Yes; I think he had many variants; the way I remember him telling it is, when I have a hangnail / when you fall in a manhole and die.

The Soft Skin François Truffaut’s follow-up to a three-masterpiece run looks like a movie made by someone exploring tone, characterization, and his own ...

4/20/64: François Truffaut's The Soft Skin
Deeply personal film a clinic in Hitchcockian techniques
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@labuzamovies.com: thefilmstage.com/every-man-fo...
@tnyfrontrow.bsky.social: www.newyorker.com/culture/rich...
@kphipps3000.bsky.social: thedissolve.com/reviews/1430...

DVD of the Week: “A Countess from Hong Kong” Richard Brody on Charlie Chaplin's "A Countess from Hong Kong" (1967).

A few words from a while back:
www.newyorker.com/culture/rich...
www.newyorker.com/goings-on-ab...

Charlie Chaplin's last film, the woefully underappreciated and misunderstood A Countess from Hong Kong, a metapolitical comedy of the link between indignities and proprieties, slapstick and repression, and on the natural-seeming gracefulness of actors and lovers; @tcmtv.bsky.social at 8:...

To put it differently, my review appeared a couple of days after the embargo lifted; without having read other reviews before writing my own, I figured that almost everyone else would already have called attention to what struck me as obvious but important to note nonetheless.

Mother Mary is the work of a filmmaker who, exceptionally, doesn't seem to see what he's doing; the results are nonetheless provocations, even if, unlike those of some other recent films, likely unintentional; but maybe that's why many critics aren't seeing them, either:

New Directors, New Films Also: Zendaya and Robert Pattinson in “The Drama,” Michael Schulman on spring fabulosity, Rachel Syme on the latest in trenchcoats, and more.

Asleep at the switch: rush to @lincolncenter.bsky.social and New Directors/New Films at 1:30 for Variations on a Theme, a treasure of reflective observation—Jason Jacobs and Devon Delmar (there for Q.&A.) develop a form to reveal the force of history in daily life:
www.newyorker.com/culture/goin...

In honor and memory of Nathalie Baye, whom I interviewed in 2002; her generosity was supreme; she called me, while on location, to talk—with great admiration—about her work with Godard: "It's impossible to be bad in one of his films. You see yourself onscreen as yourself."

If I Were a Rich Man: Salesman - Slant Magazine The film isn’t just a social and political landmark, but a technical and aesthetic one as well.

4/17/69: Salesman - Maysles bros Direct Cinema landmark
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@alansch.bsky.social: www.laweekly.com/the-maysles-...
@tnyfrontrow.bsky.social: www.newyorker.com/video/watch/...
@mattzollerseitz.bsky.social: www.slantmagazine.com/film/if-i-we...

Godard: Where and When

Made in USA, at home downtown: first saw it on 16mm. at the Mudd Club:
www.newyorker.com/culture/rich...
www.newyorker.com/goings-on-ab...
www.newyorker.com/culture/rich...

Triple-header at @metrographnyc.bsky.social Godard's Made in USA at 2:10pm., a masterwork of longing in color and closeup; Fassbinder's scathing, agonized In a Year of 13 Moons at 4:10pm; Mambéty's Touki Bouki at 9, the exuberant energy of a critical cinema (introduced by Mohamed Challouf)...:

BOTD Charlie Chaplin!!!
Leaned left ➡️ expelled from US - @vijayprashad.bsky.social: thewire.in/external-aff...
And now, again. Time to re-watch The Great Dictator, alas...
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@pamhutch.bsky.social: www.theguardian.com/film/filmblo...
@tnyfrontrow.bsky.social: www.newyorker.com/culture/rich...

“Mother Mary” is “Unfulfilled and Unsatisfying” “Mother Mary” ’s stars, Anne Hathaway and Michaela Coel, outshine its execution, Richard Brody writes.

David Lowery has made some of the best films of recent years, Anne Hathaway and Michaela Coel are magnificent actresses, and so it pains me to report that Mother Mary is a botch, in conception and realization, in substance and style:
www.newyorker.com/mother-mary-...

“Mother Mary” is “Unfulfilled and Unsatisfying” “Mother Mary” ’s stars, Anne Hathaway and Michaela Coel, outshine its execution, Richard Brody writes.

David Lowery has made some of the best films of recent years, Anne Hathaway and Michaela Coel are magnificent actresses, and so it pains me to report that Mother Mary is a botch, in conception and realization, in substance and style:
www.newyorker.com/mother-mary-...

It's Erupcja Day (opens tomorrow but starts screening today at the Angelika): Pete Ohs's turbulent modernist melodrama, with Charli xcx's energetic and vividly responsive lead performance:

Just plain Roxy Cinema, no tag here, it seems.

Right on schedule, Éric Rohmer's Pauline at the Beach, playing tonight at @RoxyCinemaNYC at 7:15pm in 35mm, intricate in storytelling, casually but joltingly direct in ideas:
www.newyorker.com/culture/rich...

