The cold, mean 'Sunset Boulevard' - a beautiful title, though I suspect it was shot on another boulevard - is further proof of the resurgence of art in the Hollywood of super-craftsmen with insuperable taste.

I have a great love of the actual.

The Big Sleep' is an unsentimental, surrealist excitement in which most of the men in Hollywood's underworld are murdered and most of the women go for an honest but not unwilling private sleuth (Humphrey Bogart).

Orson Welles's second 'I-did-it' should show once and for all that film making, radio and the stage are three different guys better kept separated. 'The Magnificent Ambersons' is one of those versions of the richest family in town during the good old days.

A peculiar fact about termite-tapeworm-fungus-moss art is that it goes always forward, eating its own boundaries, and, likely as not, leaves nothing in its path other than the signs of eager, industrious, unkempt activity.

Before seeing 'The Pride of the Yankees,' you may or may not know that the Yankees referred to are the ones who win the World Series each year. After seeing it you will find that the reference is indirect.

I think it's sinful to give the audience material it knows already, whether the material is about race relations or the car culture or the depiction and placement of a candy bar.