (Ernst Lubitsch) City Lights (Charlie Chaplin) Tabu (F.W. Murnau & Robert Flaherty) Street Scene (King Vidor) Dishonored (Josef von Sternberg) The Champ (King Vidor) The Struggle (D.W. Griffith) The Criminal Code (Howard Hawks) Arrowsmith (John Ford) An American Tragedy (Josef von Sternberg) The Skin Game (Alfred Hitchcock) Private Lives (Sidney Franklin) Wicked (Allan Dwan) Bad Girl (Frank Borzage) Chances (Allan Dwan) The Miracle Woman (Frank Capra) Girls About Town (George Cukor) Frankenstein (James Whale) The Public Enemy (William Wellman) Seas Beneath (John Ford) The Yellow Ticket (Raoul Walsh) Tarnished Lady (George Cukor) The Guardsman (Sidney Franklin) Dirigible…...

No 78: Edmund Gwenn 1877-1959

He was born Edmund Kellaway in Wandsworth, London (or possibly the Vale of Glamorgan), grew to be 5ft 4in, was described over the years as "endearing", "cherubic", "portly", "elfin", with "a twinkle in his eye" and a seductively "soothing voice". All these attributes contributed to his appearance as Kris Kringle, the New York department store Santa Claus in Miracle on 34th Street (1947) who believes he's Father Christmas and convinces a Manhattan court to agree with him.

This brought him an Oscar as best supporting actor and a kind of immortality. In 1951, he was nominated for a similar role in Mister 880 as a sweet-natured counterfeiter who only forges dollar bills when he needs them. But there's much more to Gwenn than this.

Gwenn's stern Victorian father kicked him out of the house for wanting to go on the stage and he travelled around England and...