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September-October 1989

Special midsection on cinematography, Vittorio Storaro interviewed, Sven Nykvist interviewed, Norman Jewison’s In Country, Claude Chabrol’s Story of Women, Laurence Olivier, D.W. Griffith, Euzhan Palcy interviewed, up-and-coming Australian filmmakers

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Issue Details

MIDSECTION: LORDS OF THE LENS
With sharper eyes trained on “the look” of film now—as in everything else—the shock troops are cinematographers. Five years ago, Film Comment’s “Behind the Camera” Midsection surveyed Hollywood’s cinematography talents and identified a pantheon of twelve. Where are they now and who’s on next?
Todd McCarthy picks up where he left off and digs the New Breed—the Eurolensers. Add five to the World Class category
Carol Rutter interviews the king of color, Vittorio Storaro
Armond White talks to Sven Nykvist, master of natural light and Bergman’s right arm turned DP-for-hire
White considers the evolving aesthetics of cinematography and the role of the DP over 80 years of checking for hairs in the gate and making sure all’s clear. But is the camera candid?

BACK TO THE WALL
By Jay Scott
Norman Jewison’s In Country—the Last Vietnam Movie? Can a liberal Canadian vet the collective conscious once and for all? Jay Scott admires the film and concludes with a verity: that we lost the war but must win the peace of mind

AU REVOIR LES ENFANTS
By Marcia Pally
Isabelle Huppert’s best performance yet as an abortionist executed to assuage France’s WWII-wounded ego. Marcia Pally mines Claude Chabrol’s current Story of Women for its present-day applications

LORD LARRY
By Richard Schickel
Sir Laurence Olivier was more than the embodiment of British Acting Tradition: at once matinee idol, thesp, and character actor, he found both Archie Rice and Hamlet inside himself, and therein lay the rub

D.W. GRIFFITH, LADIES MAN
By Miriam Hansen
Miriam Hansen traces the path from revision to restoration of David Wark G’s landmark Intolerance and finds a context for a classic

HELLO, DOLLY
On the occasion of Steel Magnolias, we present y’all with The Quotable Dolly by Karen Jaehne

EUZHAN YOUR HEAD
Euzhan Palcy interviewed by Marlaine Glicksman
Euzhan Palcy brings a Third World edge to her apartheid film, A Dry White Season

WHITTLE AWAY
By Lois P. Sheinfeld
Capitalism steals another idea from the Revolution—subversion in the classroom

AUSSIES ARE COMING
By Harlan Kennedy
Remember the Australian New Wave, followed by the Eighties No Wave? Young filmmakers Down Under are back and this time they aren’t offering nostalgia

JOURNALS
Anne Thompson explains how Jacques Annaud tamed The Bear
Gavin Smith commends a film student-in-Hollywood opus, The Big Picture
Marc Mancini seeks the creator of Freddie and Shocker, Wes Craven, lit. prof