Only the Dead (2016)

A visual essay that highlights top-down shots from Wes Anderson's filmography.

When characters stare at the camera in the films of Alfred Hitchcock, the look is almost always associated with the threat of death (through the eyes of a victim, a murderer, a witness). This momentary suspension between death and life is partly what makes Hitchcock the indisputable master of suspense.

Cleverly conceived and artfully edited, Christian Marclay's 7 1/2-minute video, Telephones, comprises a succession of brief film clips that creates a humorous narrative of its own in which the characters, in progression, dial, hear the phone ring, pick it up, converse, react, say goodbye and hang up. In doing so, they express a multitude of emotions--surprise, desire, anger, disbelief, excitement, boredom--ultimately leaving the impression that they are all part of one big conversation.

People constantly appear walking through passageways in the films of Japanese filmmaker Yasujirō Ozu (1903-63). His art resides in the in-between spaces of modern life, in the transitory: alleys are no longer dark and threatening traps where suspense is born, but simple places of passage.

Filmmaker Kogonada reflects on women and mirrors in the films of Ingmar Bergman.