Richard Brody

Last updated

Richard Brody
Born (1958-01-22) January 22, 1958 (age 66)
United States
Alma mater Princeton University (BA)
Occupation Film critic
Employer The New Yorker (1999–present)
SpouseMaja
Children2
AwardsChevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (2014)

Richard Brody (born January 22, 1958) [1] is an American film critic who has written for The New Yorker since 1999.

Contents

Background

Brody grew up in Roslyn, New York. [2] He is Jewish and has personally identified as an atheist. [2] [3] Brody attended Princeton University, receiving a BA in comparative literature in 1980. [2] He first became interested in films after seeing Jean-Luc Godard's seminal French New Wave film Breathless during his freshman year at Princeton.

In the early 1980s, after graduating from college, Brody briefly lived in Paris. [4] He is the author of a biography of Godard.

Brody has two children with his wife, Maja, who immigrated to the United States from Yugoslavia. [2] [5]

Career

Before becoming a film critic, Brody worked on documentaries and made several independent films. [4] [6] [7] In December 2014, he was made a Chevalier (Knight) in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres for his contributions in popularizing French cinema in America. [8]

Favorite films

Brody participated in the 2012 Sight & Sound critics' poll, [9] where he listed as his ten favorite films the following:

In the 2022 Sight & Sound critics' poll, half of the films selected remained the same:

Best films of the year

Bibliography

Related Research Articles

<i>Cahiers du Cinéma</i> French film journal

Cahiers du Cinéma is a French film magazine co-founded in 1951 by André Bazin, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze, and Joseph-Marie Lo Duca. It developed from the earlier magazine Revue du Cinéma involving members of two Paris film clubs—Objectif 49 and Ciné-Club du Quartier Latin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jean-Luc Godard</span> French and Swiss film director (1930–2022)

Jean-Luc Godard was a French and Swiss film director, screenwriter, and film critic. He rose to prominence as a pioneer of the French New Wave film movement of the 1960s, alongside such filmmakers as François Truffaut, Agnès Varda, Éric Rohmer and Jacques Demy. He was arguably the most influential French filmmaker of the post-war era. According to AllMovie, his work "revolutionized the motion picture form" through its experimentation with narrative, continuity, sound, and camerawork. His most acclaimed films include Breathless (1960), Vivre sa vie (1962), Contempt (1963), Band of Outsiders (1964), Alphaville (1965), Pierrot le Fou (1965), Masculin Féminin (1966), Weekend (1967) and Goodbye to Language (2014).

<i>Shoah</i> (film) 1985 French documentary film by Claude Lanzmann

Shoah is a 1985 French documentary film about the Holocaust, directed by Claude Lanzmann. Over nine hours long and eleven years in the making, the film presents Lanzmann's interviews with survivors, witnesses and perpetrators during visits to German Holocaust sites across Poland, including extermination camps.

<i>The 400 Blows</i> 1959 film by François Truffaut

The 400 Blows is a 1959 French coming-of-age drama film, and the directorial debut of François Truffaut, who also co-wrote the film. Shot in the anamorphic format DyaliScope, the film stars Jean-Pierre Léaud, Albert Rémy, and Claire Maurier. One of the defining films of the French New Wave, it displays many of the characteristic traits of the movement. Written by Truffaut and Marcel Moussy, the film is about Antoine Doinel, a misunderstood adolescent in Paris who struggles with his parents and teachers due to his rebellious behavior. Filmed on location in Paris and Honfleur, it is the first in a series of five films in which Léaud plays the semi-autobiographical character.

<i>Breathless</i> (1960 film) 1960 French film by Jean-Luc Godard

Breathless is a 1960 French New Wave crime drama film written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard. It stars Jean-Paul Belmondo as a wandering criminal named Michel, and Jean Seberg as his American girlfriend Patricia. The film was Godard's first feature-length work and represented Belmondo's breakthrough as an actor.

Sight and Sound is a monthly film magazine published by the British Film Institute (BFI). Since 1952, it has conducted the well-known decennial Sight and Sound Poll of the Greatest Films of All Time.

<i>Pierrot le Fou</i> 1965 film by Jean-Luc Godard

Pierrot le Fou is a 1965 French New Wave romantic crime drama road film written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard, starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina. The film is based on the 1962 novel Obsession by Lionel White. It was Godard's tenth feature film, released between Alphaville and Masculin, féminin. The plot follows Ferdinand, an unhappily married man, as he escapes his boring society and travels from Paris to the Mediterranean Sea with Marianne, a young woman chased by OAS hitmen from Algeria.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anne Wiazemsky</span> French actress and novelist (1947–2017)

Anne Wiazemsky was a French actress and novelist. She made her cinema debut at the age of 18, playing Marie, the lead character in Robert Bresson's Au hasard Balthazar (1966). A year later she married the director Jean-Luc Godard and appeared in several of his films, including La Chinoise (1967), Week End (1967), and One Plus One (1968).

<i>Two or Three Things I Know About Her</i> 1967 film by Jean-Luc Godard

Two or Three Things I Know About Her is a 1967 French New Wave film written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard, one of three features he completed that year. As with the other two, it is considered both socially and stylistically radical. Village Voice critic Amy Taubin considers the film to be among the greatest achievements in filmmaking.

