Day of Wrath (1943)
Dir. by Carl Th. Dreyer Images: Elegant, slow tracking shots, often in combination with pans in the opposite direction. Three times during the film, the camera tracks along the row of accusers, as in...
View ArticleA Writing Exercise
I spent my lunch hour over in the library, where I went snooping for some old Arthur Miller essays. Most have been collected in fine editions, of course, but I like to put my hands on the originals —...
View ArticleMy Dissertation (in the News)
“A World in Which Everything Hurts,” a profile of Arthur Miller in The Forward, gets bonus points for mentioning, in a single paragraph, three of the authors I’m writing about in my dissertation: In...
View ArticleArthur Miller, Then and Now
No new Cine Club notes this week, as we decided spontaneously last night (and with mixed results) to watch John Huston’s The Misfits (1961). I love parts of the film — Thelma Ritter’s jokes and...
View ArticleLiving with Miller
According to Microsoft Word, I wrote the first fifteen pages of the first chapter of my dissertation in November 2003, before life and other projects got in the way. So now I have these fifteen pages...
View ArticleWhen (My) Worlds Collide
“He just sits there drinking iced tea, never ordering a thing to eat. So he was married to Marilyn Monroe. Big deal.” “Um, that was Arthur Miller. Not Norman Mailer.” It’s a common mistake. I only...
View ArticleMedia Blackout
I’ve toyed with the idea of posting a prediction for tomorrow’s outcome, but the fact is that I’m just too riddled with anxiety. A prediction would require that I go sifting through polling data with a...
View ArticleArthur Miller
I am not sure what we are upholding any more—are we good by merely saying no to evil? Even in a righteous ‘no’ there’s some disguise. Isn’t it necessary—to say—finally to say yes—to something? —...
View ArticleKushner on Miller
From The Nation: He made it clear in his plays and his essays that his critical thinking and social consciousness had their genesis in the red politics that were pervasive when he was growing up, a...
View ArticleGreat Critics (And the Rest of Us)
I was talking to a friend recently, encouraging him to post some of his film writing online, and he responded with a very simple, “Why?” He’s a bright guy, certainly bright enough to realize the value...
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