Mark Rappaport Movies

Joan Crawford's close-up in Humoresque. Michelangelo's David and Boticelli's "Birth of Venus". Stendhal was overwhelmed by the cultural...

Mark Rappaport's first film—a study of a young man named Gerald Mur.

Blacklisted gay communist 1940’s character actor Will Geer became Grandpa Walton in the hit series “The Waltons”. How so?

A separated couple try to keep in touch through postcards of typically "American" sights: motels, monuments, parks; but their postcards cross in the...

Jacques Tati and Robert Bresson were very different directors, yet the way they structure a scene is very similar.

German actor Conrad Veidt is best remembered for playing Nazi Major Strasser in Casablanca. In reality, he was an ardent anti-fascist who left Nazi...

A tribute to actresses, approaching their presence in and out the screen, humanizing the icons. From the Ukrainian Anna Sten to the French Anna...

The great French actor, Marcel Dalio, who has the lead role in Jean Renoir's THE RULES OF THE GAME, also appears in Renoir's GRAND ILLUSION. In both...

As a teenager, Sergei Eisenstein signed his drawings with "Sir Gay". Mark Rappaport sees clear signs of his sexual preferences throughout the...

Stars of the 1940s and 1950s, were they cast for their mutual affinities or for their commercial appeal? If and when they were re-starred years...

What could have happened – what should have happened – if two giants in film history, like Greta Garbo and Sergei Michajlovič...

A fictional biography of Hollywood actors Martin Kosleck and Hans Heinrich von Twardowski, both of whom fled Hitler-era Germany to live a...

Paul Henreid, perhaps most famous for his roles in CASABLANCA and NOW, VOYAGER became a star at Warner Brothers during World War II, as the exotic...

Scenes from New York in the 1960s. Four young people, friendship, jealousy, separation.

In Rappaport’s dazzling and bizarre feature-length debut, he focuses on states of imaginative possession and dispossession, demonstrating how...

An irreverent take on Mozart's relations with the three Weber sisters: Louisa, whom he loved, but who didn't love him; Constanza, whom he loved and...

Max Ophuls is the legendary director and two of his favorite actors are James Mason and Danielle Darrieux. Mason and Darrieux were each in several...

In the Hollywood's studio system, sets and equipment were used over and over again. Maybe this is why movies seem to have a dream logic today. A...

A video essay by Mark Rappaport, which spans René Magritte and Michelangelo to Bonnie & Clyde. Let’s mask up to rob a bank! But make...

In the movies since he was an infant, Chris Olsen appeared in films by some of the best directors of the 1950's. Even though he never became a...