Improvisation on a noir theme: The jazz of François Truffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player
From Billie Holiday to Billy Preston, James Baldwin: Later Novels inspires a Spotify playlist
Caroline W. Healey Dall, “A Sketch from Maryland Life”
Classic Hollywood Little Women captures the story’s appeal for all time
Nathanael West, “Western Union Boy”
Nathanael West as online muse
Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie: America’s pure product and the gift of a young virgin
The Innocents: a great ghost story and an inspired rendering of Henry James’s “The Turn of the Screw”
Haunting, powerful, passionate: Martin Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence
On its 75th anniversary, John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon is still a marvel of tough, sardonic suspense
Michael Mann’s The Last of the Mohicans
Five chilling true-crime classics that capture primal American fears
The Heiress: William Wyler unveils the psychological ferocity of Henry James’s Washington Square
The primal pull of Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter
Cocktails, wisecracks, and murder: The Thin Man’s married couple for the ages
Gleaming surfaces and twisted depths: Laura’s mirror-world of wayward desire
