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            In 1939 theatre and radio star Orson Welles was offered a generous contract by RKO pictures to bring his talents to Hollywood. This contract called for him to write, direct, produce, cast, and star in two films, and promised him complete creative control over the films’ final cut. Giving such a munificent contract to an untested director was a great risk; especially as the film he made was a hit piece on William Randolph Hearst, America’s biggest media mogul. Hearst met the completed film with fury, and he did everything in his power to prevent the film from becoming commercially successful by pulling all advertising for it and all other RKO pictures. Still, try as he might, Hearst could not bury such an achievement; Citizen Kane captured audiences, and is now widely considered the greatest film of all time.             Citizen Kane, like Birth of a Nation be...

“Leaning, leaning, safe and secure from all alarms. Leaning, leaning, leaning on the everlasting arms.”             So sings the comforting baritone of the Reverend Henry Powell from his horse late one night, while out scouting for children he wants to rob and murder. As he rides, a distant silhouette, we understand the children’s horror that, run as they might, he is not going to give up.             The Night of the Hunter is dependent on juxtapositions, powerful images, and this dreamlike horror fantasy environment. Robert Mitchum plays the amiably sinister Henry Powell, a preacher with the words Love and Hate tattooed across his knuckles. We are introduced to him on a clear day, as he drives away from his latest crime. He is praying aloud, asking “well now, what’s it to be Lord? Another widow?” As he tries to remember how many widows the Lord has given him he assumes...

          Recently my life has been full of Shakespeare. I have started a Shakespeare reading group with some of my New Jersey friends, I saw an excellent production of Measure for Measure at the Globe Theatre in London this week, and I am in the middle of reading King John for my own pleasure. I have ambitions to read through the entire canon before I turn thirty, and at 25 am happy to say that I have read about twenty so far. Part of the fun of reading Shakespeare is then watching film adaptations of his work – from Orson Welles and Laurence Olivier to Ingmar Bergman and Akira Kurosawa, many auteurs have used the bard as inspiration and directed their own versions of his plays. When I was last back in America, I made it a point to watch three of the most epic Shakespeare adaptations on my parents' big screen television, and feel comfortable in saying that each is in the canon of not just the greatest Shakespearean films, but some of the greatest films of al...