“Gothic cinema inherits an ongoing obsession with writers and writing from its literary ancestors, but how does it translate such text-based fixations into its own audiovisual grammar? How does it stage ‘objective’ diegeses in concert with the innately subjective representations of writers and the act of writing? This article approaches these questions, not by offering a comprehensive history of Gothic films depicting writers (that would require a long, book-length project), but by analyzing a trio of writer-focused Gothic films notable for their dealings with literary ancestry through negotiations between subjective interiority and diegetic objectivity.”
Die Nibelungen, Part II: Kriemhild’s Revenge (Fritz Lang, 1924) Cleopatra (Cecil B. DeMille, 1934) Three Comrades (Frank Borzage, 1938) Mogambo (John Ford, 1953) Johnny Guitar (Nicholas Ray, 1954) The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing (Richard Fleischer, 1955) Peyton Place (Mark Robson, 1957) The Big Country (William Wyler, 1958) The Hound of the Baskervilles (Terence Fisher, 1959) Imitation of Life (Douglas Sirk, 1959)
ADDITIONAL STANDOUT VIEWINGS
City Girl (F. W. Murnau, 1930) Dodsworth (William Wyler, 1936) The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor, 1940) The House of the Seven Gables (Joe May, 1940) Carnival of Sinners (Maurice Tourneur, 1943) The Spiral Staircase (Robert Siodmak, 1946) The Passionate Friends (David Lean, 1949) Wagon Master (John Ford, 1950) The Tall Target (Anthony Mann, 1951) Rancho Notorious (Fritz Lang, 1952) Pickup on South Street (Samuel Fuller, 1953) The Long Gray Line (John Ford, 1955) The Quatermass XPeriment (Val Guest, 1955) Summertime (David Lean, 1955) Quatermass 2 (Val Guest, 1957) The Last Hurrah (John Ford, 1958) The Reluctant Debutante (Vincente Minnelli, 1958) A Summer Place (Delmer Daves, 1959) Tender is the Night (Henry King, 1962) Jason and the Argonauts (Don Chaffey, 1963) Danza Macabra (Antonio Margheriti, 1964) War-Gods of the Deep (Jacques Tourneur, 1965) Island of Terror (Terence Fisher, 1966) Quatermass and the Pit (Roy Ward Baker, 1967) Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (Freddie Francis, 1968) The Unfaithful Wife (Claude Chabrol, 1969) The Age of the Medici (Roberto Rossellini, 1972) The Stone Tape (Peter Sasdy, 1972) Messiah of Evil (Willard Huyck & Gloria Katz, 1974) The Parallax View (Alan J. Pakula, 1974) Burnt Offerings (Dan Curtis, 1976) The Nixon Interviews with David Frost (Jørn Winther, 1977) Losing Ground (Kathleen Collins, 1982) The 4th Man (Paul Verhoeven, 1983) Angel Dust (Gakuryū Ishii, 1994) Devil in a Blue Dress (Carl Franklin, 1995) Perfect Blue (Satoshi Kon, 1997) Serpent’s Path (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 1998) Ju-On: The Curse 2 (Takashi Shimizu, 2000) Nightcap (Claude Chabrol, 2000) Moulin Rouge! (Baz Luhrmann, 2001) Shallow Hal (Bobby Farrelly & Peter Farrelly, 2001) Ju-On: The Grudge 2 (Takashi Shimizu, 2003) Swimming Pool (François Ozon, 2003) The Bridesmaid (Claude Chabrol, 2004) Speak (Jessica Sharzer, 2004) The Staircase (Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, 2004/2018) Reincarnation (Takashi Shimizu, 2005) A Girl Cut in Two (Claude Chabrol, 2007) Australia (Baz Luhrmann, 2008) Missing (Tsui Hark, 2008) Bluebeard (Catherine Breillat, 2009) Occult (Koji Shiraishi, 2009) Watchmen [director’s cut] (Zack Snyder, 2009) Untold History of the United States (Oliver Stone, 2012) A Cure for Wellness (Gore Verbinski, 2016) The Putin Interviews (Oliver Stone, 2017) Sharp Objects (Jean-Marc Vallée, 2018) The Staircase (Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, 2018) I Love You, Now Die: The Commonwealth v. Michelle Carter (Erin Lee Carr, 2019) Hemingway (Ken Burns & Lynn Novick, 2021) The Deep End (Jon Kasbe, 2022) Eureka (Lisandro Alonso, 2023) Immersion (Takashi Shimizu, 2023) Last Summer (Catherine Breillat, 2023) Tell Them You Love Me (Nick August-Perna, 2023) The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer, 2023)
“Chime traffics in the ‘eerie’ titular concept of Mark Fisher’s The Weird and the Eerie: a kind of placid, almost subliminal detachment that Fisher argues ‘can give us access to the forces which govern reality but which are ordinarily obscured, just as it can give us access to spaces beyond mundane reality altogether.’ The chime, then, is an auditory metonym for the eerie, an experience that exceeds the visceral shock of horror to inhabit the more transcendent power of terror — 18th-century gothic novelist Ann Radcliffe defines these terms as two distinct phenomena: ‘Terror and horror are so far opposite, that the first expands the soul, and awakens the faculties to a high degree of life; the other contracts, freezes, and nearly annihilates them.’ In Chime, the high degree of life is the very thing that contracts, freezes, and annihilates.”
