NYT. Janus Films.

There'll be more on the New York Film Festival as the day wears on, but for the moment, you've got to browse this: Manohla Dargis introduces what I suppose you might call a special featurette on the remarkable sidebar, 50 Years of Janus Films. No matter how often you've seen however many of these before, she writes, "it's time to discover them again, where they belong: on the big, bright, beautiful movie screen."

So each title on these pages is accompanied by showtimes, naturally, but also by a quote from the director regarding the film. Ingmar Bergman, for example, on The Seventh Seal: "I believe a human being carries his or her own holiness, which lies within the realm of the earth; there are no otherworldly explanations. So in the film lives a remnant of my honest, childish piety lying peacefully alongside a harsh and rational perception of reality."

Updated, 9/30.

Click the title and you land on a page which in turn directs you to the trailer, reviving all those memories of seeing that starkly essential imagery for the first time, and to the NYT's original review, in which Bosley Crowther, writing nearly half a century ago, 1958, proclaimed that the film was "as tough - and rewarding - a screen challenge as the moviegoer has had to face this year."

Good thing the weekend starts this evening. Earlier: Michael Atkinson in the Voice on the series and Ray Pride here on The 400 Blows, "uncut, Janus Films logo and all, on late night TV."

Update, 9/30: An audio slideshow in which Manohla Dargis, AO Scott and Stephen Holden talk about a few of their favorites in the series.

Posted by dwhudson at September 29, 2006 7:46 AM