“Laurence Olivier in Hamlet (1948)”
When I published Acting in the Cinema (California, 1988), I omitted one of the chapters on star performances because it was more critical of the performer and was the only chapter that involved a non-Hollywood film. I recently came across most of it in a desk drawer, and decided to reconstruct it here.
A French edition of the acting book was published in 2014 by Presses Universitaires de Rennes, translated by Christian Viviani (a noted writer on film and author of Le Magique et le Vrai: L’acteur de cinéma, sujet et objet [Rouge Profond, 2015]). A Chinese edition appeared in 2018 from Peking University Press, translated by Zhanxiong Xu, with a preface by Jonathan Rosenbaum. (It has my favorite cover.) A Romanian translation is forthcoming. –J. N.
“Orson Welles, Citizen of the World”
I was recently asked to contribute an entry on Orson Welles for a vast Brazilian/French digital project entitled Transatlantic Cultures: A Dictionary of Cultural History. The cinema portion is edited by professors Eduardo Morettin and Caroline Moine. My entry is written for a general audience and will appear in Portuguese and French. Here is the English version. –J. N.
“An Aftertaste of Dread: Cornell Woolrich in Noir Fiction and Film”
In March, 2019, I was invited by Columbia University to lecture on Cornell Woolrich for the annual Kit Noir film series, which in that year was devoted to Woolrich. Here is an illustrated text of the lecture.
“The Wayward Pleasures of His Kind of Woman“
This essay was commissioned by an Italian quarterly, Fata Morgana, which asked several contributors to write short essays on a favorite Hollywood movie. I made a somewhat unorthodox choice.
Kubrick and Cold Modernism
The following essay was originally presented in 2009, in the form of invited lectures at Reed College in Oregon and Alfred University in New York.”
