The Thinking Machine #48

In their series The Thinking Machine, critics Cristina Álvarez López and Adrian Martin create a new video essay for De Filmkrant every month.

Over 40 years ago, before even the birth of de Filmkrant, a teenage boy in Australia set out, not merely to analyse or appreciate a film, but to grasp it, take material hold of it. The film was Angel Face (1953) starring Jean Simmons and Robert Mitchum. A violent, erotic, mysterious, secretive film. The boy’s tools were primitive, imperfect. Our audiovisual tools today are more technically sophisticated. But are they necessarily any better?