January 2016

When Hitler traveled to Rome to meet Mussolini in 1938, Elsa Morante was standing by her window with a pot of boiling oil on the stove. The duo's parade route was going to pass just below her apartment, and she planned to throw the…

I first saw Contempt many years ago in an impression so washed out everything was pale pink; it was like contemplating an artifact from an immeasurable past. Watching the film now, with its Mediterranean reds and blues rediscovered in…