The contempt that travelling actors hold for themselves in A Story of Floating Weeds may be extreme, yet the petty drama they vindictively stoke only further condemns them to sorrowful lives, as Yasujirō Ozu examines their thorny relationships with both compassion and cynicism.
The canal barge which becomes home to newlyweds Jean and Juliette may feel like an oppressive enclosure at times, yet Jean Vigo’s lyrical direction of L’Atalante also reveals it to be a sanctuary of healing, guiding them on a journey to the marital bliss that has so far eluded them.
Edgar G. Ulmer savours every demented moment of conflict between Bela Lugosi’s creepy psychiatrist and Boris Karloff’s prowling Satanist in The Black Cat, painting over its uneven narrative pacing with a macabre expressionism that makes for a darkly mesmerising occult horror.
Tragedy marks the beginning and end of the brotherly love between Blackie and Jim in Manhattan Melodrama, touchingly binding them together as soulmates destined for incompatible lives on either side of the law, and by crafting such robust formal connections between them, W.S. van Dyke draws out a pair of internal struggles forcing them to confront their own principles and loyalties.