The crucial films for Éric Rohmer's cinematic philosophy: Summer (Le Rayon Vert), on romantic steadfastness as a fundamental form of resistance (to what? see The Tree, the Mayor and the Mediathèque); The Marquise of O..., on men's violence; Claire's Knee, on creepiness and shame.

Éric Rohmer’s Elusive Life, Revealed in a New Biography Long before the release of his first feature, Rohmer brought about a revolution in the name of others, as critic, editor, and friend.

as a surefire way of missing out on a true one when its rare and life-changing moment may arrive. Here, a long discussion of these ideas in relation to his biography and a short one sticking close to a few films:
www.newyorker.com/culture/rich...
www.newyorker.com/culture/rich...

Éric Rohmer filmed cautionary tales against yielding to sexual temptation because: 1. With men, if it isn't mutual, it's violent, and he recognized and abhorred men's proclivity for sexual violence; 2. With everybody, he believed in true love and saw the pursuit of a false one...

Combing the Syracuse roster for WAR (Wanted: Any Replacement); Baty and Vientos aren't major-leaguers, Benge isn't one yet.

A tweet I hope to eat in October: I wonder whether David Stearns is like a filmmaker who excels at low-budget movies but doesn't achieve similar results when working with Hollywood budgets and Hollywood expectations.

The question was posed in the other place: top four movies by Martin Scorsese; answered thus:
Only way is fast: The Wolf of Wall Street, Raging Bull, The Irishman, Goodfellas

L’Eclisse (1962) Don’t miss this chance to catch Michelangelo Antonioni’s modernist masterpiece.

4/12/62: Antonioni's L'eclisse
w/Alain Delon, Monica Vitti
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@tnyfrontrow.bsky.social: www.newyorker.com/culture/rich...
@jakecole.bsky.social: www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/leclisse/
@daveyjenkins.bsky.social / @lwlies.com: lwlies.com/reviews/lecl...

“Blue Heron” Is an Exalted Drama of Troubled Childhood Sophy Romvari’s first feature, “Blue Heron,” brings keen observation and wondrous imagination to the quasi-autobiographical story of growing up with a brother in crisis, Richard Brody writes.

Blue Heron, Sophy Romvari's exquisite first feature, blends meticulous observation and bold imagination; it's a story of a past that's still present, of memory as physical experience; it opens Friday at @ifccenter.bsky.social and elsewhere: www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

Edward O. Bland's The Cry of Jazz and Alain Gomis's Rewind and Play—music history and criticism on film, with Sun Ra and Thelonious Monk, at @anthologyfilm.bsky.social tonight at 6:30pm:
www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...
www.newyorker.com/goings-on-ab...

Remembering Jean-Paul Belmondo, an Accidental Revolutionary of the French New Wave The actor expected to have a career on the stage. Instead, with his starring role in Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless,” he became an icon of a cinema to which he didn’t belong.

BOTD Jean-Paul Belmondo!!!
MCCT5 5)Breathless (Godard) 4)Classe Tous Risques (Sautet) 3)Double Tour (Chabrol) 2)Leon Morin 1)Le Doulos (Melville x2)
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@evincentelli.bsky.social: www.nytimes.com/2021/09/08/m...
@tnyfrontrow.bsky.social: www.newyorker.com/culture/post...

Searching for Mr. Rugoff A personal mission fuses with movie history in Ira Deutchman’s 2019 documentary, “Searching for Mr. Rugoff,” which is streaming on the Criterion Channel and other services. The titular subject, Donald Rugoff, inherited a small chain of New York theatres and, from the late nineteen-fifties through the seventies, expanded it into an art-house mini-empire, near Bloomingdale’s, that he endowed with the upscale cultural allure of modern architecture and design—and he also became the distributor of films that he showed. Rugoff, turbulent and troubled, hiring and firing on a whim (he gave Deutchman, a prominent distributor, his start, in 1975), turned his chaotic office into a hive of cinephilic passion. Launching such films as “Z,” “Scenes from a Marriage,” “Marjoe,” “Gimme Shelter,” and “Pumping Iron” into the Zeitgeist with pinpoint strategies and brazen ballyhoo, Rugoff made New York’s art-house releases matter to Hollywood (and several garnered Oscars to prove it); then he lost control of his company and vanished from the scene. Deutchman decided to find out what happened; the story—graced by recollections from Rugoff’s family and former employees and associates—shows how Rugoff changed the face of the cinema and the city alike.(Sept. 30.)

Terrific documentary: www.newyorker.com/goings-on-ab...

Lenox Hill's Cinema 123 May Be Replaced by Luxury Tower, Leaving Only One UES Movie Theater The possible sale of Cinema 123 by Angelika could erase one of the Upper East Side's last two cinemas, paving the way for a luxury tower.

How has this place not been designated as a landmark? If you are interested in the historical context, you should see my movie, "Searching for Mr. Rugoff." www.uesrpt.com/2026/04/leno...

“Fiume o Morte!,” which opens in New York this week, is centered on an astounding true story that took place in the director Igor Bezinović’s home town, and his telling “emphasizes both his personal connection to the saga and the strangeness of dramatizing it,” @tnyfrontrow.bsky.social writes.