So brazenly was Britain’s Culture of Death on display recently that the scales dropped from the eyes of any who wished to see. Many do not want to see, though, and look away as life support machines are turned off, and the full force of the law is used to prevent the sick moving to a better [...]
Sean O’Casey’s play “The Silver Tassie” will grow in significance in the years ahead because it is a mirror that is now being held up to modern Ireland—a country which, like the crippled hero of the piece, can no longer cope with platitudes and half-truths, but which has also lost faith in its former causes. [...]
The body language of the band is one of a frozen watchfulness. Each band member has the look and stance of one who has witnessed something truly awful, and yet is powerless to do anything about it. Before their eyes, what the Rolling Stones were witnessing was the ending of a life… It was to [...]
French director Abel Gance’s magnificent 1927 silent film “Napoleon” was only rediscovered thanks to the efforts of an English schoolboy, who was given a film projector as a Christmas present. There are films about legendary figures that become legends themselves. Such a film is Abel Gance’s Napoleon. Premiered in 1927, it was so far ahead [...]
When a death is reported, the first task is to identify the body. Who was the deceased? If, however, that somebody has deliberately left as few clues to her real identity as possible, then the identification is all but meaningless. […]
Be careful what you read—it may change you, for better or worse. In the case of Joseph Pearce, his early reading made him a violent white supremacist. It also landed him in jail. While there, he continued to read; only this time, he read the works of G.K. Chesterton. It was not so much that [...]
No matter how bright Charlie Chaplin's name grew on the lights above the movie theaters, there was always the fear that, in the darkness below, a specter waited to drag him back to the streets and the fears that stalked him. Just more than 100 years ago, an English Music Hall artist was invited to [...]
From what had he fled? From what was he running? What was it that pursued him? The film titles give us some clues, as does his pace of life, the rapidity of his mood swings, the speed of his reactions—all lived as if in a race, one that, as he grew older, got ever more [...]
The story you are about to read is one of the real horror endured by Bela Lugosi, and more terrifying than any screen role he played. It was to prove a tragic end for an actor synonymous with the supernatural. When it did come, it was to be an exhausted finale to what by then [...]
In July 1925, a young Swedish actress disembarked at New York harbour. She was nineteen years old and unknown, with little to mark her out from any of that day’s other arrivals. In less than two years, she would not only have become one of the most famous women in the world but would have also [...]
Life imitates art, or is it the other way round? In the lives of actors there is often a strange synergy with the roles they inhabit, one that reaches into their private lives and indeed beyond. For one actor, born 100 years ago, his life was to be indelibly marked by that of his creation, [...]
One of the pleasures of living in London is the opportunity for frequent visits to the National Gallery. But for those who live elsewhere, you need no longer miss out as a new documentary about that institution is now playing at movie theaters on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. And, of course, a movie [...]