Reverse Shot A different angle on moving images—past, present, and future

It’s one of the best examples I know of a film that seems to exist independently of a viewership, self-contained in its own evocation of a specific time and place.

The high-resolution digital images of Bergman’s actors have a certain facticity that makes them seem more vivid than they had ever been.

For years this single cut has held in my mind as a rebuttal to all of the expensive blockbusters that rely on costly explosions, explicit crashes or elaborate computer-generated effects to get a rise from the viewer, when something as simple as a perfectly placed jump cut can startle just as effectively.

Criterion’s lavish double-disc treatment of La Haine gives ample testimony to the film’s importance, not only to recent French cinema but also to contemporary French society.