Eloise Ross
Eloise Ross is completing a PhD in film studies at La Trobe University. She is a writer and researcher specialising in Hollywood film history, sound studies, and phenomenology. She works for the Melbourne Cinémathèque and helps out at Screening the Past.
The first time that I really took notice of Orry-Kelly’s name was when I began researching the 1933 pre-code film Baby Face a number of years ago. I became obsessed with Barbara Stanwyck’s sharp Manhattan business attire, her intricate gloves, and the fur-draped costumes she later wore as a kept woman. That the costumes were, at heart, Australian made them seem only more glamorous. For me, the ... (read more)
Bette Davis once described Hollywood actors as American royalty, a cohort that answered the core human desire to look up to something. Those Hollywood actors who became stars (so named because of the stars in Paramount Pictures’ logo), thus served a purpose not only by acting, but also by representing societal and cultural ideals; not an easy demand, as such ideals are often conflicting. Anne He ... (read more)
From first-time director and screenwriter duo Charlie McDowell and Justin Lader, The One I Love is a film that confronts just how hard it can be to love someone. Sophie (Elisabeth Moss) and Ethan (Mark Duplass) are married and in counselling when their therapist (Ted Danson) suggests that they go on a weekend retreat together, just the two of them. He sends lots of his clients there, he assures th ... (read more)
Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1909–93), a screenwriter, producer, and director of films in Hollywood for over forty years, is the latest to receive repertory profile treatment at the 52nd New York Film Festival. Entire-career retrospectives are always interesting events; they are at once a celebration of auteurism and a complication of it. Nobody’s career is flawless, and a retrospective like this ine ... (read more)
‘I get awful intense about these movies I do. I become, in fact, obsessed with them.’ So Elia Kazan (1909–2003) wrote to his daughter in 1957. A workaholic, Kazan was both extremely self-assured and plagued by self-doubt, terrified he would produce mediocrity. He rarely did. As a stage and screen director he achieved remarkable success. Kazan was an egotist, and the confidence he exhibited p ... (read more)