Titus Techera is the Distinguished Fellow in American Culture at Hillsdale College, International Program Coordinator at the Edmund Burke Foundation, a researcher in the European Center of Political Philosophy at Mathias Corvinus Collegium, and managing editor of the European Journal of Political Philosophy.
Posts by Titus Techera
April 21, 2022
Classic film noir wanted to reveal to America the depth of the problem of ambitious men in a democracy through crime stories—detectives, criminals, and victims caught in the quest for justice after the quest for happiness leads to catastrophe.
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April 06, 2022
My first film noir essay was on
The Maltese Falcon, whose ambitious protagonist, private detective Sam Spade, chooses justice over an uncertain promise of happiness, the love of a dangerous woman.
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March 30, 2022
Recently I spoke at Hillsdale College on film noir as part of a program that introduced audiences to four of the most impressive movies in the genre that defined the tough detective in America and the less popular type of doomed romantic.
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March 23, 2022
My long series on Oscar movies is coming to an end with angry words about Hollywood. To summarize, I liked Wes Anderson, loved Paul Thomas Anderson, was amused by Ridley Scott, disappointed by Steven Spielberg, and disgusted by Guillermo Del Toro.
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March 03, 2022
Guillermo del Toro won Best Picture and Best Director Oscars for
The Shape Of Water (2017), a movie infamous for a leading lady so desperate for intimacy that she makes love to a fish, probably the best metaphor for the ongoing moral collapse of the women who like such movies.
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February 24, 2022
My series on cinematic nostalgia continues—after Wes Anderson’s Francophilia, Ridley Scott’s Italian farce, and Spielberg’s Puerto Rican fiasco, here’s a California story: Paul Thomas Anderson’s ninth feature film,
Licorice Pizza, the only Hollywood movie made last year with some reason to be remembered.
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February 17, 2022
Steven Spielberg has recently made a number of movies nostalgic for midcentury liberalism,
Bridge of Spies and
The Post, especially, very mediocre stories that won him Oscar nominations and praise in the mainstream press at the price of the popularity he once enjoyed.
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February 08, 2022
My first Oscars essay presented Wes Anderson, the Hollywood dandy’s Francophilia,
The French Dispatch, and gentle criticism of liberal intellectual pretense. The 2022 Oscar contenders also include an examination of American Italophilia—veteran Ridley Scott’s
House of Gucci, as full of today’s stars as Anderson’s movies are of yesteryear’s.
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February 01, 2022
I offer you a series on Hollywood as seen by its artists, on the occasion of the impending Oscars. I don’t mean the dominant liberal arrogance that has doomed cinema, but rather the efforts of artists who have spent their careers trying to advance a view of America that might bring us together, or at least help prevent us coming apart, the concern of all decent people who have influence.
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January 25, 2022
Fair play and the rule of law are essential conditions of our civilization, regulating private and public life. We would be ashamed to look for success, prosperity, victory without them. People whom we suspect of unfair dealings or illegality stand to lose everything concerning their reputation, to say nothing of what authorities might do to them.
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