“The film’s lush, otherworldly dreamscapes foreground the theme of time by contrasting contemporary film technology against the aesthetics of Gothic pasts. Coppola fills Baltimore’s nocturnal visions with Expressionist gestures: tilted crosses and jagged shadows summon the ghosts of Murnau, Wiene, and Lang.”
“Director Alexandre Aja’s latest film, Never Let Go, occupies a deliberately liminal space. Its threadbare plot suggests a post-apocalyptic near future, but its central family is stuck in a Gothic past.”
“Sayuri makes overtures to the cultural anxieties underlying many haunted house narratives, with several lines pointedly alluding to what constitutes a ‘happy life.’ An early scene depicts a teacher asking her disinterested class to analyze a poem by posing questions such as ‘Where do we find happiness?’ and ‘What exactly is happiness?’ The film ultimately disavows the notion that domestic ownership equals anything like existential fulfillment or familial harmony. It locates horror in the conformist embrace of cultural repetitions, depicting its haunting as something like a tape stuck in a loop: the same ghostly giggle echoes through the house again and again, haunted TVs replay snippets of glitchy footage, and one character repeatedly watches the simulated reenactment of her beloved’s grisly death.”
“The Canyons and The Counselor represent an America unmoored from its own self-aggrandizing mythologies — the capitalist dream as nightmare of anxiety and violence. The films are haunted by symbols rather than subjects, made nowhere clearer than in McCarthy’s naming The Counselor’s title protagonist (played by Michael Fassbender) after his profession — he is a nameless intermediary, a metaphor.”
La Bête Humaine (Jean Renoir, 1938) The Best Years of Our Lives (William Wyler, 1946) Margie (Henry King, 1946) Daisy Kenyon (Otto Preminger, 1947) They Live by Night (Nicholas Ray, 1948) Caught (Max Ophüls, 1949) Lust for Life (Vincente Minnelli, 1956) The Man Who Knew Too Much (Alfred Hitchcock, 1956) See No Evil (Richard Fleischer, 1971) Trilogy of Terror (Dan Curtis, 1975) Mikey and Nicky (Elaine May, 1976) Pauline at the Beach (Éric Rohmer, 1983) A Better Tomorrow (John Woo, 1986) Patty Hearst (Paul Schrader, 1988) Jade (William Friedkin, 1995) Nixon (Oliver Stone, 1995) Stealing Beauty (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1996) Romance (Catherine Breillat, 1999) Ju-On: The Curse (Takashi Shimizu, 2000) Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning (John Hyams, 2012)
Other standouts
After Death (Yevgeni Bauer, 1915) Satan’s Rhapsody (Nino Oxilia, 1917) Warning Shadows (Arthur Robison, 1923) A House Divided (William Wyler, 1931) Safe in Hell (William A. Wellman, 1931) Night at the Crossroads (Jean Renoir, 1932) A Night on Bald Mountain (Claire Parker & Alexandre Alexeieff, 1933) From Mayerling to Sarajevo (Max Ophüls, 1940) The Letter (William Wyler, 1940) The Woman in the Window (Fritz Lang, 1944) The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1947) The Woman on the Beach (Jean Renoir, 1947) The Reckless Moment (Max Ophüls, 1949) Stage Fright (Alfred Hitchcock, 1950) Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Howard Hawks, 1953) French Cancan (Jean Renoir, 1955) A Kiss Before Dying (Gerd Oswald, 1956) Interlude (Douglas Sirk, 1957) The H-Man (Ishirô Honda, 1958) I Bury the Living (Albert Band, 1958) The Flesh and the Fiends (John Gilling, 1960) Allures (Jordan Belson, 1961) X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (Roger Corman, 1963) The Collector (William Wyler, 1965) The Birthday Party (William Friedkin, 1968) Secret Ceremony (Joseph Losey, 1968) Claire’s Knee (Éric Rohmer, 1970) The Last Run (Richard Fleischer, 1971) Super Fly (Gordon Parks Jr., 1972) Legacy of Satan (Gerard Damiano, 1974) Night Moves (Arthur Penn, 1975) The Haunting of Julia (Richard Loncraine, 1977) The Pied Piper (Jiří Barta, 1986) The Comfort of Strangers (Paul Schrader, 1990) Def by Temptation (James Bond III, 1990) Deep Cover (Bill Duke, 1992) The Tempest (Stanislav M. Sokolov, 1992) Green Snake (Tsui Hark, 1993) Affliction (Paul Schrader, 1997) Forever Mine (Paul Schrader, 1999) In the Bedroom (Todd Field, 2001) Auto Focus (Paul Schrader, 2002) Innocence (Lucile Hadzihalilovic, 2004) Universal Soldier: Regeneration (John Hyams, 2009) Nas: Time is Illmatic (One9, 2014) The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst (Andrew Jarecki, 2015) Beware the Slenderman (Irene Taylor Brodsky, 2016) Sick (John Hyams, 2022) Tár (Todd Field, 2022)