<i>In Praise of Love</i> (film) 2001 film by Jean-Luc Godard

In Praise of Love is a 2001 French film written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard. The black-and-white and color drama was shot by Julien Hirsch and Christophe Pollock. Godard has famously stated that "a film should have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order." This aphorism is illustrated by In Praise of Love, which reverses the order of past and present. It was selected as the Swiss entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 74th Academy Awards, but it was not nominated.

David Kehr is an American museum curator and film critic. For many years a critic at the Chicago Reader and the Chicago Tribune, he later wrote a weekly column for The New York Times on DVD releases. He later became a curator within the department of film at the Museum of Modern Art.

<i>King Lear</i> (1987 film) 1987 film

King Lear is a 1987 American film directed by Jean-Luc Godard, an adaptation of William Shakespeare's play in the avant-garde style of French New Wave cinema. The script was primarily by Peter Sellars and Tom Luddy. It is not a typical cinematic adaptation of Shakespeare's eponymous tragedy, although some lines from the play are used in the film. Only three characters – Lear, Cordelia and Edgar – are common to both, and only Act I, scene 1 is given a conventional cinematic treatment in that two or three people actually engage in relatively meaningful dialogue.

Richard Stanley Roud was an American writer on film and co-founder, with Amos Vogel, of the New York Film Festival (NYFF). At the NYFF, Roud was a former program director, and latterly director, from 1963 to 1987.

<i>Paris Belongs to Us</i> 1961 film

Paris Belongs to Us is a 1961 French mystery film directed by Jacques Rivette in his feature-length directorial debut. Set in Paris in 1957 and often referencing Shakespeare's play Pericles, the title is highly ironic because the characters are immigrants or alienated and do not feel that they belong at all.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Raymond Cauchetier</span> French photographer (1920–2021)

Raymond Cauchetier was a French photographer, known for his work as the set photographer from 1959 to 1968 on many films of the French New Wave. His photographs are an important record of the New Wave directors at the beginning of their careers, and of their unconventional and groundbreaking production methods. A 2009 profile of Cauchetier in Aperture magazine declared that his photographs "are themselves central works of the New Wave."

<i>Goodbye to Language</i> 2014 film by Jean-Luc Godard

Goodbye to Language is a 2014 French-Swiss narrative essay film written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard. It stars Héloïse Godet, Kamel Abdeli, Richard Chevallier, Zoé Bruneau, Jessica Erickson and Christian Grégori and was shot by cinematographer Fabrice Aragno. It is Godard's 42nd feature film and 121st film or video project. In the French-speaking parts of Switzerland where it was shot, the word "adieu" can mean both goodbye and hello. The film depicts a couple having an affair. The woman's husband discovers the affair and the lover is killed. Two pairs of actors portray the couple and their actions repeat and mirror one another. Godard's own dog Roxy Miéville has a prominent role in the film and won a prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Like many of Godard's films, it includes numerous quotes and references to previous artistic, philosophical and scientific works, most prominently those of Jacques Ellul, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Mary Shelley.

Geoff Andrew is a British writer, lecturer, teacher, film programmer and occasional broadcaster.

Letter in Motion to Gilles Jacob and Thierry Frémaux is a 2014 short film directed by Jean-Luc Godard.

<i>The Image Book</i> 2018 collage film by Jean-Luc Godard

The Image Book is a 2018 Swiss avant-garde essay film directed by Jean-Luc Godard. Initially titled Tentative de bleu and Image et parole, in December 2016 Wild Bunch co-chief Vincent Maraval stated that Godard had been shooting the film for almost two years "in various Arab countries, including Tunisia" and that it is an examination of the modern Arabic world. Godard told Séance magazine that he was shooting without actors but the film would have a storyteller. It was selected to compete for the Palme d'Or at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival. The film was positively received by film critics. It was the final film directed by Godard before his death in 2022.

The "Top 100 Greatest Films of All Time" is a list published every ten years by Sight and Sound according to worldwide opinion polls they conduct. They published the critics' list, based on 1,639 participating critics, programmers, curators, archivists and academics, and the directors' list, based on 480 directors and filmmakers. Sight and Sound, published by the British Film Institute, has conducted a poll of the greatest films every 10 years since 1952.

References

  1. "Notice de personne "Brody, Richard (1958-....)"". Bibliothèque nationale de France (in French). Retrieved February 4, 2024.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Collins, Glenn (February 11, 1993). "A Film Maker's Lot: Frustration, Devotion, Rejection and Some Fun" . The New York Times . p. C19. Retrieved August 31, 2018.
  3. Brody, Richard. "Catching Up". The New Yorker.
  4. 1 2 Bale, Miriam (February 24, 2009). "A Dialogue with Richard Brody". Slant Magazine. Retrieved July 20, 2022.
  5. Brody, Richard (May 31, 2009). "The Groom" . The New Yorker .
  6. "Richard Brody". The New Yorker . Condé Nast . Retrieved February 27, 2015.
  7. Smith, Liz (March 13, 2015). "Richard Brody on Cinema and Digitalization". Cooper Squared. Wordpress.com . Retrieved February 27, 2015.
  8. Adams, Sam (December 15, 2014). "The New Yorker's Richard Brody Named Chevalier, Offers Top 10 List". Indiewire . Penske Business Media, LLC. Archived from the original on March 13, 2015. Retrieved March 12, 2015.
  9. "Richard Brody | BFI". www2.bfi.org.uk. Archived from the original on February 14, 2016.
  10. Brody, Richard (December 2, 2021). "The Best Movies of 2021". The New Yorker. Retrieved December 8, 2021.