David Bordwell

The “digital revolution” reached the cinema late and was chiefly styled as a technological advancement. Today, in an era where analog celluloid strips are disappearing, and given the diversity of digital moving picture formats, there is much more at stake: Are the world’s film archives on the brink of a dark age? Are we facing the massive loss of collective audiovisual memory? Is film dying, or just changing? CINEMA FUTURES travels to international locations and, together with renowned filmmakers, museum curators, historians and engineers, dramatizes the future of film and the cinema in the age of digital moving pictures.

David Bordwell, author of Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema, discusses some of the key themes and stylistic qualities that define Yasujiro Ozu's work and The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice, in this interview for The Criterion Collection.

An analysis of stylistic and narrative cinematic choices, themes, patterns composing scenes, and shots in Alfred Hitchcock's films, focusing on "Notorious" (1946), that demonstrate his genius as a master craftsman.

In this 25-minute video essay, film scholar David Bordwell, co-author of "Film Art: An Introduction", conducts an analysis of Howard Hawks's "His Girl Friday" (1940), which he believes to be the apotheosis of classical Hollywood storytelling. Bordwell discusses the film's history and the status of Howard Hawks as an auteur before delving into a detailed analysis of various aspects of the film's narrative, dialogue, use of props, editing, and staging.