About David Krauss
A lifelong movie buff, David possesses a special fondness for classic films from Hollywood's Golden Age. He holds a degree in film history and criticism from Northwestern University, and over the past 20 years has written film-related articles for several national and regional magazines. He's been a staff writer at High-Def Digest since 2009.
If you only see one Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers movie, make it Swing Time. With memorable Jerome Kern standards, smooth direction by the great George Stevens, and a host of dazzling dance routines, this vintage musical remains fore...
The closest thing to an acid trip in 1930s Hollywood was a Busby Berkeley musical number, and Footlight Parade is one of the filmmaker’s most potent hallucinogens.
Jezebel may be a poor man’s Gone with the Wind, but it’s still a very rich cinematic experience, thanks to Bette Davis’ Oscar-winning performance and William Wyler’s superior direction. Fans of Golden Age c...
Gaslights may be obsolete, but the verb inspired by those flickering flames – and George Cukor’s classic 1944 thriller – is still very much in vogue today. Seventy-five years after its premiere, Gaslight remains a finely cra...
Beautiful and devastating, Le quai des brumes (Port of Shadows) stands as one of the prime examples of poetic realism and remains a classic of French cinema.
Mystical, thought-provoking, occasionally witty, and a bit weird, Death Takes a Holiday parlays a fascinating premise into a strangely compelling and spiritual film. If you’ve met – and liked – Joe Black, you should get to k...
Hold back those tears. The Best Picture nominee Hold Back the Dawn remains a classic romantic weepie, but beneath its glossy veneer lies a substantive examination of a topic that’s still making front-page news 80 years later...
Some message films lose their sting as the years pass, but A Patch of Blue isn’t one of them. This touching, beautifully mounted movie still has something very powerful to say about racial tolerance and human understanding. ...
Shirley MacLaine’s irrepressible vivacity and Bob Fosse’s iconic choreography sweeten Sweet Charity, but the lumbering story of a not-so-happy hooker’s quest for love leaves a slightly sour aftertaste.
Film history is everywhere, and sometimes you just innocently stumble upon it.
If you can’t make it to Rome or Venice anytime soon, check out Three Coins in the Fountain. It’s the next best thing to being there. This lightweight romance about the affairs of a trio of American expatriates living l...
The 1966 version of Madame X may be a tearjerker on steroids, but don’t judge this emotional tale of motherly love by the copious amounts of Kleenex required to get through it. Lana Turner’s last hurrah is surprisingly...