Let Us Live (John Brahm, 1939)

Playing at Harvard Film Archive on November 7. – EK

This extraordinarily grim tale of an innocent cab driver called Brick (Henry Fonda) who, on the eve of his marriage to Mary (Maureen O'Sullivan), is mistakenly identified by eyewitnesses as a robber and murderer, prefigures Fonda’s similar role in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Wrong Man, made two decades later. Yet in its pessimism and poignancy, it surpasses that later take on the themes of mistaken identity, fate and the threats lurking behind civilized facades.

Abbas Kiarostami's Early Shorts and Features on Criterion Blu-ray

I have written a long essay to accompany a Criterion three-disc set featuring the early work of Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami, produced between 1970 and 1989. This release relaunches the Eclipse series for the home video label, with Imogen Sara Smith serving as the series new editor. 

All of the titles have been restored in 2K by the renowned Bologna-based film restoration laboratory, L’Immagine Ritrovata. 

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