Sight & Sound November 2020

Out now, our November issue looks at 2020 through the apt prism of horror cinema. Our cover star Rose Glass talks about religion, terminal illness and self-harm in her breakthrough Saint Maud; Kim Newman weighs the year in horror and peers ahead at the impact of 2020 on horror; Ben Wheatley brings us back to Manderley in his new adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca; 1960s horror icon Barbara Steele talks about death, dark fairytales and why she turned down Hammer; David Thomson considers the meaning and timing of Natalie Erika James’s terrifying debut feature Relic; and from our archives, Linda Ruth Williams explores the seminal impact on theatrical horror of Hitchcock’s classic shocker Psycho – released 60 years ago.

Plus: Garrett Bradley’s Time, Josephine Decker’s Shirley, Bassam Tariq’s Mogul Mowgli, found-footage horror, Venice in a time of plague, and cinemas’ own ongoing fright times…

Plus regular features:

Editorial
The fright stuff

Rushes
In search of lost time
Garrett Bradley discusses her topical new documentary Time addressing the US prison epidemic and why her portrait focuses on those serving time on the outside.

Influences: riding the rap
Director Bassam Tariq picks five films that inspired his fiction debut Mogul Mowgli, from Robert Bresson to Anna Rose Holmer. By Naomi Obeng.

Soundings: pitch perfect
Musician Tamar-kali talks about exploring the outer limits of the human voice in her score for Josephine Decker’s Shirley.

Dream palaces: Electric Shadows, Canberra
Cate Shortland, the Australian director of Marvel’s Black Widow, now delayed until next year, reflects on her film education in cinemas.

Rising star: Maimouna Doucoure

Obituary: Diana Rigg, 1938-2020
Mighty from The Avengers to Game of Thrones, Diana Rigg was devoted to the art of acting, and herself inspired cult devotion. By Josephine Botting.

Festivals: Venice 2020 – some kind of wonderful
The first non-virtual major international film gathering since lockdown was the best of times amid the worst of times. By Jessica Kiang.

+ Six highlights of Venice 2020
By Jonathan Romney.

Rising star
White Riot’s Rubika Shah

The numbers: Covid and cinemas
As autumn arrives and cinemas are still struggling, hopes have been pinned on blockbusters to save the day. Enter a surprise outlier… By Charles Gant.

Wide angle
Found footage horror: I wake up screaming
As more and more of our day-to-day activity is recorded, the possibilities of the fake-real horror movie are proliferating. By Kim Newman.

Primal screen: Maintaining silents
The pandemic may have put paid to silent film in the cinema, but fans are making sure that live screenings can still happen. By Bryony Dixon.

Profile: Stephen Broomer
Chemically and digitally transforming found footage, the Canadian filmmaker creates looping, hypnotic new works. By Ben Nicholson.

Reviews

Film of the month
Host
A feat of socially distanced production-as-story, Rob Savage’s haunted housebound horror is the film for our logged-on moment – but its feelings are screen-deep.

Shirley
Elizabeth Moss captures the singularity of writer Shirley Jackson. Couples collide and imagination and reality blur in the manner of Jackson’s fiction in Josephine Decker’s intense psychodrama.

Plus reviews of:

About Endlessness
Body of Water
The Forty-Year-Old Version
His House
I Am Greta
Kajillionaire
Little Girl
Mogul Mowgli
The Other Lamb
Relic
Rialto
Summer of ’85
Tenet
Tesla
Time

Television of the month
The Haunting of Bly Manor

Plus reviews of:
Away
Little Birds
Ramy: Season 2
Ratched

Home cinema features
Play for Today Volume 1
Memorable plays, dazzling careers, bruising controversies – has any UK drama series had as much impact as Play for Today? Reviewed by Robert Hanks.

Rediscovery: Eve + Mademoiselle
Two monochrome classics of the high-60s transnational art film make ideal showcases for Jeanne Moreau’s electrifying presence. Reviewed by Kate Stables.

Lost and found: Pretty Polly
Shashi Kapoor and Hayley Mills make for an endearingly charming couple in Guy Green’s Singapore-set 1960s Noël Coward adaptation. By Phuong Le.

Plus reviews of:
After the Fox
Circus of Horrors
CzechMate: In Search of Jirí Menzel
The Guinea Pig
L’important c’est d’aimer
Ragtime
Toto the Hero

Books
Paul Thomas Anderson: Masterworks by Adam Nayman (Abrams & Chronicle Books) reviewed by Tom Charity

Phantom Lady: Hollywood Producer Joan Harrison, the Forgotten Woman Behind Hitchcock by Christina Lane (Chicago Review Press) reviewed by Pamela Hutchinson

Letters
Tenet, Memento and Christopher Nolan’s lost lessons in clarity
Myths of Charles Lindbergh
Linda Manz’s forgotten turn in Joseph’s Daughter (Mir reicht’s ich steig aus)
Unmentioned oddities on Eureka’s latest Buster Keaton Blu-ray box set
Diversity in British-set European horrors of the 1960s

Endings
Psycho
However clumsy the horror classic’s coda might appear today, it’s hard to believe Alfred Hitchcock didn’t have his tongue in his cheek all along. By Anne Billson