Welcome to ‘The Pictures’
A new blog featuring the musings of a passionate cinephile
I have no background in the film industry. But I have a passion for film. When I was completing my doctorate, film became an outlet away from my thesis. Every week I ventured across the city to Bondi Junction to rent four films from Doctor What — not just a video store, an institution (which sadly closed its doors in August 2014). My weekly mission was part of a plan — to watch every single film on the list of ‘1001 movies to see before you die.’ To date, I have viewed 641.
When I began my journey, I did not know Bergman from Bertolucci or Wyler from Wilder. I have now viewed many works of the great masters of cinema — De Sica, Bergman, Hitchcock, Ozu, Truffaut, Cocteau, Lang, Ford, Renoir, Keaton, Hawks, Capra, Eisenstein, Cukor, Buñuel, Bresson, Wyler, Wilder, Huston, Reed, Clouzot, Lean, Mankiewicz, Kazan, Kurosawa, Antonioni, Welles, Melville, Aldrich, Fellini, Altman, Kubrick, Leone, Godard, Forman, Tarkovsky, Ford Coppola, Bertolucci, Kieślowski, Miyazaki, Herzog, Scorsese, Malick, Fassbinder, Wenders, Almodovar, Jarmusch, and the list goes on.
Through watching the films of masters, I have come to find a greater appreciation of cinema. This is the reason that I have started this blog.
In terms of content, the site will feature short reviews of current pictures, retrospective reviews of classic pictures, and longer essays on directors of note. I have a rather modest ambition: to post one piece every week.
Why the name? To Alfred Hitchcock, they were not “films” or “movies,” but “the pictures.” Like all the great masters, Hitchcock believed that the cinema was about visual storytelling. He said that, “when we tell a story in cinema, we should only resort to dialogue only when it’s impossible to do otherwise.”
As I mentioned, I am looking to post new content every week. It is my hope that this platform can become a community. If you would like to contribute, please feel free to send me a note in the comments section below.
Up next: a list of my 15 favourite films.
