Noticias

Randolph Scott is one of the most recognizable and acclaimed actors in Western history, with a storied career spanning from 1928 to 1962. Scott's command of the screen was not just down to his towering, well-built 6'2" frame, but also his charismatic delivery, stellar performances, and good looks. He built career-long collaborations with some of the best Western directors in the genre, like Budd Boetticher and Henry Hathaway, which resulted in some of the most iconic Westerns of the time, cementing his legacy as one of the era's strongest leading men.

Though Scott appeared in many different roles in numerous varied genres, such as war, horror, and fantasy, it was his Western films that truly set him apart, showcasing his innate ability to portray rugged, complex characters. Some of the best Westerns he starred in, such as Ride the High Country and Ride Lonesome, show his skills at portraying a hero with...

With fears our winter travel will need a, let’s say, reconsideration, the Criterion Channel’s monthly programming could hardly come at a better moment. High on list of highlights is Louis Feuillade’s delightful Les Vampires, which I suggest soundtracking to Coil, instrumental Nine Inch Nails, and Jóhann Jóhannson’s Mandy score. Notable too is a Sundance ’92 retrospective running the gamut from Paul Schrader to Derek Jarman to Jean-Pierre Gorin, and I’m especially excited for their look at one of America’s greatest actors, Sterling Hayden.

Special notice to Criterion editions of The Killing, The Last Days of Disco, All About Eve, and The Asphalt Jungle, and programming of Ognjen Glavonić’s The Load, among the better debuts in recent years.

See the full list of January titles below and more on the Criterion Channel.

-Ship: A Visual Poem, Terrance Day, 2020

5 Fingers, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1952

After Migration: Calabria,...

By Doug Oswald

Randolph Scott plays a former Confederate spy in the 1953 western “The Stranger Wore a Gun.” When the movie starts, Jeff Travis (Scott) is involved in a brutal murder during the final days of the Civil War while spying for Quantrill' Raiders, a gang of notorious Confederate guerrillas. A wanted man after the war, Travis heads west to Arizona to start a new life. Josie Sullivan (Claire Trevor) helps him escape from a river boat and meets up with him later in Arizona. Travis also meets up with one of his former Quantrill Raider associates, Jules Mourret (George Macready), who offers him a position in his new gang of outlaws so he can continue to steal “Yankee gold.”

Mourret wants Travis to continue his old ways as a spy and pretends to be a detective sent by the stage line to investigate recent gold robberies. Travis meets the...

Above: Griffith's Intolerance.

In New York, Bam, Film Forum, and Anthology Film Archives are playing forgotten masterworks, unavailable on DVD, in pristine prints: this past week has surfaced prints of Elia Kazan’s America, America at Film Forum, Douglas Sirk’s A Time to Love and a Time to Die and André De Toth’s Man in the Saddle, Norman Rockwell with guns, at Bam, and an entire retrospective to Ulrike Ottinger at Anthology, where upcoming are long overdue retros of Roger Corman and Jerry Lewis. In most cases, it’s been decades since these films have been shown in New York.

Meanwhile, MoMA slugs on with deliberately disposable movies designed to draw families and indie teens who have already seen them: a Spike Jonze retro of his music videos and films; an upcoming Tim Burton retro the museum’s been working on for years; a just-completed “Recent Film Acquisitions...