The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959)

Mongrel Sherlock was an invention of the times, following the new idea of evolution. The notion of pure reason being able to perceive and comprehend everything in life was especially novel. This was contrasted to the bumbling inductive logic of doctors like Watson. Handling Holmes is easy if you stick to the magic of Holmes… Continue reading The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959)

Anatomy of a Murder (1959)

Drunk Lawyers There seems to be a sub-genre of movies that feature drunk or downtrodden lawyers taking on cases and winning. This is sometimes associated with the “courtroom” film where reality is unfolded according to specific rules, coloured by human dynamics. And this is under the larger branch of the detective narrative, that one where… Continue reading Anatomy of a Murder (1959)

The 400 Blows (1959)

Real Fiction With this film began an experiment that was to ultimately fail after dozens of notable films. It was much like the experiment in art nouveau in architecture seventy years earlier. I suppose that every art has cycles which begin with a collapse of the passion in artifice and a resulting call to the… Continue reading The 400 Blows (1959)